Trump gives Starmer an open goal on Brexit

Keir Starmer is a decent footballer. “Perhaps not the most skilled, but a good captain, an effective organiser and a tenacious player,” wrote the i’s Ian Birrell, who plays in a weekly game with the prime minister, earlier this year. “He is solid, hard-working and the sort of competitive character who hates losing that you want on your side.”

Starmer then is certainly familiar with the concept of the open goal – that all-too-rare moment when opportunity presents itself and an empty net gapes wide before you. All you have to do is control the ball being passed towards you and guide in your shot.

The election of Donald Trump presents an open goal for the PM on something he has struggled with – how to sell the British people on a return to the European Union’s single market. Labour’s leader has been explicit in ruling this out. Signing up without a full return to the EU is a backdoor method that would involve joining Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and then following the first three into the European Economic Area (EEA). But that would involve the return of free movement.

Starmer supported this as recently as his 2020 campaign for the Labour leadership, during which he said: “We have to make the case for the benefits of migration; for the benefits of free movement.” But as immigration has again become a leading issue, he has changed his tune, so much that people joke he introduces himself with the words “my name is Keir Starmer, but that does not mean a return to the single market, the customs union and the free movement of people”.

Trump’s victory gives Starmer a convincing reason to perform a u-turn on his u-turn. Of course he can push for a UK trade deal with Trump, and foreign secretary David Lammy’s previous remarks about the president-elect will be no obstacle to this. JD Vance once called Trump “an idiot” and “reprehensible” and privately compared him to Hitler, but it hasn’t stopped him becoming vice president-elect.

But Starmer knows that Britain is much more likely to become collateral damage in Trump’s isolationist trade wars. The president-elect speaks of bringing in 10% or even 20% taxes on imports. The most generous assessment, from the London School of Economics, is that at 10%, this would cost the UK about £3.8bn a year. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank believes a 10% tariff would take the country’s expected growth in 2026 down from 1.4% to just 0.4%, with the knock-on effect of a Trump trade war resulting in a 2-3% rise in inflation.

For Starmer, who has put growth at the centre of his economic strategy and who has just witnessed Kamala Harris defeated by Trump partly because of inflation, these will be chilling predictions. They alone may not be enough to persuade him to move, but a rising number of Westminster voices will encourage him to do so.

These include Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, who seems to have rediscovered his European mojo – perhaps at the bottom of a splash pool – and who recently said: “If you’re going to rebuild our economy and get growth, you have to go further… I just don’t think he is going far enough. The fact that he’s ruled out going back into the single market, I think is a mistake.” Closer to home is the Labour Movement for Europe led by the MP Stella Creasy, who tweeted after the US election: “Trump is now happening, so the answer to this problem lies in rebuilding trade with Europe – research shows Brexit accounts [for] about a £23bn quarterly hit to UK exports.”

Up to this point, Starmer’s rejection of the single market may have been a result of that curse of the striker with the goal at his mercy – overthinking things. The last time YouGov asked detailed questions about the single market, just under a year ago, 57% of Britons said they would support the UK rejoining it, even if this meant a return to free movement. Only around 22% were opposed. Nigel Farage would be among them, of course, but Starmer would have an easy reply: isolationist tariffs imposed by his close personal friend has made a return to the single market attractive.

So come on, Keir. The ball has been rolled to your feet in the six-yard box. A large, orange man is sitting on the goalkeeper. Are you going to be a bad captain, or are you going to shoot?