Does this development mean Starmer is secretly planning to Rejoin?

It is now almost a given that the majority of Britons want to rejoin the European Union. When the question was asked by a Mail On Sunday poll last week, the findings – which strangely, did not get much coverage in the Brexit-friendly Mail on Sunday – were 53% Rejoin, 40% Stay Out and 7% would not vote.

There has been no Stay Out lead in a single poll since November 2023, and the one before that was in April 2022. As the poll leads mount, it seems right to wonder why Stella Creasy MP, one of the leading lights of the pro-EU movement within the governing Labour Party, should be in this week’s print edition of the New European explaining why she is not campaigning for Rejoin.

In an excellent interview with my colleague Matt Withers, the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe explains that her group “is not about rejoin” but instead alleviating the problems British business and British artists currently encounter because of the previous government’s shambolic Brexit deal.

In a memorable moment, she says: “I am not sat here wearing a blue beret with gold stars on it singing Ode To Joy because I don’t think that is in the best interests of the British public. I’m being clear about what I think is in the best interests of the British public, which is to negotiate and focus on now… it isn’t going to help the people at the sharp end, the people I came into politics for, to be spending 10 years in treaty negotiations.”

The interview has already drawn a large response from readers, both in online comments and emails destined for our letters page. Some back Creasy’s pragmatism. At the time of writing, slightly more – perhaps those who doubt that slow and steady can win this race in febrile political times – regret that she and other leading Labour figures are not more openly committed to rejoining.

The interview also contains what Creasy calls “the Mark Francois question”, which is whether she and LME are actually to Labour what Francois and his inaccurately named European Research Group were to the Tories: a hardcore cabal of troublemakers who will not stop until they get their own way.

I confess to not having given Francois, the pompous Penfold from Danger Mouse lookalike, much thought in recent years. This has been a very pleasant experience.

Yet no sooner had the Walthamstow MP mentioned him, there Francois was again, commenting on a news story that seemed to support Creasy’s case that picking off problems and gradually drawing closer to Europe’s orbit might deliver more than a full-throated campaign to Rejoin.

The story was the appointment of Sir Olly Robbins – once the architect of Theresa May’s proposed EU deal, and therefore a hate figure for hard Brexit headbangers like Francois – as the most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office. He will work alongside David Lammy, Keir Starmer and others on the much-vaunted reset of UK/EU relations.

Francois foamed to the Daily Telegraph that this was betrayal. “As the official who led the negotiations on Theresa May’s deeply flawed withdrawal agreement, he is well connected around the EU,” he sniffed of Robbins, calling him the “perfect choice if Labour wanted to rejoin the EU”.

Francois added: “I have always argued that Starmer remains a Remainer at heart and this just helps prove it. Labour are going to try and take us back in, one step at a time.”

All of which poses another interesting question, no matter whether you are a Rapid Rejoiner or a Relatively Relaxed Resetter: when was the last time you hoped Mark Francois was right?