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On the day the government openly admitted that it would violate international law by overwriting parts of the EU divorce agreement, it was to be expected that the Labor leader would join in the political attacks on the prime minister.
The top civil service attorney, Jonathan James, had resigned in protest of the decision.
But in a round of interviews broadcast Tuesday, the opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer – a lawyer who, in fact, knows Mr. James personally – did no such thing.
Instead, he focused his Brexit intervention on the message he wanted to convey: the Brexit problem had been solved and the divide between Leave and Stay was over.
He was no longer, to borrow from Boris Johnson, the “Islingtonian Remainer”, but a politician who, to borrow again from Johnson, wanted to “End Brexit.”
“We have left the EU and therefore the discussions about Leave and Remain that tore us apart for years are over,” he told Sky News.
“I am very clear, therefore, what is now in the national interest is to reach an agreement. We need to reach an agreement and we must move forward.”
Nor did he want to open the door, not even a sliver, to the question of trying to rejoin the EU in the future.
When I asked him if this issue had been resolved for a generation, he said: “I don’t think there is any reason to reopen the issue of EU membership in the EU. We are gone. We need an agreement.”
Clear blue water between Labor and Liberal Democrats once again, but here is a politician trying to bridge the Brexit gap between himself and Johnson.
Sir Keir now faces the challenge of reforming himself
“This was our Brexit detox,” was how a high-ranking Labor figure put it. “Now we are the party to go ahead with Brexit and say that the only frustrating people now are the Conservatives.”
Sir Keir is attempting to rehabilitate the Labor Party with swaths of former Brexiteers voting for Labor, while trying to lay the blame for the failure to secure a trade deal not at the feet of the EU but at the feet of the prime minister.
Getting a deal is “not difficult”, it is “what the public wants” and “what they were promised.” Failure becomes, again, a matter for Mr. Johnson.
As the government prepares to publish its Internal Market Bill, which will void part of the Withdrawal Agreement and parliament prepares to debate it, there is surely a case where Johnson and his team will attempt to reintroduce Labor and Sir Keir. like those who, again, trying to thwart Brexit.
But the Labor team believes this is clear.
The party will not support the violation of international law, but it will not be involved in the fight for the Withdrawal Agreement either, instead it will focus on the most important issue for voters: the trade agreement.
The Labor leader has thrown his party on the train that “we are all leaving now.”
His challenge in the coming weeks is to recast himself, once a fiery Remainer, as the “competent” Forward against a prime minister who could lead the country to a no-trade deal exit on December 31.
