A youth mobility deal is really about trust

Time to move on from red lines

It’s no secret that the Labour party is highly sensitive to any discussion on migration, perceived as a key weakness by both friends and foes alike.

It’s no secret either that Labour is just as sensitive to any discussion on Brexit, likewise seen as a key weakness by both friends and foes alike.

So the party’s reaction to a proposal that combines both shouldn’t be hard to guess.

When reports came through in the press of a potential youth mobility deal with the EU, the instinctive response of the Labour government was firm denial. They would not engage on this issue unless there was total confidence that this was indeed something they wanted to go ahead with. Until such a time, the logic is that it is too reckless to open up any space on either migration or Brexit, lest it be exploited by their opponents.

This is tactically sound but strategically mistaken.

One of the biggest reasons why it’s a strategic mistake to act so defensively on this issue is that they will probably have to agree to it anyway. There are a number of things that Labour wants from the EU (notably around easing customs checks) meaning it will have to sign up to certain EU demands. Given the costs of Brexit are disproportionately on the UK side, the British government is in a weaker position and in greater need of a deal to improve the EU-UK trading relationship. So the EU has sufficient leverage to, if it so chooses, require a youth mobility agreement be part of a any upcoming renegotiation (either directly or as a precursor).

If you know you’re going to have to agree to something, it’s best not to be too firm in your denials that it will ever happen. That doesn’t mean you need to immediately say yes without any further questions – it is still reasonable to hold back and use your reticence to persuade the other side to throw in something additional (and indeed this would be a charitable interpretation of Labour’s current approach). However, you should stay away from public, widely-advertised and unambiguous statements along the lines of: “Our negotiating team has very clear red lines, and none of the preparatory work involves this” (as reported here).

The other main reason why Labour’s initial response is ill-advised is perhaps more fundamental. It’s an issue of trust.

Relations between the UK and the EU have been in a bad way for a number of years now. Brexit was obviously, in and of itself, taken as a mark of rejection and betrayal by many in the rest of Europe. However, it didn’t need to become as toxic as it did. There have always been those who felt that Britain wasn’t really committed in the first place (not least in France) and that perhaps a new settlement, outside the EU, would be for the best.

The real problem came with the negotiations that followed in the wake of Brexit, both around the terms of exit and the subsequent free trade deal. EU negotiators became increasingly frustrated with the ‘have your cake and eat it’ attitude of prominent UK politicians like Boris Johnson. ‘Spats’ and public recriminations were, for some years, a common feature of UK-EU relations. In the view of Brussels and many national governments in Europe, UK leaders were disorganised, unprofessional and overtly populist.

Both the EU and the new Labour government want a reset, a fresh start in relations between the UK and the EU on a more positive footing.

In that context, the EU offer for a youth mobility deal should be seen as something of a first test. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but an early mood-setter.

As far as the EU is concerned, a youth mobility agreement would be a win-win offer. While some Brexiteers seem to believe it’s a ploy to ease youth unemployment in countries like Spain, it’s pretty unlikely that officials in Brussels would be thinking along those lines. Instead, it’s more reasonable to consider that intercultural exchange for young people across Europe is a genuine value that people within the Commission and other EU institutions sincerely believe in. Many of them are themselves the products of these kinds of exchanges, having studied other languages at school, undertaken university studies in another country and often formed close relationships with others from across national borders.

At the same time, there is unlikely to be much sympathy for UK sensitivities on free movement of people. For one thing, a youth mobility deal would not be free movement in any sense, given that they are time-limited visas (normally just a few years) with clear rules and restrictions attached (e.g. minimum savings or health insurance requirements). For another, the UK clearly doesn’t oppose youth mobility deals in principle given that it already has quite a number, including with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, Iceland, Japan and Uruguay.

The risk is that, in rejecting youth mobility with the EU too aggressively or definitively, Labour will signal to our partners in the rest of Europe that it is not really serious about a reset in relations. Whether a deliberate choice or a near-subconscious auto-response, Labour’s actions would be seen as simply repeating the pattern of the last decade of a British government more focused on short-term domestic headlines than on medium- and long-term mutual interest.

If Labour wants a real reset in the tone of UK-EU relations and meaningful improvements in the practical terms of that relationship then its negotiators need to adopt a new philosophy. The ‘red lines’ approach of 2016-2020 should be deprioritised in favour of openness. All ideas should be open to consideration and none should be dismissed out of hand. This does not mean that Labour needs to be a pushover in negotiations (it can always add caveats or the need for quid pro quo concessions), simply that it should always emphasise a willingness to talk.

If Brexit was about what the UK and EU must do apart, Labour should envision EU relations as what we want to do together.  

A youth mobility deal is an ideal opportunity to rebuild trust through an agreement on a proposal of mutual interest. If even this hurdle is too high for Labour to clear, it does not bode well for future, much tougher, negotiations on trade.