It's time Starmer explained why we won't rejoin the EU

The Labour leader was shockingly blunt in an article written for a Eurosceptic newspaper yesterday: “Britain’s future is outside the EU.” He hadn’t said it quite so categorically before. Previously, he had tended to say there was “no case” for rejoining the EU, which always allowed the possibility that there might be a case for it at a later date.

- JOHN RENTOUL

Now he has ruled it out indefinitely. Which will puzzle much of his party. As the British people continue to move ever more emphatically towards the view that the vote to leave the EU was a mistake, the Labour leader seems to be going in the opposite direction.

Many in the party will understand what he is up to, even if they do not like it much. The crude calculation is that Rejoiners have nowhere else to go at the election, whereas Leavers – especially those who voted Conservative for the first time in 2019 – could easily be persuaded to vote Tory again. Yes, Rejoiners could go Lib Dem, Green or nationalist, but Keir Starmer actually wants to encourage voters in many southern Tory seats to vote Lib Dem. The Tories lose most seats if a swing to Labour is accompanied by a Lib Dem surge.

So Starmer’s focus is solely on convincing Leavers that he doesn’t want to reverse Brexit. Thus he used his article to block more tightly some of the possible loopholes that might allow the Conservatives to accuse him of harbouring the intention to backslide. Britain’s future, he went on, is “not in the single market, not in the customs union, not with a return to freedom of movement. Those arguments are in the past, where they belong.”