On the Boles proposals

On the Boles proposals

There is an essay by Nick Boles, published on demos website that argues to reframe Starmer’s EU reset by offering to extend Britain’s nuclear umbrella in exchange for a single market in goods. It is claimed this is circulating within government.

It has caused much excitement by the rejoin opposing press and its followers in the Labour Party. It has also been noted by some of the rejoin commentators as an item of hope.

It’s nonsense.

This proposal fails to recognise that, Starmer’s reset has failed, mostly through lack of ambition on the British side. This proposal is similar to the reset agreement made in May 25 which set an agenda, including an enhanced defence agreement. Not one single item of the reset has been finalised.

 The one disappointment I have in Starmer being replaced is that the learning process on the subject of EU relations within the government has been set back. I believe the Starmer speech on 1st May, together with the House of Commons Select Committee report and the Fabian Society’s “Pressing Reset” shows that large elements of labour we’re ready to learn a new lesson.

What needs to be understood is that the European Union will not make an agreement that leaves a third country in a better position than either current members or aspirant members and it considers the single market as indivisible.

The proposal has the benefit to Labour’s Atlanticists that it embeds Britains commitment to the US designed strategic nuclear deterrent, and its proposed extension, the air based so called tactical nuclear weapons in exchange for minimal concessions from the EU. I say, minimal, splitting the single market which is what is proposed is not minimal,  but if the UK is making the offer, it should be able to get more than a single market for goods, even if only seen from the nation of shopkeeper’s accountant’s lense.

The country needs a better deal on all three dimensions of the issue, defence, trade and international solidarity.

Labour’s NPF also shows a continuation of this lack of ambition, and a failure to learn from the failed two years of the Reset.

Rejoining the EU could be the easiest deal in the world if we just forget what we once had and embrace the economic benefits, the opportunity for deeper social relationships between our peoples, and the continued development of a force for peace, democracy and human rights.

This needs ambition and I am very unclear that Burnham’s government is ready for this.

Those of us that want to rejoin need to push harder and articulate achievable goals. The UK should join the single market now, and Labour should put that a Labour Government will seek to rejoin the EU in its next manifesto.

The Russian Ukraine border Sergey Bystro, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons …

Rejoin and the need for speed

the staircase at Lancaster House

In an article, on Best for Britain’s sub stack, Joshua Edwicker reviews the personnel responsible for EU relations in Burnham’s new cabinet. On first glance it would appear that this team is more likely to support closer relationships with the EU without putting roadblocks in the way and will at least have more ambition, although he doesn’t talk about Shabana Mahmood staying at the Home Office.

My fear is that relationships with the EU we’ll take a back seat in the priorities of the Burnham administration. New policy needs to start from the fact that the “Reset” has failed, yet most of the PLP don’t realise it. Not a single initiative announced in May 25 has been closed. It would be too easy for this team to continue to try for incremental changes to the trading rules with the EU.

The EU will survive without the UK and it is changing up, most significantly for the UK via its  Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA).

People, mainly convinced Brexiters, have been saying the EU has changed too much, it hasn’t yet, but it will, The IAA  is likely to increase the UK’s barriers to entry EU markets, harm the UK economy, and thus the living standards of the UK people.

We must put more on the table and act with speed. I believe that membership of the EEA, is a minimum first step and that the European Movement’s 5 asks are minimal demands. …

A time for reflection by London Labour, or not.

a red rose

London Labour held its annual conference on 18th and 19th of July, a month and half after disastrous local election results, and in the shadow of Keir Starmer’s resignation as leader of the Labour Party.  These two events shaped the debates that took place and in the tradition of the current leadership faction, the vast amount of time was given over to speakers from the platform, either as panel speakers, or just guest speeches.

There were two MP guest speakers, David Lammy and Wes Streeting who were occasionally joined on the platform by the outgoing regional director, Aline Delawa and regional chair Maggi Ferncombe of Unison.

They all repeated what’s becoming a line about what a good leader and Prime Minister Keir Starmer was, how he’d delivered a working majority after Labour’s greatest post-war election loss, and a successful government, even though and unmentioned, the number of votes won was amongst the lowest. This story is not true, and repeating this nonsense will make it harder to recover our vote share; it leaves the question, that if he was so good, “why did he have to resign?”, unanswered.

It’s a retread of Mandelson’s strategy, “they have nowhere else to go”, which has been proven to be false, most dramatically in 2019, and I am reminded, that in Scotland, there is now a generation that has never voted Labour and that in 2024, the hero voter strategy failed.

There is reticence to recognise that Palestine cut through and that the mantle of community progressive leadership has, in London at least, moved to the Greens. Labour were also hampered by being unable and/or unwilling to say it was a good government. For me and my Labour comrade councillors, it is galling to live in a borough which wins awards for its parks and have introduced landlord registration and yet lose to the Greens particularly where renters have switched from Labour to the Greens to punish a Labour Government that strengthened renter’s rights by making new laws.

