No Longer Theoretical

Although he oddly does not mention the reduction to zero of the rate of VAT on domestic electricity, and I almost dare the Government to put that back up again in April, Brendan Chilton writes:

Britain’s debate about Europe has been trapped between two competing stories. One says Brexit liberated Britain from an inflexible political and economic structure. The other says Brexit inflicted lasting economic damage that can only be repaired through much closer integration. We voted to leave the European Union, and some of the strongest support for leave was in Labour constituencies.

The Prime Minister Andy Burnham has firmly challenged the first account. At the Party conference he argued that Brexit had done “more harm than good” and that Britain needed to determine its long-term relationship with its largest market, however, on many indicators we have performed better than France and Germany, outside the EU. Some within the Labour family are nervous about opening that debate again. Lucy Powell expressed concern that going beyond Keir Starmer’s reset plans was not “possible or desirable” and the Business Secretary has warned that renegotiating would lead to significant uncertainty for businesses.

Those arguments deserve serious consideration. But there is another question Labour should examine equally seriously: What would Britain lose by rejoining?

The freedoms acquired outside the EU are no longer theoretical. Labour is exercising them. Britain now operates an independent trade policy. The government has agreements with 74 countries. We have the best trading relationship with the EU of any non-member state. Britain has joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, while Labour concluded the UK-India agreement negotiated in 2025. The Government estimates the latter could eventually increase trade by £25.5 billion annually and UK GDP by £4.8 billion. These are enormous achievements and have only happened because we are outside the EU.

The CPTPP is particularly significant. It gives British businesses preferential access across an 11-country partnership whose economies, including Britain, were worth almost £13 trillion in 2025 and growing fast. These agreements do not compensate automatically for barriers to Britain’s largest neighbouring market. Geography matters in trade, about 46 percent of UK trade is with the EU. But UK trade with non-EU countries now accounts between 54 percent and 59 percent of our exports. Our trade with non-EU countries is growing. This cannot simply be ignored.

There is similar freedom over industrial policy. EU membership did not prohibit our having an industrial strategy, and several EU countries demonstrate that. Britain nevertheless now operates its own subsidy-control system rather than the EU state-aid regime. It allows public authorities to provide subsidies subject to domestic principles and Britain’s international commitments. The government has established streamlined routes covering areas including local growth, research and development, housing and energy use. That matters as Andy Burnham’s government seeks to reindustrialise Britain. A recent example is the excellent decision to determine that defence contracts will only be awarded to British firms and ports for naval procurement. Security, defence and growing the economy all in one.

The government is changing public procurement. Around £400 billion passes through government contracting annually, and ministers are developing procurement policy to strengthen strategically important industries including steel, shipbuilding, energy infrastructure and AI while improving access for smaller businesses. Leaving the EU does not magically produce good industrial policy. It simply changes where decisions can be made and British governments can determine policy that best suits our needs.

Regulation provides another example. Recent economic growth in the UK has largely been underpinned by huge innovations and investment in tech, AI, and professional services. The UK’s light regulatory framework has resulted in the UK leading in Europe in this field. Meanwhile, the EU has been rigid and top down, compared to the UK’s sector specific guidance. Returning to the EU would result in these crucial areas for future economic growth being constrained and the excessive regulation could deter investment.

Britain also possesses greater autonomy over tariffs. Since leaving the EU, businesses have been able to request UK-specific tariff suspensions on imported inputs, with more than 300 implemented following previous application round. We have also been able to escape some of the tougher sanctions placed on the EU by the US. Our agility in this area is crucial. Businesses have adapted to the new norm and are taking advantage of the best trading relationship with the EU, with customs checks completed online, minimising any border friction.

Sometimes common rules are preferable. A manufacturer selling into European markets may value one regulatory standard more than Britain’s theoretical freedom to devise another. Labour’s developing approach implicitly recognises this: align where alignment brings worthwhile economic benefits, retain autonomy where divergence serves a strategic purpose. This does not require us to rejoin the EU or tear up our trade deals by entering a customs union, or to lose control of our borders by accepting free movement in the Single Market. This third way is a more sophisticated stance than, “diverge from Brussels everywhere” or “follow Brussels everywhere”. Its British pragmatic.

Instead of seeking to re-open the Brexit debate, which was the most divisive and polarising period in British politics lets focus on being the best of allies, in cooperation but without membership. Labour’s 2024 manifesto offered precisely that settlement and provided business with the confidence that we would not return to the uncertainty of Brexit arguments. Our manifesto promised that Britain would stay outside the EU, Single Market and customs union while seeking to reduce unnecessary trade barriers and strengthen European security cooperation.

Brexit did not guarantee prosperity and progress. Nor does EU membership. Across Europe, the far right is on the march and economies are struggling. The AfD in Germany, Le Pen in France, Wilders in Holland and the populist parties of Eastern and Central Europe. If we were to rejoin, we would not be joining a progressive trading bloc, but one dominated by the hard right.

We have been outside the EU formally just six years. Before reopening the enormous constitutional question of membership, this Labour government should at least establish whether we can make a success of it as a serious nation, rather than create uncertainty, division and polarisation by re-opening a debate largely settled in the country.

After all, as Rokhaya Diallo writes:

As a secondary school pupil in 1994, I took part in protests against a reform that would have allowed French employers to pay young people below the minimum wage. Our campaign was successful, but if we had had to face the terrifying police response unleashed on student protesters in France over recent weeks, I would have stayed at home.

