In opposition, Keir Starmer pushed Brexit to the margin of debate. In government, he has learned that Europe is central to Britain’s interests whether you talk about it or not. The avoidance of painful arguments from the past turns out to be a handicap when making plans for the future.

This was predictable. Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto pretended that Brexit was a historical event. It was something Boris Johnson got “done” in 2020, in fulfilment of his winning campaign pledge from the previous year. The terms could be tweaked, but Starmer promised to preserve the substance. That was an indulgence of public fatigue with the whole issue, made electorally expedient by fear of offending former Labour supporters who had voted leave in the referendum.

But the relationship can’t be settled because the EU is an evolving project in a world of flux. It responds to international crises, with consequences for the ex-member on its border. The options are more Brexit, or less, never a steady state.

Johnson understood this perpetual motion. His deal was structured to accelerate separation over time. The theory was that divergence from EU rules gave Britain a competitive advantage. Any downside from friction in trade with the single market would be outweighed by gains from deals with other countries, chiefly the US. That was a Eurosceptic fantasy built on assumptions that open, low-tariff trade was an immutable fact of the world economy, and that nimble Britannia could negotiate on equal terms with whole continents.

The colossal wrongness of that view is now exposed. Vladimir Putin’s territorial aggression, Donald Trump’s geopolitical vandalism and China’s emergence as a superpower nearing parity with the US combine to form an irresistible........

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