With three words, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen captured the new mood of EU bonhomie with the British government.
“My dear Keir,” she said softly, as she turned to smile at British prime minister Keir Starmer during a press conference in Lancaster House in London, where both sides on Monday effectively renegotiated Britain’s post-Brexit trading relationship with the European Union.
If it sounded a bit familiar, that’s because it was. It seems that whenever von der Leyen strikes a far-reaching deal on trade rules with a British prime minister, she reaches for the same rhetorical device.
“My dear Rishi,” she said at a Windsor press conference a little over two years ago, after she had negotiated the Windsor Framework with Starmer’s Tory predecessor, Rishi Sunak.
The Lancaster House deal struck this week with the UK’s Labour government superseded the Windsor Framework in several important ways. For example, gone are many of the petty rules that caused friction when moving food goods between the North and Britain, now that the UK and EU have struck a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement on standards for food exports.
To echo one of the British prime minister’s favourite three-word rhetorical devices, Starmer went “further, faster and deeper” in pursuing a better trading relationship with the EU than many of his Brexiteer critics would have wanted him to, and than many wistful Remainers hoped he would.
“Britain is back on the world stage,” said the prime minister as he talked up the deal. Meanwhile, his domestic critics lined up on his right flank to accuse him of betraying Brexit. But in truth, their hearts didn’t seem to be in it. There was no real groundswell of Brexiteer fury. It was all a bit ‘meh’.
Even former prime minister Boris Johnson’s slur that Starmer had become the “manacled gimp of Brussels” seemed overly-confected and fell flat.
The only domestic UK criticisms of Starmer that had any real verve were the complaints of Scottish fishermen opposed to the UK-EU deal’s provisions to keep British waters open to European trawlers for another 12 years.
[ UK declares ‘new chapter’ in relationship with EUOpens in new window ]
The mood music from early on Monday morning indicated that Starmer and von der Leyen, who was accompanied in the talks by European Council president Antonio Costa, were in full-on friendly mode and, thus, had probably struck a substantial agreement.
“They’re throwing kind eyes at each other,” said one interloper on Monday in the press room in the bowels of Lancaster House. She had earlier been taken through the gilded hall upstairs, where both sides were holding talks. There was no tension in the room, she confirmed. They were all smiles.
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Shortly afterwards, it was announced that a far-reaching deal had indeed been struck, covering issues such as trade, security and defence contracts, food standards, the energy market and emissions trading.
It also included a pathway towards a youth mobility scheme to allow adults aged up to 30 to more easily travel between the EU and UK for study and work.
Starmer, von der Leyen and Costa marched into Lancaster House’s gold-hued Long Gallery to talk up the agreement to the assembled press corps. Then they went off to lunch on a vessel moored on the river Thames. It was an old warship. The EU and UK’s old battles, however, seemed over for now.
