Britain told to stop being so ‘secretive’ about its Brexit reset

LONDON — The British government should stop being “unnecessarily secretive” about its plans for closer relations with the European Union and be much clearer about what it wants, the chair of the U.K. parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee said.

In a report released on Wednesday, the cross-party committee of lawmakers urged ministers to publish a white paper outlining what they want the eventual relationship with the EU — billed as a Brexit “reset” — to look like.

The Labour government should, they argued, “clarify” whether it is reconsidering its election manifesto red lines on trying to rejoin the bloc’s single market and customs union — and whether “it can envisage any circumstances in which it would be prudent to do so.”

“We do feel that the government is being unnecessarily secretive about it all and isn’t sufficiently clear about what it is that it’s doing and why — which we think is unfortunate,” Emily Thornberry told POLITICO in an interview timed with the report’s launch.

Thornberry, the veteran Labour MP for Islington South, whose constituency neighbors that of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said she understood why the government had been “nervous” when starting talks with Brussels, but said it should now be more ambitious and open.

“The truth is that the public have just sort of shrugged their shoulders and said, well, yeah, get on with it,” the committee chair said.

“And so I think that it has been incumbent on the government to be more ambitious, to go further, and to be clearer about what it is that we want. Because it’s quite clear what the Europeans want, and that there are times when it is not necessarily as clear about what it is that we want to achieve.”

Starmer last year struck a deal in principle with the EU that opened talks on a spread of agreements covering trade in agri-food, electricity interconnections, carbon markets, and visas for young people. Negotiations on the topics are currently ongoing, with most of the files expected to be completed by the summer.

But the prime minister and his finance chief Rachel Reeves have since hinted that they want to go further and align the U.K. with the EU single market in other areas — while ruling out joining the EU customs union.

The government is yet to say exactly which sectors it would prioritize, however — and Starmer has said he wants the U.K.-EU relationship to be “iterative” with new cooperation added on an annual basis at regular summits.

Scrutiny

The new report also calls for the re-establishment of a dedicated European Scrutiny Committee in the House of Commons, to oversee the Brexit reset and Britain’s wider relationship with the continent.

A version of the specialized EU affairs committee had existed since 1972, but it was disestablished by Starmer’s new government in 2024 — with responsibility for the topic passing to Thornberry’s Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as a group of unelected lawmakers in the House of Lords.

Thornberry told POLITICO: “The truth is that there are only 11 of us … we had, at one stage, ten reports open, which sounds ridiculous, but then you think about the state of the world, and you think, well, yeah, of course.

“We haven’t properly done a study into China yet. And how can we not have done an inquiry into China? The reason is because you just can’t do everything, although we are trying. So I think in order to give our developing relationship with the European Union the scrutiny that it definitely deserves, we do think that there needs to be another team working on it.”

A U.K. government spokesperson said: “Our priorities are clear: working in the national interest to deliver a strategic shift in our relationship with the EU through improved diplomatic, economic, and security cooperation.

“This includes securing a landmark food and drink trade deal and the carbon linking agreement by the next UK-EU Summit that will add £9 billion a year to the UK economy.

“We are stripping away the costly bureaucracy and red tape that acts as a drag on growth, backing British jobs and putting more money in people’s pockets across the country.”