Description
The July 2024 election of a Labour government after 14 years of Conservative rule – characterised by the UK’s chaotic withdrawal from the EU – has placed the spotlight on the Labour Party’s European policy post-Brexit. The existing literature highlights some of the difficulties which the ‘Europe question’ presents for Labour, given the high proportion of leave supporters in the Labour heartlands, the readiness of Reform and the Conservatives to accuse Labour of ‘betraying Brexit’, and the electoral difficulties entailed by the pre-2019 commitment to a ‘second referendum’. This paper argues that Labour’s European policy faces a deeper problem – namely, an underlying belief that the party can negotiate bespoke forms of association on the basis of its Europeanist credentials. Drawing on interviews with policymakers, speeches and memoranda, we show how these ‘cakeist’ beliefs embody a broader myopia in the UK regarding the EU’s interests post-Brexit and fail to appreciate the risks involved in granting such concessions to the UK. Our argument helps to explain why the Starmer government has pinned hopes for a political and economic renaissance on ‘resetting’ relations with the EU, as well as the reasons why this is likely to be frustrated.
