I find the hand wringing here somewhat daft - whether or not it is free movement is irrelevant, it matters only whether it can be spun as free movement effectively. And as far as Labour are concerned here, Caesar's wife must be above suspicion

What a shitshow 🤦🏽

.European Commission clumsily misjudges timing of its offer to UK on youth mobility

.The Labour Party overreacts, fearing election debate on free movement, making a story out of nothing

Conservatives Rishi Sunak reject EU's offer

So as we were then
🇬🇧🇪🇺

Well said Anand Menon — how have we been at this for eight year and still unable to manage the absolute basics??

“Utterly depressing”, indeed. Via Lisa O'Carroll

theguardian.com/politics/2024/…

Ooh. 👀

Next Tuesday. 10am. Box office line-up at Biz and Trade select cmme Business and Trade Committee - full spectrum of experts and, er, how to put it politely… 🤔

parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/56…

Lots of good stuff in this long and evolving 🧵

And back to where I started a few tweets ago yesterday, that Labour needs a better approach to handling the many different EU issues that are going to emerge. This is a multi-faceted, multi-level relationship which is going to be painful handled in binary. x.com/pmdfoster/stat…

Increasingly thinking that Labour is going to need some clever way to handle the EU issue otherwise there is going to be a lot of difficulty and frustration spilling into government. And judging by my inbox, affecting negotiations. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Tis a good piece. Am sceptical. Whatever private Labour ambitions now, reality will be tough and iterative — see EU gambit on youth mobility, and Labour response. The convo post-election doesn’t become as instantly easier as many suppose, IMO.

Thoughtful piece by Martin Kettle. But I remain of the view that The Labour Party and Keir Starmer Govt will be much more ambitious towards the EU, including possibly on stuff like a CU, in its first term than consensus suggests. Thread 1/

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Timing of European Commission move on youth mobility very odd. Bxl knows Labour can't afford to have an election debate about something that looks like free movement. So why do it now? Suggests defensiveness: Bxl unclear about how to handle Lab & greater openness to it in EU capitals

Inspired and angered by Peter Foster's Financial Times story (no paywall: ft.com/content/feb93c…), I've written to my Labour MP.

If your MP is in the same party and you care about this, I suggest you do the same. Or send it to your Labour candidate. Feel free to plagiarise some of the below.

1 week & 25 client meetings in HongKong & Singapore later... Lots of interest in EU-China relations, Ukraine & impact of Trump presidency on both. EU elections, populism & UK elections & implications. Tories seen as 🤡, Brexit a stupid waste of time. So much for “Global Britain”

The party is already over before it started! Labour does *not* even want a youth mobility scheme. I'm not entirely surprised though. Labour is a Brexit party now. If I was aged between 18-30 I wouldn't vote for Labour for this reason alone.

Via Peter Foster

A clumsy and inaccurate response from Labour (could have easily said ‘we will consider proposals subject to our red lines’). In this area, Labour would appear to be working on giving people a reason not to vote for them - which is rather odd.