Starmer: EU reset is good for our borders

PM insists his deal will benefit UK, but critics warn it will ‘open the floodgates’ for European migrants

17 May 2025 Daily Telegraph 

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Sir Keir Starmer has promised that his plan to reset relations with the European Union will be “good for our borders” despite warnings that tens of thousands of migrants will flood into the country.

The Government is locked in negotiations to determine how long young Europeans will be able to live and work in the UK as part of a deal to be announced on Monday.

The Telegraph understands that the EU is pushing for a Youth Mobility Scheme to allow migrants aged between 18 and 30 to stay in the UK for as long as three years.

Labour’s minister for EU relations said that the reset would see Britain “standing side by side with the EU”.

However, MPs from Labour’s Red Wall have warned that the deal amounts to a reversal of Brexit and will alienate voters. The party is battling to fend off the threat from Reform UK, which has vowed to reverse any deal.

Speaking ahead of the final day of negotiations, Sir Keir insisted that his deal “will be good for our jobs, good for our bills and good for our borders”.

He said: “That’s what the British people voted for last year, and it’s what my Government will deliver.”

‘Disingenuous charlatan’

However, the Conservatives challenged Labour’s claims, with Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, saying: “This scheme could open the floodgates to tens of thousands or more flooding into the country including people who recently entered Europe illegally and then got citizenship, which in some countries can happen in just three years.

“Last week, Starmer said he wanted to clamp down on immigration but he’s now on the verge of throwing open the doors. He is a disingenuous charlatan when it comes to our border security.”

British officials negotiating the terms of the Youth Mobility Scheme are pushing for a hard numerical cap amid government concerns of an “imbalance” between Europeans arriving and Britons leaving for the Continent.

Sir Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London, said that the plan would lead to EU migrants filling vacancies in the health and social care sector despite the Government announcing a crackdown on foreigners taking such jobs last week.

He told BBC Newsnight that the agreement would “put rocket boosters up businesses in London where we have critical gaps in hospitality, in creative industries, in health and social care, in other sectors”.

But critics warned that the agreement would undermine Sir Keir’s crackdown on mass immigration, which he unveiled last week in a speech warning that the UK was becoming an “island of strangers”.

Negotiators are attempting to model the scheme on an existing arrangement the UK has with Australia, which is capped at 42,000 people a year.

That scheme was originally limited to two years’ stay in Britain but was extended to three.

A Whitehall source close to the negotiations told The Telegraph: “Obviously we’re a country of 60 million people and they’re a bloc of 450 million, so there are fears in government of an imbalance in numbers, and in terms of who is benefitting on each side.”

Discussions are expected to continue until the early hours of Monday morning as officials hash out further details on food and fishing.

Britain is set to concede to the EU on food standards, aligning with Brussels’ rules on plant and animal health.

Such a deal – an agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards – would reduce trade barriers on food but mean that the UK would be obliged to follow European Court of Justice decisions in the case of disputes.

EU representatives are pushing for a time-limited agreement on food standards.

Officials are also wrangling over arrangements to allow European fishing boats access to British waters. Brussels’ negotiators are pushing for four years of access, while the British side is understood to be holding firm on one year.

Separately, a defence and security pact with the bloc is understood to have been agreed, paving the way for British access to a fund of rearmament loans worth €150 billion.

Writing in The Telegraph below, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the EU relations minister, said that “in an uncertain world” Britain was now “standing side by side with the EU”.

He added: “We aren’t interested in rehashing old ideologies or fights. The world has moved on.”

Sir Keir will claim that the deal marks the third in a hat-trick of diplomatic successes, following trade agreements with India and the USA, when he unveils the agreement in principle on Monday at Lancaster House in London.

However, MPs within his own party – as well as the Conservatives and Reform, who seized hundreds of council seats from Labour at this month’s local elections – have warned that the “reset” will undermine Brexit promises.

Graham Stringer, the veteran Labour MP for Blackley and Middleton South in Manchester who supported Leave, told The Telegraph that the deal would amount to “opening borders at a time when Starmer appears to want to take back control. It’s giving up control.”

Another Labour MP in the Red Wall said: “Anything that remotely resembles freedom of movement needs to be treated with utmost caution. The politics is very delicate on youth mobility”.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, told The Telegraph this week that he would scrap Sir Keir’s Brexit deal if he was elected prime minister.

“The PM thinks he will get away with this surrender deal, but he underestimates how strong Brexit feeling still is in the Red Wall,” he said. “The whole reset is an abject surrender from Starmer and politically something he will come to regret.”

Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, echoed his language, saying the deal would mean “getting free movement by the back door. This isn’t a reset, it’s a surrender.”