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Sir Keir Starmer will today promise that a Labour government would not bring back EU freedom of movement as he attempts to draw a line under the party’s Brexit divisions. The Labour leader will deliver a speech at the Centre for European Reform think-tank this evening in which he will set out a five point plan to “Make Brexit Work”. He will say that under Labour, the UK would not rejoin the EU and nor would it join the bloc’s single market or customs union. And on migration, he will say: “We will not return to freedom of movement to create short term fixes.” 

In a speech to the Centre for European Reform, Starmer will set out what he describes as a five point plan to “make Brexit work”. As well as plans to align with EU agriculture rules he will also pledge to follow EU regulations in other areas such as chemicals and product safety standards saying Labour has “no intention from diverging standards below current levels”.In addition he will promise to agree a deal over the Northern Ireland protocol and push for British UK scientific institutions to be allowed back in the EU Horizon funding scheme.

In a speech to the Centre for European Reform at an event at the Irish Embassy in London, he said: ‘There are some who say, “We don’t need to make Brexit work – we need to reverse it”. I couldn’t disagree more.
  ‘Because you cannot move forward or grow the country or deliver change or win back the trust of those who have lost faith in politics if you’re constantly focused on the arguments of the past.
‘We cannot afford to look back over our shoulder because all the time we are doing that we are missing what is ahead of us.’

In a speech at the Centre for European Reform thinktank, Starmer will say that joining the single market “would distract us from taking on the challenges facing people, and it would ensure Britain remained stuck for another decade.” 
“So let me be very clear: with Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union,” he will add. 

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said the ministers’ statement “shows a hardening of the EU line on the protocol”. “The new German government is a few notches tougher on the British than its predecessor,” he said. “In recent years it has often been the French who have taken the hardest line among the 27 — but the joint statement shows they are not alone. EU governments now say that the arguments over the protocol are not just about Northern Ireland, they are about the UK’s international reputation as a country that respects the rule of law.”

According to Zach Meyers, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER), "if the French presidency gives up on an EU-wide directive to implement the minimum global corporate tax because of Hungary’s veto, then any alternative will be far less legally robust.""The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has already ruled that EU member states cannot stop corporates from taking advantage of lower tax rates available in other member states: when the UK was a member of the EU, it proposed to do this, and the regime was struck down."

The doppelgänger approach has been used extensively by John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform. His latest update, covering the period to the end of last year, was published earlier this month, and the results are striking.

John Springford, du groupe de réflexion Centre for European Reform, a comparé les statistiques britanniques à celles d’un groupe de vingt-deux pays développés. Il en conclut que depuis le troisième trimestre 2016 (juste après le référendum), la croissance britannique a été inférieure de 5,2 % à celle du groupe témoin, les investissements inférieurs de 13,7 %, le commerce de marchandises de 13,6 % et celui des services de 7,9 %. Cela ne signifie pas que l’économie britannique a stagné depuis 2016, mais simplement qu’elle a moins prospéré que celle des pays témoins.