Keir Starmer banks on public being over Brexit

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Keir Starmer banks on public being over Brexit

This is undeniably a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible.

For many in politics, wading through the details of this agreement will be an act of nostalgia – or perhaps deeply triggering.

Dynamic alignment. Sanitary and phytosanitary checks. Fishing quotas. Jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

These are concepts, institutions and trade-offs which came to dominate British politics for much of the past decade. And with good reason: as the *** navigated its divorce with the EU, these technical questions became deeply political as they shaped the post-Brexit relationship.

Sir Keir’s big bet is that nobody really cares any more. The view at the top of government is that there is no public clamour to reopen the biggest questions of Brexit – membership of the single market and customs union – but that making the relationship smoother within those parameters is mere pragmatic common sense.

Of course pragmatism lies in the eyes of the beholder. The Conservatives have lambasted the deal as “surrender”, attacking both the 12-year extension to existing fishing quotas and the commitment for the *** to follow EU rules on agriculture.

Reform ***, in many ways the successor to the Brexit Party and UKIP, are unsurprisingly making a similar argument.

On the other side of the equation, the Liberal Democrats welcomed “some positive first steps” but urged the prime minister to “be more ambitious”.

Their position is that the *** should rejoin the EU’s customs union – an agreement between member states not to charge tariffs on each other’s goods.

What will prove revealing over the coming days, weeks, and months is not just those opposition parties’ positions but how much they campaign on them.

If opposition to today’s deal becomes a significant part of these parties’ platforms, it will tell us that they believe there is in fact plenty of controversy yet in the decades-long debate over the ***’s relationship with the EU.

If that’s right, then today’s main significance may prove to have been thrusting questions about Brexit right back to the centre of political life.

But if Sir Keir is right that the bulk of the public simply wants as little friction with the EU as possible, then he could prove to be our first truly post-Brexit prime minister.

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