Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has expressed frustration over the pace of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's efforts to reset UK-EU relations following Brexit. Kinnock criticized the lack of concrete results and warned that Starmer risked squandering the goodwill for a new government.
Sir Keir Starmer needs to move faster and further in securing his much-vaunted Brexit reset, former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has warned., the Labour peer launched a frustrated, impassioned and sometimes angry broadside at what he said were his Labour successor’s failure to so far show concrete results from his overtures to Europe.He also suggested Starmer risked squandering the goodwill for a new government.
“It would help if the signals sent out from No 10 and the Treasury were published rather than conveyed by semaphore.” Starmer and von der Leyen agreed to hold regular EU-UK leader summits, with the first set to take place in the spring Simon Usherwood, professor of politics and international studies at the Open University, said: “The simplest explanation for these comments is that the EU Commission wants something to show at the summit in the face of inertia in the UK.”
“There’s no doubt at all that this is what they want to do. And I don’t understand the inhibitions that exist about doing exactly that.” Despite accepting that the UK is not likely to rejoin the EU Kinnock also claimed that the public was in favour of closer ties to the EU.Kinnock also criticised Rachel Reeves and the Treasury’s handling of the economy so far, with growth data gloomy and public services facing further sweeping cuts.
“I understand that the Government is daunted,” Kinnock said. “I support and respect them, and they’d be stupid to make just audacious cavalry charges, so I don’t blame them for being cautious. Kinnock, who was MP for the Welsh constituencies of Bedwellty and Islwyn for 25 years until 1995, said the government should recognise what he claimed is the shift against Brexit.
“I just wish that they had teams in the relevant ministries now finalising the detail in company with their counterparts in the European Commission to implement agreements by mid-to-late this year. That could be done. And it wouldn’t frighten anybody. It would be treated with relief.” An EU source said: “We are in the same space on security and defence. We want to ensure we have a credible deterrence in Europe, for Europeans. We need to stick together, because Russia will be an enemy potentially for decades.”
BREXIT UK-EU RELATIONS KEIR STARMER NEIL KINNOCK LABOUR PARTY
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