Third of leave voters want UK to rejoin single market, poll suggests on Brexit anniversary – UK politics live | Politics

Banking bosses held a “very productive” meeting with Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, after a shock interest rate hike deepened the mortgage crisis and threatened more pain for struggling households, PA Media reports. PA says:

Hunt met with large lenders including HSBC, Santander and Barclays in Downing Street early on Friday morning, with the government being urged to relieve the pressure.

“We had a very productive meeting. We’re doing everything we can to help customers and help with the anxieties,” NatWest boss Alison Rose said as she left the meeting. She added they were “very keen” to help everyone.

Chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group Charlie Nunn said that bosses had held a “good working discussion with the chancellor”.

Julia Kollewe has more coverage on our business live blog.

The Tony Blair Institute report – Moving Forward: The Path to a Better Post-Brexit Relationship Between the UK and the EU – includes a series of recommendations for how Britain and the EU could develop a closer trading relationship. It does not explicitly propose rejoining the single market. Instead it highlights 10, mostly technical, recommendations, that would align the UK more closely with EU regulations.

But does the EU want a closer relationship with the UK. As Anton Spisak, one of the authors of the report, highlighted on Twitter last week, the answer seems to be no. Spisak highlighted a Financial Times report quoting Stefan Fuehring, the European Commission official in charge of overseeing the trade and cooperation agreement (the post-Brexit trade deal with the UK). Fuehring told a conference recently:

There’s almost on a bi-weekly basis a report [on how to improve the existing Brexit deal] coming from the Tony Blair Institute, the UK in a Changing Europe, the House of Lords and so on. My job is to follow all these, of course, but I’m not aware that in the last two years any such report has come out of the EU system. We have really moved on now with this debate [over Brexit] and I think the next decade is one where we’ll deal with future member states, rather than a past member state.

Fuehring also said the review of the TCA due to take place in 2026 was an “implementation” review and not a moment for “revising, revisiting or renewing, let alone amending” the deal.

In its report, the Tony Blair Institute says that, although there would be advantages in rejoining the single market, rejoining the EU as a proper member might be better and more straightforward. It says:

Full membership of the EU single market could happen only in return for the UK accepting all four freedoms that are inherent to the EU – including free movement of persons – and ceding regulatory autonomy over parts of its economy, without having much decision-making power over those EU rules. If it was faced with this decision, the UK would have to consider the merits of going back into the single market versus rejoining the EU, the latter offering a similar balance of rights and obligations but with the UK given a direct seat at the table, where the rules are made and decided.

The report also says that just rejoining the single market would involve a renegotiation of the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement, which allows Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein to be in the single market but not in the EU. This might be complicated because “the UK’s economy is approximately seven times greater than that of Norway’s, the next largest country within the single market but outside the EU, and structurally, they have very different economies”, it says.

Keir Starmer has said a Labour government would not try to rejoing the single market and the fact that the report does not include this as a recommendation is is a sign of how keen it is to promote ideas that have a chance of being implemented. In a recent column, the FT’s Robert Shrimsley said that, if Labour wins the election, the Tony Blair Insitute could become the country’s most influential thinktank. Blair has “unfinished business” in terms of shaping Britain, Shrimsley concluded.

Good morning. Seven years ago today the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. Even leave voters don’t believe it has been a success, and this morning the Tony Blair Institute has published a report that includes polling suggesting that four out of five people (78%) now want a closer relationship with the EU. Even amongst leave voters, 71% now favour a closer relationship with the EU.

The poll also suggests that 56% of people want the UK to at least rejoin the single market (with 43% favouring rejoining the EU in full, and 13% favouring just returning to the single market).

Remarkably, even amongst leave voters, 34% want the UK to at least rejoin the single market (with 13% favouring rejoining the EU in full, and 21% favouring just returning to the single market).

Commenting on the findings, Anton Spisak, head of politcal leadership at the thinktank, said:

Our polling shows that there is a large majority of the British public who recognise that Brexit in its current form isn’t working and would like to see the UK moving closer to the EU. This creates a substantial political space to move the debate forward from refighting the old battles about whether Brexit was right or wrong, to discussing what an improved future relationship with the EU should look like.
The EU will always remain a key strategic ally, and it is absurd that the bloc has deeper trading arrangements with Israel and Georgia, better regulatory recognition on food-safety standards with Canada and New Zealand, and deeper mechanisms for political co-operation with nations including Australia and Japan.

Any future British government that wants to improve the relationship with the EU will need a carefully considered strategic plan – and make a clear-eyed offer to the other side. Asking the EU nicely cannot succeed as a negotiating strategy.

To mark the anniversary, there is quite a lot of other Brexit news around, including polling showing that the proportion of Britons who want to rejoin the EU has climbed to its highest levels since 2016. Jon Henley and Michael Goodier have the details here.

Otherwise, the political news fountain is running a bit dry today. But Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has been meeting lenders to discuss the mortgage crisis. Julia Kollewe is covering this on the business live blog.

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