Month by month, Labour is bringing us closer to Europe. This week, the UK announced it is rejoining the Erasmus youth exchange programme. This will open the door beyond the many young people who attend university – its remit includes FE students, apprentices, and youth and school groups. A whoop of excitement greeted the announcement, with opportunities for those involved in education, training, culture and sport, and a commitment to maximise take-up by disadvantaged young people. Widening experience, encouraging adventure: Erasmus may help cure Britain’s monolingual handicap and the catastrophic decline in language courses. Last year in the UK, less than 3% of A-levels were in languages.

This all eludes Europhobes such as Andrew Neil, who posted on X that “extra taxes now being inflicted on working people will be used to finance some ‘study’ in Barcelona for gap-year yahs from affluent families”.

Our expensive experiment with isolation from Europe is unwinding. Forget Labour’s embarrassingly futile slogan of “make Brexit work”, its insistence on “red lines” and fear of doing anything that might reignite Brexit passions. Now it is accelerating from tiptoe to trot towards Europe. Last month, Keir Starmer wrote: “We must confront the reality that the botched Brexit deal significantly hurt our economy.” Listen to other ministers’ language.

© The Guardian