The Brexit Blog The arrival of the seventh Prime Minister in Number 10 since the 2016 referendum is an opportunity to try once again to get to grips with British European policy.
In practice, this is not a problem of wrestling Lots of Things, but instead more about trying to work out whether the absence of visible activity is a function of a very tight ship, or of a lack of activity.
Undoubtedly, negotiations on the May 2025 reset agenda in the Common Understanding has progressed well, to the point that several dossiers are largely wrapped up: SPS and ETS are the two big ones. Internal Energy Market talks finally got underway in the early summer too, the last big element to get going.
At the same time, once it became clear that Keir Starmer was stepping down, the EU decided to pause everything, there being little point in making deals with a departing leadership. Moreover, the arrival of a new PM might also offer new opportunities for the EU to secure more concessions, especially if Andy Burnham was really that much more pro-cooperation and wanted to get a quick win.
The evidence of the first couple of months of Burnham suggests that this has not been the case. Indeed, as the tracker below (mildly sarcastically) suggests, Burnham’s time in power has been marked by talking about pretty much anything apart from EU policy.
The ‘regular’ EU-UK summit heralded by the Common Understanding, and already rather uncertain by the time of the May anniversary of the first one, has only been pushed back since, with Burnham’s recent talk of November feeling more aspirational that definite. This is not a government in a rush to press forward on things, despite Burnham’s repeated invocations of the damage of Brexit to the economy.
From what little he has said, the impression is very much one of continuity-Starmer: use the reset process to secure some wins, plus avoid the worst effects of the continual activity of the EU to protect and promote its interests. The language about ‘Made in Europe’ reflects another common thread to Starmer, once the UK had determined the potential impacts on high-profile sectors of the economy and the possible leverage of working together in Europe in the face of – how to put it? – debatable international relations.
However, all of this has been very much off-camera, without much grandstanding by either side, neither of whom really feel any value in kicking up a fuss. Even the failure of SAFE talks was managed away without too much hand-wringing and with efforts to find other ways of building defence procurement cooperation.
But there has been one exception.
Youth mobility has become the poster-child of the reset, and the one with the most conspicuous disagreements.
As a reminder, the two sides have always had different positions with regard to the fundamentals of any scheme, grounded in its purpose, scale and operationalisation.
Since the 2025 summit, those gaps (on caps on numbers, university fees and permitted activities) have not definitively closed down. Instead, there has been a steady drip-feed of briefings by both sides to try to signal intent and (less often) offer possible landing grounds.
The following is a list of all Financial Times stories that include such briefings, the paper being a convenient shared space for negotiators:
- 7 November 2025. ‘EU officials’ flag the need for the scheme to be drawn up as a binding legal instrument, rather than the memoranda of understanding the UK has with other third countries
- 5 December. A leaked EU ‘draft text’ has no cap on numbers, and gives EU students access to UK university fees
- 15 March 2026. ‘UK officials’ offer to give way of fees, in return for a cap and other concessions
- 5 June. ‘UK officials’ reiterate their offer on fees
- 3 July. The ‘Commission’ says the proposed cap is too low, EU nationals need to be exempt from the NHS surcharge and have access to UK fees
- 13 July. ‘EU diplomats’ say the cap offered by the UK is a ‘non-starter’ and repeat points on the surcharge and fees
- 18 August. ‘EU diplomats’ again say the cap offered is too low, but might consider something in the ‘low 100ks’, and say fees is ‘vital’
- 23 August. A leaked UK negotiating brief from ‘UK officials’ says Starmer was willing to concede on fees and up to 100k on the cap, in return for access to Made in Europe or steel tariffs
This procession suggests a number of points that speak to the wider relationship.
Firstly, the UK has moved further than the EU on these points. We might reasonably assume that the EU will get domestic fees, but without any evident quid pro quo on caps or other dossiers. Indeed, when such cross-linkage has been mentioned by the UK, the reply from the EU has been very dismissive. This reflects the underlying asymmetry in the relationship: the UK needs this more than the EU, and the EU knows this.
Secondly, this is as much evidence as we have that Burnham is not going to stray very far at all from Starmer’s positions: The PM was talking again about Made in Europe in his first PMQs this week. Whether that helps or hinders progress on negotiations remains to be seen, but the sense that Brussels was ultimately underwhelmed by Starmer’s translation of rhetoric to action does not look set to be challenged by Burnham any time soon.
Finally, it points to the perils of low-stakes negotiating. None of the items on the table will be of notable macro-economic significance for either side, but instead act as markers of good intent and willingness to try to keep the wheels spinning on the minimal architecture of the Trade & Cooperation Agreement’s free trade area. Part of this might be the anxiety over who will be in power in the UK following the next general election, but more of it is that neither side see their relationship as either particularly important or in need of urgent attention. With plenty of other things to be getting on with, this is something that lacks any strong sense of pressure to wrap things up.
Of course, it’s still early days, but if the last seven PMs have taught us anything, then it’s that their revealed preferences on EU policy are pretty clear, pretty quickly.
The post Not even a new ‘reset’: The minimalist Burnham agenda on the EU? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.
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