This crisis is the perfect moment to reverse Brexit. Will Starmer finally seize it?

Few would accuse Keir Starmer of setting the world alight at his press conference on Wednesday morning. The prime minister decided to give a rare airing to the Downing Street briefing room – built at great expense during Boris Johnson’s premiership to enable on-air lobby briefings, only for them to be cancelled before they even launched – but seemed unclear as to what he was actually trying to tell the nation.

Voters are worried that Donald Trump’s Middle Eastern adventure is going to cause an economic disaster for the UK, whether we’re involved in the conflict or not. Every day, the reports get more alarming: we may soon get our last shipment of jet fuel from the region for the foreseeable future, petrol prices are spiking, and energy prices could soon follow.

Starmer, evidently aware of the huge cost of the 2022 energy price bailout, doesn’t want to make any grand promises that he can’t afford. But the result of that was the prime minister stood on camera and lamely tried to talk about how Labour’s existing economic plan had already done a lot to help people – and had we not noticed that already?

That was an incredibly high-risk approach when voters are already upset, and when inflation will almost certainly get much worse in the coming months. Given his popularity ratings, it is surely best that the PM tries to stay off camera except when he’s got something concrete to announce.

However, there was one solid statement of intent in this speech – a fresh acknowledgement that Britain’s future depends on Europe, and another open admission that Brexit has been an economic disaster.

“As the world continues down this volatile path, our long-term national interest requires closer partnership with our allies in Europe and with the European Union,” Starmer said. “Brexit did deep damage to our economy and the opportunities to strengthen our economy and cut the cost of living are simply too big to ignore. So in the coming weeks, we will announce a new summit with our EU partners.”

For those who have wanted first to stop Brexit, then minimise its economic harms, and ideally to join the EU once more in time, the prime minister is at least making all of the right noises. “We want to be more ambitious: closer economic cooperation. Closer security cooperation,” he said. “A partnership for the dangerous world that we must navigate together.”

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The difficulty is that while the messaging is getting clearer, it’s not entirely different to what Starmer has said ever since getting elected in 2024 – and his talk has often not translated into results. When the EU agreed the €150 billion SAFE defence procurement cooperation deal, Canada managed to get itself included as a participant, but the UK did not.

EU leaders are more than willing to work with the UK. Under Donald Trump’s increasingly volatile presidency, European leaders are well aware of the benefits of keeping the UK close and strengthening their alliance with us – we are one of only two nuclear powers in Europe, our military (even in its current diminished state) is one of Europe’s best, and we’re still one of its largest economies.

The problem for European leaders is that they have heard Keir Starmer talk a big game on closer cooperation before, only to say with his next breath that his “red lines” on cooperation are non-negotiable. Frustratingly, he did much the same on Wednesday morning.

He promised that “the summit will not be a stock-take summit. It will be a deliberate ambition on our part to go further, including on the economic sphere,” but when asked about red lines insisted that “manifesto commitments remain”.

There is an old political adage that a leader should never let a good crisis go to waste. Keir Starmer is boxed in by stupid political commitments on Europe that never made sense, and which were never compatible with his desire to return Britain to decent economic growth.

Trump’s Middle East crisis has made closer European cooperation not merely nice-to-have but vital. It is the perfect reason – excuse, if you must – to abandon silly political promises that are holding a better deal back. Dropping them in advance of next month’s summit would be a clear signal of intent from Starmer to European leaders, and one they would be certain to notice.

It would make them come to the table with serious propositions on offer, and to take notice in a way they are not necessarily doing at the moment: until Starmer shifts on them, they have taken to largely ignoring his supposed desire for a new deal.

Starmer’s press conference was underwhelming at best and complacent at worst. But he has a genuine opportunity to turn it into concrete action that could help the country and his own political fortunes – if only he has the courage to seize the moment. It is time for him to rub out his red lines.