Nick Thomas-Symonds is not an easy man to read. He sat there at the Lords European Affairs Committee hearing yesterday – stony-faced, speaking at a slow, rhythmic clip, his hands clasped together on the desk, wearing a crisp and anonymous black suit. He neither frowned nor smiled. This was our best opportunity yet to decipher Labour’s EU policy, but he was an impenetrable figure.
Underneath that opaque exterior, the geopolitical future of Britain is being decided. Symonds is the minister for European Union relations – basically he’s Keir Starmer’s EU reset negotiator. And over the course of that testimony, if we listened to Symonds very closely, we would learn about the conflict at the heart of that process. It’s a European youth mobility scheme. And it may well define the future of Brexit.
We know a fair amount about what happens next.
We know the timetable. There will be a UK-EU summit in the first half of next year. This is where the reset will be hashed out in detail. There’s then a review of the previous government’s Trade and Co-operation Agreement in May 2026. The combined effect of these two initiatives will embed a new UK-EU relationship.
We also know what Labour wants. It wants an agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary measures – safety provisions for human, animal and plant life. It wants mutual recognition of professional qualifications in services. And it wants visas for touring musicians. It all sounds tremendously boring, but that’s how you stitch together a vast trading system: melding together your regulatory framework, trusting your partner’s internal arrangements and opening up movement for workers.
Many Remainers are furious at Labour’s reticence when it comes to Europe. But Starmer’s Labour was never going to rejoin the EU. The most realistic aim was for Labour to detoxify the UK-EU relationship, which it has done, and to establish the closest possible relationship outside of the single market and customs union, which it plans to do. Sanitary and phytosanitary measures may sound boring, but it’s upon these boring measures that the European project is based.
Then the Duke of Wellington asked a question. And suddenly all the things which had been ticking along rather nicely seemed fraught and full of danger. “The Europeans, we understand, proposed a youth mobility agreement and it was apparently fairly quickly rejected by the British Government,” he said. “I was just rather surprised by that and I would like to understand”.
Good question. We know that the European side wants a youth mobility scheme. We also know that there is opposition to the idea from within the Home Office. Yvette Cooper, Home Secretary, is said to be the leading opponent. She’s worried by what it will do to net migration numbers.
Symonds answered very carefully. He voiced Cooper’s concerns. “The Government is pledged across the course of this Parliament to bring net migration down and that is a point we wish to achieve,” he said. This seemed to pour cold water on the idea. Then he brought out a boiler, filled it to the brim, and started to warm the water back up. “It depends… on the nature of the wider proposal,” he said. “There’s so many different ways this could be put on the table.”
In this context, from this man, on this subject, that’s about as open a door as you could ask for. He did not shut down the idea. He kept the option open.
What have we learned from this? First, that there is indeed an anti-immigration pressure on Government to reject the proposal. And second, that the Government has not submitted to it, but could do in future.
If it does, it will radically limit the British-European relationship. Europeans treat the youth mobility proposal as a litmus test of Britain as a partner. Ruling it out would suffocate negotiations before they had even begun.
That would be a betrayal of the British national interest. It is the most sophisticated trading entity in human history. It is right on our doorstep. A pro-growth government must embrace it. And if that was true in stable times, it is doubly true in the current period, as we face up to the possibility of a Trump-inspired trade war.
If youth mobility is the price of a closer relationship, it is a very cheap one indeed. It is absurd to claim that the Government’s commitments on immigration prevent us paying it. This is not free movement. It is a visa deal, of the sort which we already have with countries like Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. If our migration policy has become so deranged that we cannot differentiate between initiatives like this, we have simply lost the plot. Damaging Britain’s trading prospects so we can stop bright European kids from travelling here would be utter lunacy.
Young people have been sacrificed at the altar of other people’s requirements for years. They were overwhelmingly against Brexit, but were overruled by older voters. During Covid, they were not particularly at risk, but they stayed home to protect the elderly anyway. Their GCSEs and A-Levels were thrown in to disarray. Their years at university – ostensibly the best of their lives – were turned into a prison camp. Far from thanks, they were then subject to former victimisation. During the election campaign, the Tories promised protected pensions for the old and national service for the young. Young people have been messed around, ignored, scolded and abused for so long we forgot that it was ever any different.
Why on earth shouldn’t they be able to go live in Europe for a couple of years? Why can’t they go grape-picking in Spain, or write bad poetry in Paris, or teach English in Poland? Why can’t they drift through this beautiful continent – the greatest doorstep any country was ever fortunate enough to have – in their formative years? And who knows? Maybe they’ll find someone they love, or encounter a city they adore, or secure a job they value? They’ll be the richer for it. And so will we, by the connections they then go on to establish.
Symonds’ hesitation shows clearly where the battle over Europe will come. As things stand, the future UK-EU relationship will hinge on youth mobility. It also shows that it is all still to play for.
This is a debate we must win: for economic reasons, for political ones and most of all for moral ones. Young people deserve this. They’ve sacrificed enough. It’s time a British government finally put them first.
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