The UK government’s agreement with the EU to rejoin the Erasmus educational exchange scheme for university students, apprentices, sporting bodies and adult learners is a welcome confirmation that its wider “reset” with the EU is genuine. The decision follows those on scientific research, veterinary and electricity schemes; it may herald more important ones on the customs union, security and defence. A more explicit reconsideration of elements of Brexit by the Labour government is driven by growing evidence of its economic damage and geopolitical misjudgments.
The Erasmus scheme pioneered by Jacques Delors and Irish commissioner Peter Sutherland in 1987, inspired by Renaissance humanism, has seen millions of students spend up to a year in places of learning elsewhere in Europe without paying additional fees. Covering grants for travel, accommodation and living costs, it makes a valuable contribution to intercultural integration and awareness. UK re-entry comes ahead of ambitious plans to extend the scope of what is now called the Erasmus + scheme in the next EU budgetary period.
The obvious advantages for younger age groups and support from many educational and business lobbies help explain how relatively uncontentious the Erasmus decision has been across the British political spectrum.
The same does not apply to the larger process of re-examining Brexit of which it forms part. Economic and security imperatives have reinforced the shift of opinion within the Labour government towards a critique of the radical Brexit they inherited from the Conservatives, and a shift away from political caution on the subject. Closer ties with the EU beckon.
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That raises major questions about the future of British politics. A more explicit commitment to reconvergence with the EU by the Labour government would expose it to competition with the Reform party led by Nigel Farage, which now leads in the opinion polls. The Brexit cleavage is thereby resurrected and may well now be replayed.
