Why are we so scared to accept the EU’s generous post-Brexit deals?

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the EU’s new head of trade Maroš Šefčovič has offered a post-Brexit breakthrough of sorts. It is an offering to discuss the possibility of the UK joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention, which allows manufacturing components, parts, and ingredients to be used in tariff-free trade across the EU and a dozen other countries.

This is a clever, decent, generous offer – a solution to cut red tape and costs that was one of the remedies suggested by MP Stella Creasy of Labour Movement for Europe in her recent New European interview. It is a compromise that does not involve the UK rejoining the single market or the customs union or the EU itself. Thus, it’s nowhere near as good as rejoining would be but is a work around that would improve things slightly for British business and is therefore a step in the right direction.

Šefčovič also says a deal on veterinary and food standards could be reviewed. This is again a generous offer, especially since the EU has already introduced the costly tests and checks called for under the existing agreement but the UK not because they are costly, complicated and deeply unpopular with the food industry.

The UK government’s response so far has been for EU relations minister Nick Thomas-Symonds to say that it is “not seeking to participate [in PEM] at this time”. Meanwhile, back in Davos, chancellor Rachel Reeves and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds have given a joint interview in which they warn of the dangers of reopening the Brexit can of worms, repeat Labour’s red lines and suggest that being out of the EU will be good for our tech industries.

The government is quietly negotiating on PEM and veterinary standards, and Šefčovič also said in his speech that the mood music between Brussels and Westminster was now much improved. But really, this lack of public enthusiasm by us is embarrassing and counter-productive.

We should be biting the EU’s hands off to do deals like these. But Reeves, Reynolds, Thomas-Symonds and Keir Starmer himself are all so terrified of what the Daily Mail and Nigel Farage will say about moving closer to the EU that they are frozen in the headlights.

The smallest movement towards compromise will undoubtedly be portrayed as an attempt to rejoin the EU. But failing to talk with enthusiasm about the benefits of doing these deals is hog-tying the government’s response.

The same goes for the perfectly reasonable proposal on a limited youth mobility deal between the UK and the EU. Starmer and Yvette Cooper are so terrified of even being seen to discuss such an idea that they don’t stop to point out why it might be a very good deal. And so the negativity of the Brexiteers are left to fill the vacuum.

Instead, we have the chancellor at Davos wittering on about AI and why the UK is “the place to invest in now”. But Ms Reeves was not invited to talk on stage at Davos, adding to the UK’s (justified) paranoia about its place in the world post Brexit. Perhaps this is a good job, since the government’s message that it is clamping down on immigration while also welcoming the highly skilled from around the world is confused to say the best.

The fall in UK PhD students under the Tories is evidence enough that we have not been welcoming the brightest and best, while the rush of UK tech companies to float in New York rather than London is evidence enough that the UK is missing the boat.

The UK desperately needs some realism, sitting off the coast of the EU claiming that “everything is fine, thank you very much”; when it obviously isn’t and when offers of help are batted away because of little more than self-harming political cowardice, won’t cut it.

Rachel Reeves is pushing for growth with domestic reforms, more airport runways, fewer regulatory constraints, fewer consumer protections but the UK is not an economic island.

Claiming, as the chancellor does, that the UK is a better place to invest in AI because we do things differently from the EU is thin on detail, unlikely to make us friends on the continent and quite arrogant when the UK has very little to be arrogant about. We need to cooperate with those willing to help – the idea that Trump might lend us a hand on this is for the birds. He is investing heavily in American AI, to the tune of $500 billion, and cares not a jot for our ambitions.

We need closer ties with the EU and now they are letting us know the door is ajar. All we have to do is push it open. And yet we cannot even find the strength to do it.