Something I have noticed, and it came up at the Conference, is an anti-Green sectarianism. While it should be clear that there are political disagreements between the two parties, the crude stupidity of Labour’s anti-Green position, focusing on NATO and a controversial position on drugs makes it hard to genuinely speak to Labour’s defecting voters, most of whom are good people who feel let down by the first Labour Government of their generation. We may come to regret this.

Another part of the complacency is the idea that they’ll come back, we just have to wait our turn. During a Q&A session, one of the contributors pointed out that, the General Election strategy, where Labour instructed campaigners to campaign outside London meant that voters might and did feel ignored as the level of contact and conversation was diminished.

We need to ask just how good the London Labour regional offices is or has been. It’s job has been to manage the party; winning elections has come a distant second.  In London over the last two local election cycles, London Labour have lost six councils and in three of them, the councils are now led by Labour defectors who have been the victims of underhand administrative action by the regional office.

Len Duvall, the leader of the Labour Group on the GLA spoke of the next London wide elections, on the challenges facing the Mayor and highlighting his successes, the Fare Freeze, School Meals, Policing, where knife crime is down, and clean air, through electrification and investing in trees and parks. He also highlighted Kahn’s brave stand against hate.  Duvall warned that Labour needed to get its candidates in place as soon as possible. London Region’s record in just forgetting to hold trigger ballots is well remembered, at least by me.

In the REC elections, Labour to Win won all the seats, with one exception and that was because they failed to run a full slate. The office had also excluded the delegation from Islington South CLP; its presence might have made a difference in that division which has often been a stronghold of their opponents.  The three Newham Parties remain suspended.

There was 1½ hours for motions, which were on the whole pretty anodyne. They included motions from the Unions on Pay, London Weighting, Hours, the Health Service, and gambling. To this we add Unite’s motion calling for a debate and greater regulation of automated vehicles with a moratorium until regulation is in place.  The Co-Op party tabled two motions.  The CLP motion on re-nationalising Thames water was ruled out of order, and a CLP motion calling for better rail routes in South London was defeated when the ASLEF delegate stated that it would require more track or sacrificing other routes. Lewisham North’s motions on Horizon Europe and Rail Services were not submitted on time.  Does this accurately show the interest that CLPs have in policy?

I attended as a delegate from my Union, and this is written in a personal capacity. It was written in mid-August, from contemporaneous notes and back dated to the Monday following the Conference. The featured image is from unsplash.  …

After Makerfield, what next?

Is winning in Makerfield a new dawn for Labour, or just that this time, voters chose Labour as the “Not Farage” candidate. Since they won in Runcorn & Helsby, Reform have failed in Caerphilly, Gorton and Denton, and now Makerfield, losing to Plaid Cymru, the Greens and now to Labour. It was a great victory for Burnham and Labour, but the question has to be asked together with has Labour learnt the lesson that to fight Reform, you need to fight it. (I think not!)

Source: No10@flickr 10th June 2026 CC 2026 BY-ND-NC

Having returned to the House of Commons, Burnham has forced Keir Starmer to resign and a time table for a Party leadership election has been declared.

Much has been written about why he had to go; I have been calling for it since February when the likely defeats in Scotland and Wales became obvious. On the day, Labour also lost three more London Councils.

Starmer’s resignation speech starts in the same way as his election campaign to be leader of the Labour Party, with lies. When Starmer inherited the Labour Party, it was in the strongest financial position it had been for decades and anyone who has closely read the Forde report and the EHRC report knows there is still work to do to eliminate racism from the Labour Party. The focus on macroeconomic statistics repeats the mistakes that Biden made. While I do not subscribe to the meme that “perception is reality”, perhaps it is truer in politics than in engineering. Claiming the credit for growth doesn’t work if income equality remains at the current miserable level and if the growth in the economy goes into the pockets of a few. If people don’t feel better off, then it’s pointless claiming they should. It’s also difficult to understand, how Starmer can claim credit for the abolition of the two child benefit cap when he initially suspended seven MPs for voting for that abolition.

Much has been written about Starmer’s weaknesses as a politician and Prime Minister. For a lot more words you can check out Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, who focuses on personality and the politics of Downing St., and fails to mention Gaza and the Middle East, and alternatively, Phil Burton Cartledge, who does mention them, together with the dishonesty of his mandate within the Party. Phil also repeats his accusation that Starmer and McSweeney deliberately sought to break up Corbyn’s electoral coalition.

