Creasy: It's time to drop red lines with EU

The government must end talk of “red lines” with the EU if it is serious about securing a game-changing new Brexit deal, an influential Labour backbencher has said.

Stella Creasy, chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said Keir Starmer’s government needed to get better access to the single market and reduce customs barriers to reduce the paperwork and costs causing so much friction for British businesses.

She also argued there was “nothing to be gained for the UK in turning youth mobility into a symbol of something that must be opposed” over a key EU demand which ministers have set their stall firmly against.

In a joint article for the i newspaper with Karl Pike, a senior lecturer in public policy at Queen Mary University of London, Creasy wrote that Britain needed “a confidence boost, a hit of clarity about where it is going and why it matters – and it needs it now. That means turning up the dial on the much-discussed ‘reset’ with the EU”.

The pair wrote: “Putting Europe first in the queue for action is not about rerunning Brexit, but being clear-eyed about making it easier for Britain to do business. Rebuilding our relationship with Europe would undoubtedly muster short-term confidence that we are serious about fiscal growth.

“It would also show we understand the way the world is going. Nobody who cares about evidence thinks all economic opportunity lies in dealing with America or China alone. We can fight many things in life, but geography is not one.”

Creasy and Pike argued that it was “time to stand up to those who still claim exiting the EU was a good idea – and those eye-rolling because they fear ‘Get Brexit Done’ remains politically immovable”.

They wrote: “However hard the times may feel, we should always trust the good and decent instincts of the public. They know change takes time.

“While so many policy debates today can be in lurid or worse language both on and offline, the impact of them is felt in our everyday encounters. Are you experiencing the glory of UK sovereignty, or a longer queue at a border? Can you relish your blue passport, or can your business actually afford to export? But the decisions that can lead to that positive change – relations with Europe being one – cannot be delayed any longer.”

Late last year Creasy spoke to the New European and explained why her group was not campaigning to rejoin the EU but trying to salvage relations instead.