London ‘disappointed’ as UK-EU summit delayed after PM Starmer quits

The UK’s minister for EU relations Tuesday said he was ‘disappointed’ that a UK-EU summit on post-Brexit ties planned for July 22 had been delayed after Keir Starmer resigned as Britain’s prime minister.

‘Yes, of course, it’s disappointing. I’m not going to insult your listeners by saying that I’m not disappointed that the EU summit has been delayed,’ Nick Thomas-Symonds told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, the 10th anniversary of the UK’s Brexit referendum.

The second summit aimed at repairing Britain’s fractured ties with its neighbouring bloc was due to take place between Starmer and EU top officials Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa.

But after Starmer announced his decision to step down on Monday following months of domestic pressure, the European Commission confirmed the summit would be delayed.

‘The summit with UK is postponed. Postponed is not cancelled, so it means as soon as the possibilities are there, we will, of course, look into another date,’ European Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho said.

A government spokesperson said Tuesday the UK was ‘committed to holding the next summit at the earliest opportunity’ and was ‘committed to securing’ deals agreed during Starmer’s term.

Starmer inched the country back closer to the EU during his almost two years in office, but ruled out rejoining the customs union – a thorny issue which would be seen as a reversal of the 2016 referendum in which the UK narrowly voted to leave the bloc. 

Instead, he proposed strengthening ties with the single market.

Veteran Labour politician Andy Burnham, currently frontrunner to succeed Starmer as soon as next month, has said he wants to see Britain rejoin the union in his lifetime, while also trying to distance himself from the politically toxic topic.

According to Tony Travers, politics professor at the London School of Economics, ‘both Starmer and Andy Burnham agree on that the UK lost economic output, lost productivity because of leaving the EU’.

‘They want to get closer. That’s politically quite difficult,’ Travers told AFP.

Ten years since the knife-edge vote, businesses and voters are pessimistic about the payoffs.

‘There is little evidence that the UK is a happier place post Brexit,’ Catherine Barnard, professor of EU Law at the University of Cambridge told AFP.

‘Recent polling shows the majority think that Brexit was a mistake but that doesn’t necessarily equate to a desire to rejoin.’

Last May, the UK and EU reached a landmark deal on closer defence and trade ties which was seen as a reset after the UK’s acrimonious exit from the bloc in 2020.

London and Brussels also reached an agreement for Britain to rejoin the bloc’s popular Erasmus student exchange programme this year, starting in 2027.

source: AFP

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