🌹 The Customs Unionists 🌹 The Single Marketeers 🌹 The Swiss Bankers 🌹 The Issues-Led MPs 🌹 The Blue Labour holdouts All except the last group are united by wanting closer ties with Brussels regardless of the mechanism. But some would come closer to Keir Starmer's red lines — or crash through them

Stella Creasy told me Labour should put a "Swiss-style" deal — which would return Britain to free movement and hefty payments to EU — in its 2029 manifesto PM's biographer Tom Baldwin says Starmer's comments this week indicate 2029 manifesto could “get very close to rejoining the single market.”

One person who speaks regularly to No. 10 says there could be a "boil the frog strategy" at work “You get closer and closer and then maybe … you go into the election saying ‘we’ll try to negotiate something more single markety or customs uniony.’”

PM's allies insist his opposition to a customs union is deep. Says one senior Lab official: “Keir is really strong on it." Starmer is invested in his plans and discussed them on a Chequers walk with Nick Thomas-Symonds But others detect a need to reclaim a Europhile narrative from Wes Streeting 👀