In Britain, Brexit is debated again as Starmer’s grip on power slips

For record stall owner Johnny Skates, leaving the European Union has made travelling to DJ in Europe harder as the tax implications of bringing his materials with him have tightened.

“If I want to DJ and if I take records, I have to declare that. In the past, you could just go, and there [Europe], it was nothing,” the 66-year-old said.
He spoke to Al Jazeera in the London borough of Lambeth, where about 80 percent of people like him voted in vain to remain in the EU in 2016.

“Now I have to declare the value of the records I take because if I don’t, I get taxed because they say, ‘Oh, you’re taking in records to sell. There’s tax on them.’ If I send a record and I put the value, or vice versa, if I buy something and it’s the value, I’ve got to pay the tax when it comes into the country,” said Skates, who goes by his DJ name.

Since the ruling Labour Party suffered heavy losses in local elections at the beginning of May, the debate over the decision to leave the EU, also known as Brexit, has been renewed.

In the aftermath of the vote, Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised to rebuild Britain’s relationship with Europe “by putting Britain at the heart of Europe, so that we are stronger on the economy, stronger on trade, stronger on defence” – almost 10 years after 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the bloc.
Wes Streeting, the former health secretary and now would-be contender in a possible leadership contest to succeed Starmer, has called Brexit a “catastrophic mistake”, suggesting the UK rejoin the bloc to help “rebuild our economy and trade”.But some among the Labour leadership have shunned the Brexit debate. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called it a “bit odd” while Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has refused to say whether he thinks the UK should rejoin the EU.

The Labour Party’s membership is overwhelmingly pro-EU. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Reform UK, the hard-right party predicted to win a general election if one were to be held soon.

“The EU is not going to be willing to engage in a serious discussion with the UK about rejoining when anti-EU parties are ahead in the opinion polls,” said Jonathan Portes, an economics and public policy professor at King’s College London. “Why would they waste time talking to Keir Starmer or whoever succeeds Keir Starmer about rejoining when there’s an election in 2029 and at the moment it looks likely that, or at least highly possible that, it will be won by parties who are fervently opposed to re-joining.”

Streeting is not the only contender to Starmer to bring up Brexit. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who is currently preparing for a crucial by-election that he hopes will allow him to become an official candidate in a leadership contest, has said that while he would not try to reverse Brexit, it “has been damaging”.