 Although some would seek to claim he’s been good on the world stage; this does need to be contrasted with his speeches and actions on Gaza, which is one of the primary causes for Labour’s loss of political support. Labour started the general election campaign with a poll score of 44%, finished with a vote of 34% which has since  collapsed to a score in the high teens.

Source: politico.eu – British polls 24 June 2026

It is expected that Burnham will be crowned as Labour’s new leader. If so he will be beholden to the fixers and not the membership and his retreats from his beliefs in order to win Makerfield are worrying because Labour and the country need a change of direction not a change of personnel.

The new leader also needs to turn Labour’s democracy back on. It is clear from the ending of Blair’s New Labour government that this Government and Labour leadership have run out intellectual steam; the Party needs debate and new ideas to sustain its relevance and energy.  We can also see by observing the last two years of the PLP what happens when MPs fear their whip more than their members and voters.

Clive Lewis, in an article entitled, ‘After Burnham’s Win in Makerfield, the Answer Cannot be Managerial Politics with a Different Accent’, speaks for me, when he says,

“Climate breakdown, war, energy insecurity, financial shocks, technological upheaval, and democratic decay are here. They will not wait for Labour to finish its management seminar.”

 …

Only full membership works!

the flags at the Berlaymont

Rafael Behr writes a trenchant statement about the weakness of Labour's "Fix Brexit" policy. It's titled, "The Brexit delusion is dead – so now Keir Starmer doesn’t need to pretend any more" with a tag line, "To rebuild relations with Europe in a dangerous world, the prime minister needs to win big arguments, not hide behind outdated red lines".

He criticises the timidity of the manifesto, Starmer's apolitical approach to dealing with Europe, and everything really, points out that cherry-picking can never succeed and that membership is the best answer even for the economic questions.

Today's debate amongst Labour's leadership, is whether its possible to pursue a sector-by-sector negotiation without compromising the red lines. It is not! Unless the UK gets on the train, the next tranche of EU reforms will make it harder for an incrementalist approach to succeed. Furthermore the EU are not going to give better terms to an ex-member than to current or acceding states. Also the five year review is due to start, there is no reason why the EU will want to put more on the table, and Behr's eloquent statement, that the only model that truly works is membership is now obviously true, made more so by the changing geo-political circumstances. I would add, that until we begin to talk about the need for mutual social solidarity with the peoples of the European Union, again progress will be slow. 

To me, this is a great article which you should read yourself, for those short of time, I have book marked the article in diigo, and made the following notes. These can be seen overleaf, by using the "Read More" button ...

Single market, customs union and a poison pill.

Single market, customs union and a poison pill.

In an article, Starmer prepares for parliamentary battles over imminent EU ‘reset’ bill, jessicaelgot suggested that there is movement on the “red lines”. It is clearer on reading that this is an attempt to accelerate UK agreement to the currently on-going trade negotiations by increasing the powers of the relevant ministers.

The article uses the phrase swiss-style agreement which is highly unlikely to succeed and at the best is tone deaf as to the EU’s needs and wants.  

UK in a changing Europe, document what they see as the timetable and goals of the current reset negotiations.I see them as optimistic, and everyone seems to forget that the EU’s starting point is full implementation of the withdrawal agreement and Windsor framework; there remain, even 18 months after the general election, eight infringement proceedings unresolved.

It’s sort of interesting that they think they need new language, but to me, they have not yet changed their mind.

I also see this as a means by which the Government deflects the internal Labour Party pressure towards joining the Customs Union by posing, parts of, the single market as an alternative. It is disappointing to see so many seeing the Customs Union as sufficient advance, but the UK economy and people need and want membership of both, including, reciprocal, free movement of  people.

Labour should join the customs union and single market now and promise to rejoin the EU in its next election manifesto.

Various news sources, including the Brussels Times, report that EU is demanding a “poison pill” clause in further agreements, to make the cost of revoking the new treaties exorbitant. This should have been proposed by the UK side, and without it negotiations would stop.

I predict they won’t until they abandon the strategy of triangulating against reform and that will take significant personnel changes in the Government.

Image: from PIxabay, their licence …

A breeze in Downing Street

A breeze in Downing Street

Are we moving closer to joining the EU? It's been quite an eventful month, culminating in Wes Streeting’s call for the UK to join the EU’s Customs Union. This article looks at the current state of thinking of HMG on negotiations with the EU, comments on the velocity and direction of travel, contrasting the red lines vs the numerous programme adoptions, recent polling evidence that a majority of people in the UK now want to rejoin, the House of Commons vote on rejoining the customs union, and the announcement of the UK’s rejoining Erasmus+, the EU’s student exchange scheme. It concludes looking at a Guardian EB piece questioning if British Politics is fit to survive the current challenges and the Labour Party’s abysmal response. The full article, is overleaf, use the "Read More" to see it ...