Keir Starmer's six tests for EU departure are wishful thinking, and may make a bad Brexit more not less certain

Almost 20 years since Gordon Brown revealed with much fanfare his "five economic tests" for joining the euro, Labour’s Keir Starmer has announced the party’s "six tests" for Brexit.

Brown’s tests set the political agenda for years. Starmer’s, it is not too uncharitable to assume, will not. There is a fairly significant reason for this: Gordon Brown was in government, and at that time faced no realistic prospect of ever being out of government. Commentators opined on the end of the Conservative Party. Now, Labour is out of government, and faces no realistic prospect of ever being in government again.

In any event, the "six tests" can be boiled down to one point: that unless Britain leaves the European Union and continues to enjoy the "exact same benefits" it does now, Labour will vote against the deal.

This latest attempt from the shadow Brexit Secretary to resolve his party’s irresolvable position on Brexit is almost as heartbreaking as the last. It simply cannot be done.

He has warned the Prime Minister that he will not allow her to deliver a "Brexiteer’s Brexit" – that Labour will not allow the country to, for example, crash out of the EU without a trade agreement in place, to fall back on WTO terms and allow Tory hardliners to strip away workers' rights. But to back this up, he has threatened to give them the very thing they want. To vote against the deal, to crash out of the EU without a trade agreement in place, to fall back on WTO terms and allow Tory hardliners to strip away workers rights.

I was, and am, a hardline Remainer. Whatever the consequences, even if they are economically favourable (which they will not be), I will always be of the view that leaving the EU is a terrible course of action. The idea that Britain can be Australia, or Canada, or Singapore, or anywhere else, is bogus. Britain will be the country that walked out on its continent rather than led it, in an act of international self-humiliation from which its reputation will never recover, not least as it is a decision that has been secured by utterly baseless lies.

But a Brexiteer’s Brexit doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. What is the alternative? A Remainer’s Brexit? Brexit for everyone? The People’s Brexit? No.

David Cameron left office because he knew a Brexiteer’s Brexit was necessary and having led the Remain campaign, he couldn’t deliver one. Even Lord Heseltine has made clear the Brexiteers should be in charge.

Arguably, if they were, a less hardline option might be being pursued. Maybe a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who campaigned for Remain might feel they have more to do to show those calling the tune that they really mean it.

Starmer has borrowed that "exact same benefits" phrase from David Davis, who used it himself.

“Does [a new deal] deliver the 'exact same benefits' as we currently have as members of the single market and customs union?” asked Starmer. “For this is the standard David Davis has set for the Government and it is one I will hold them to.”

But what Angela Merkel made clear around a year ago, while the UK chose to listen instead to Steve Hilton settling scores and selling a re-released self-help book, the exact same benefits cannot be enjoyed. There is no one in Brussels or its member governments, not one lone voice, who thinks Britain can enjoy the "exact same benefits" it has now, while rejecting all the costs.

If Starmer’s latest strategy to somehow keep hold of a voting base utterly bisected on this fundamental question, is to seek to hold the Government to a promise it cannot possibly keep, or else hand it the very thing it suggests it really wants, there may yet be another wrenching chapter in this slow motion hari-kari.