The Observer view: Keir Starmer must find the courage to rejoin the EU

Keir Starmer is spending the weekend at Chequers trying to find a way to keep his job as rivals circle and local elections loom. He should raise his head – above the Mandelson mess – and think seriously about Britain’s place in Europe. A year ago we urged Starmer to build on his timid manifesto promises on Europe rather than hide behind them. We said a reset bound by rigid red lines on free movement and the customs union wouldn’t cut it when Brexit was plainly failing and America could no longer be relied on as a strategic partner. The argument was strong then. It is stronger now.

President Donald Trump has since defied credulity by threatening to invade Greenland. He has started a war with Iran without consulting Nato allies and one that he can’t stop without losing face. When Spain objected, he threatened to eject it from the alliance. When Britain set limits on its help, he said the US would think again about UK sovereignty in the Falklands.

It bears repeating that Britain’s natural place is its geographical place: in Europe, and polling shows that people know it. A new YouGov survey finds only a third of voters are happy with the current EU-UK relationship – 55% want to rejoin the EU, but more striking is 63% want a return to free movement. So much for the anti-migration consensus that supposedly fired up Vote Leave 10 years ago.

Philip Rycroft, the civil servant who supervised the bleak reality of Brexit, says it needs to be unwound “in the country’s best interests”, however long it takes. Neil Kinnock writes today that he believes it will happen, if not in his lifetime. Why delay? The economic case is overwhelming. Brexit has meant a hit to GDP of up to 8%. Public services and national security have suffered accordingly; so too have investment, trade and opportunity. Starmer knows this, yet publicly sticks to his red lines, talking up incremental steps towards easier trade in foodstuffs, even though their impact will be marginal. He knows this too, but fears poking the Brexit bear.

It is a wounded beast. The prime minister’s dire judgment in sending Peter Mandelson to Washington means he is wounded too, but not seeing and grasping the opportunity that is Europe is a failure on another scale. The real weakness of this government is not that it appointed a flawed ambassador – it is that it has not settled on an ambitious domestic project and pursued it with courage and conviction. Europe should be that project. Rejoin should be its name. Privately, officials admit this represents the only hope of repairing the economic damage done by Brexit. Whoever occupies Downing Street for the remainder of this parliament, it’s not too late to say out loud that governments, like voters, can change their minds.

Eighteen months ago Kim Leadbeater MP introduced the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill in the House of Commons. It would have allowed adults with less than six months to live to choose a dignified, pain-free death at a time of their own choosing. It incorporated multiple safeguards to prevent people being persuaded to ask for help to die against their wishes. It was approved twice in the House of Commons. On Friday, it failed in the House of Lords, an unelected chamber captured by a tiny minority of peers who abused their privilege to derail the democratic process.

The assisted dying bill was backed by a large majority of elected MPs. It was killed off by seven peers who tabled most of the 1,200 largely unnecessary amendments and used parliamentary process to debate them while people died in acute distress and pain for want of a civilised new law. The peers responsible should be ashamed, but so should the government. It could have embraced assisted dying instead of leaving it to the whims of their Lordships as a private members’ bill. As on Europe, so on ethics, Britain needs leaders of more courage and more conviction.

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