A 14-year-old boy, Eden, suffered a fractured jaw and had teeth knocked out after a police tear gas grenade struck him in the face. Sixteen-year-old Maël lost the sight in one eye allegedly after being struck by a shot from an LBD, a form of rubber-bullet launcher. Evan, 15, had his hand blown off in an explosion involving a police stun grenade. And in Dunkirk, a police SUV is alleged to have driven repeatedly at groups of secondary school pupils, as an officer could be heard saying: “Come closer, we’ll smash their fucking faces in.” Accounts from children left terrified by brutal treatment in police custody describe traumatic experiences with severe psychological and physical consequences.

France, the self-styled home of human rights, is now attracting the kind of international legal scrutiny you would expect if this were an authoritarian regime gone mad. The human rights organisation Ligue des droits de l’Homme has condemned the alarming “brutalisation of young people”, and the threat to their freedom of expression.

A UN special rapporteur has called on the French authorities to respect the physical safety of protesters. The UN human rights office says it is following incidents surrounding the protests in France “with concern”. Amnesty International has called for the suspension of rubber-bullet launchers at school protests, condemned the disproportionate use of force and reminded the authorities of their duty to protect children. The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose activism increasingly encompasses struggles against oppression and state violence, travelled to France this week to support school pupils.

It is often argued that France is broke, and that crippling debt levels make the student demand for €10bn of investment to improve their learning conditions a non-starter. But even in our difficult fiscal position, public spending is a political choice: to reduce debt you can cut public spending or you can raise revenue.

Economists Élise Huillery and Romane Paris have come up with a credible proposal for investing an additional €11.8bn a year in education, funded through tax reform targeting large inheritances, raising €12.7bn in 2026 and increasing taxes only for the wealthiest 1% of heirs. This would make money available to raise teachers’ pay, improve support for pupils, student grants and housing, and expand university places.

But the debate about public spending does not invalidate the legitimate grievances of pupils, teachers and parents, which are not new. Nor does it justify a vicious law and order response. Learning conditions in some of the most disadvantaged schools have been deteriorating to shockingly poor levels for a long time. I highlighted school conditions in France in the Guardian three years ago, arguing then that the state education system was among the most unequal in the developed world. The lack of resources assigned to such basic things as teaching vacancies has been glaringly apparent for years, with jobs in some districts sometimes left unfilled for months.

More than 20m teaching hours were lost in state secondary schools in 2024-25, equivalent to almost one in 10 lessons. More than 15m of those hours were lost because no replacement teachers were provided. Schools in designated priority education areas, which serve disadvantaged communities, have been particularly affected, according to France’s National Audit Office.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest part of mainland France, two-thirds of school doctor posts were vacant in 2023. As early as 2022, the Créteil education authority reported a shortfall of 60 school nurses and 20 social workers, with 90% of the unfilled posts in Seine-Saint-Denis. In 2025, 49 suicides were recorded among staff in the national education system. While these deaths cannot all be attributed to work, it is hard to avoid thinking of the severe deterioration in working conditions across the sector.

Then there are the schools that are physically falling apart: water that is unsafe to drink because of bacterial contamination, pupils reporting rats and cockroaches, filthy toilets, and in one case, a septic tank that overflows when it rains. There are power cuts, missing furniture and some classrooms are so poorly insulated that temperatures fall below 14C in winter and hit 40C during heatwaves.

In Mayotte, where protests began, a secondary school built for 900 pupils is accommodating 2,300. The protests then spread to mainland France through a school in Créteil that began the academic year short of 13 teachers and other staff, as well as a deputy headteacher.

Another issue at the core of pupils’ anger is Parcoursup, the system through which school leavers apply for higher education. Seen as discriminatory, it has left 126,000 applicants – many from disadvantaged backgrounds – without a place this year.

Rather than deal with this crisis as justified social protest based on legitimate demands, the government has invoked a doctrine set out in its Operational Guide to Urban Violence. It has treated school pupils as internal enemies to be neutralised. This sets up a coercive response, disregarding the possibility of resolving the conflict through constructive measures.

By 8 October, 6,877 people had been taken into police custody, about 80% of them children. On 1 October alone, police made 1,949 arrests, exceeding the highest single-day total recorded since 1961, says the historian Éric Anceau. According to the Syndicat de la magistrature, a French judges’ leftwing union, the numbers reflect a clear determination to crush the movement. So overwhelming has the police deployment been that teachers and parents have had to form human chains to protect children.

The police operations are also driven by a focus on arrests, which encourages forceful confrontations and fuels the escalation. This in turn draws more people into rioting. About 700 police officers and a number of teachers have been injured since the start of the unrest.

The sociologist Olivier Fillieule points out that policing protests requires an assessment of risk. If the swift break-up a blockade exposes teenagers to serious injury, you have to consider alternatives. Temporarily accepting a degree of disorder when immediate intervention risks creating more of it should remain a guiding principle of policing protests, Filleule says, noting that the French authorities know how to apply restraint when farmers stage blockades.

Yet while the police have opened internal investigations into 36 allegations of officer violence, the interior minister Laurent Nuñez said he had given the forces “no instructions to exercise restraint”. This is a shameful and contemptuous way to respond to young people’s healthy expression of dissent. Such violence towards citizens has no place in a democracy.