UK’s ruling party may be seeing a turnaround on what is considered the biggest geopolitical move in the continent. Labour’s Europe problem is no longer just how much friction it can remove from trade with the EU, but whether its growth pitch can survive while the party refuses to revisit the larger Brexit settlement.
Labour MP Wes Streeting has forced that question into the open. Speaking at a Progress conference, the former health secretary and a contender to Prime Minister Keir Starmer argued that Brexit had weakened Britain’s economic and strategic position and said the country should ultimately return to the EU.
“Leaving the European Union was a catastrophic mistake,” Streeting claimed. “The ‘vote leave’ campaign deluded itself into thinking that the UK could forge a global free trade nirvana, as though we still had the East India Company at our disposal.”
That is not the same as a formal Labour policy proposal. Starmer’s government has pursued closer UK-EU cooperation while stopping short of the most politically loaded steps: rejoining the single market, re-entering the customs union, or restoring free movement.
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The timing matters because Labour is already trying to make Europe do more work without admitting how much work it wants Europe to do. Reuters reported this week that the government plans new legislation to strengthen UK-EU ties, including measures tied to current and future agreements with Brussels.
The material case for reopening the debate rests on trade intensity and productivity. The Office for Budget Responsibility has long assumed that Brexit will leave UK imports and exports 15% lower than they would have been under EU membership, with reduced trade openness weighing on potential productivity by 4% over 15 years.
Reuters reported that Streeting said he would run in any future Labour leadership contest. After joining Starmer’s government since 2024, he resigned this month as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care citing a lack of confidence in Starmer’s leadership.
For Starmer, the immediate danger is being squeezed from both directions. Pro-European voters may see the government’s EU reset as too cautious to repair the economic damage. Brexit-supporting voters may view even limited alignment as democratic backsliding. Reform UK and the Conservatives can attack from one side, while Labour rivals test whether the party’s own voters are ready for a more explicit reversal.
The harder policy question is what “rejoin” would actually mean. A return to the EU would require negotiations with 27 member states and would almost certainly raise questions over budget contributions, regulatory authority, migration rules, and the terms Britain could secure after leaving once already.
The “Breturn” may still be more of an aspiration than programme. But Labour’s old Brexit formula now has a visible crack: it wants the economic upside of being closer to Europe without yet owning the political consequences of saying how close.
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