Tory press is still screaming about the ‘betrayal of Brexit’, but few voters are listening

The Government is making use of Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union to help Andy Burnham achieve his ambition of resetting the relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU.

The timing of Ireland’s presidency coincided fortuitously with the arrival of Burnham in Downing Street and his admission that Brexit was a mistake.

An important symbolic initiative is that Irish ministers invited their British counterparts to attend the informal meetings of the EU’s Council of Ministers held in this country during the six-month presidency. The offer has been made with the agreement of the other EU states. This means that for the first time since Brexit, British ministers have collectively met their 27 EU counterparts to discuss common challenges and exchange perspectives.

In recent weeks, the UK education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour Party attended the meeting of the EU education ministers in Dublin. Her arrival was warmly welcomed by her fellow ministers from EU countries. Here, European Affairs Minister Thomas Byrne publicly welcomed the relationship between the EU and the UK growing stronger and said that in the operation of the EU presidency, Ireland would support further strengthening of those ties.

“The UK is an ally and a partner, and the next upcoming EU-UK Summit on November 20th is an important opportunity to build on the progress made over the last 17 months and strengthen our co-operation further,” he said.

This is a far cry from the acrimony that characterised the relationship between Ireland and the UK at the height of the Brexit process, when relations between the two governments sunk to their lowest ebb in decades.

The reset in relations with the EU began in a low-key fashion under Keir Starmer’s premiership. A crucial step was the agreement in May last year to start the process of negotiating a new agreement on food and plant products. Called the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement in EU jargon, this is a step forward that will result in the removal of paperwork in trade between the EU and the UK and, more important from an Irish perspective, make the Northern Ireland Protocol largely redundant.

Negotiations have also progressed on a plan to link the EU and UK carbon emissions trading schemes. It will allow both sides to grant mutual exemptions from each other’s regulations and will remove the risk of up to a billion euro in charges being levied by each side.

These are only the first steps in the move by Burnham for closer alignment, but some big decisions that will determine the ultimate success or failure of his initiative have yet to be made. A summit between the UK and the EU on November 20th will help determine the direction of travel.

One big issue is the EU’s Industrial Accelerator Act brought forward by the European Commission this year. It aims to boost the bloc’s manufacturing base in the face of intense competition from the United States and China by introducing a “made in the EU” condition for public procurement contracts and approved state aid schemes.

The Commission is open to close partners of the EU, such as UK and Norway, being included in the scheme, but that is meeting some resistance, particularly from France. The inclusion of the UK would show the EU is really committed to further alignment and would boost Burnham’s ambition for closer ties.

While the opposition in Westminster and the Tory press are screaming about the betrayal of Brexit, it appears that a majority of the British public are adopting a much calmer attitude to the change of direction.

Polls are showing more than 60 per cent of voters in the UK share Burnham’s view that Brexit was a mistake. This is no great surprise, given that support for leaving the EU was greatest among older voters and lowest among the young. A big cohort of Brexiteers have died since the vote as more pro-EU people earned the right to vote.

In the 2016 campaign, Brexiteers promised that leaving the EU would both enrich Britain’s economy and enhance its democracy. Since then, the UK economy got worse and on immigration, the biggest specific concern of Leave voters, the story has been one of losing control, not taking it back.

The dramatic shift in the global balance of power since Brexit – with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s support for Russian aggression – has left the entire Continent of Europe in a precarious position. The EU and the UK now need each other for military and strategic purposes as much as for trade.

With the EU and Canada this week discussing closer ties, it makes sense to bring the UK back into the European tent. If the Irish presidency can help the process, then it will be an important development for the Continent as a whole and not just a step in the right direction for Irish/British relations.