Theresa May should unilaterally pass legislation to secure the rights of up to 3 million European Union citizens to stay in Britain or risk souring the tone of the Brexit talks, according to Labour’s Keir Starmer.

The shadow Brexit secretary said May should act immediately and abandon her increasingly controversial position of refusing to make any concession over the rights of EU citizens in the UK without securing equivalent guarantees for the 1.2 million UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU.

“It’s becoming increasingly apparent to me from my discussions in Brussels with those that are likely to be involved in the negotiations that they are very concerned about the fact that we are not giving comfort and status to their citizens,” he told the Guardian.



“They have said to me, pretty well in terms, the UK should sort this out before March, and that would ensure that the article 50 negotiations got off to a much better start than they will otherwise do.”

Relations between the UK and the rest of the EU have become increasingly heated on the topic. On Tuesday the European council president, Donald Tusk, published a strongly worded letter to a group of Conservative MPs saying the issue would have to wait for formal negotiations to begin and appeared to blame the British electorate for causing the uncertainty in the first place.

Starmer described Tusk’s letter as unhelpful, but said it “points to the need to act unilaterally now, and is further evidence of the unhelpful atmosphere that has been created in the lead-up to the negotiations”.



In his letter Tusk added: “The only way to dispel the fears and doubts of all citizens concerned is the quickest possible start of the negotiations based on article 50 of the treaty.”

But Starmer, the MP for Holborn and St Pancras in London, said the government should take more urgent action as a goodwill gesture before formal talks begin. “Everywhere you go there is a mounting sense of very real injustice. I think everybody feels it; it’s across parties, and it can’t be left unresolved any longer.”

At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, May defended her approach. She said: “I think the reaction that we have seen shows it was absolutely right for us not to do what the Labour party wanted us to do, which was simply to give away the guarantee for rights of EU citizens here in the UK. As we have seen, that would have left UK citizens in Europe high and dry.”



The government has suggested the vast majority of those EU citizens already living in the UK are likely to be entitled to apply for permanent residence, because they have been here for more than five years. But Starmer said that could be a bureaucratic and unwieldy process and could overwhelm the resources of the Home Office. He added that “permanent residence” was an EU concept, which would be expected to fall away when Britain leaves.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theresa May defended her stance at prime minister’s questions. Photograph: PA

Instead, he suggested the government could “pass a domestic law, dealing with the status of these individuals, and it would get cross-party support, and could be passed very swiftly”.

He added: “At the very least there ought to be clarity for those who were already here on 23 June.”

The bad blood between London and Brussels over the future of EU citizens was indicative of a wider problem with the tone the government had adopted as it approached the coming negotiations, Starmer claimed, warning about “mixed messages” from London.

He contrasted May’s Conservative party conference speech, widely interpreted as signalling she favoured hard Brexit, with reassurances subsequently given to Nissan about continued access to the single market.

“It’s very difficult to suggest that what [May] said at conference and the Nissan assurance are the same thing, and so mixed messages are being received in Brussels. That is not healthy.”

He added that the sometimes jocular tone of the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, risked offending his EU counterparts. “They perceive an arrogance on behalf of the UK, and Boris Johnson may think he’s very amusing in his approach, but my perception is our EU partners are not in the mood for that kind of amusement.” He added: “We need to make sure that the tone is right.”

With just four months to go until May’s self-imposed end-of-March deadline for triggering article 50, Starmer said he believed there was still a tussle within the government about what kind of relationship with the EU it wanted to aim at when negotiations began.

“I think they haven’t come to a final view, and that is because the argument about Europe that has been going on for years in the Tory party has broken out like never before,” he said. “It’s become an argument about the very future of our country.”



Labour’s own stance on Brexit has sometimes appeared less than unanimous, and senior party figures have told the Guardian that Starmer himself – one of the highest profile promotions when Jeremy Corbyn refilled his frontbench after the summer leadership challenge – is being “man marked”.

He underlined Corbyn’s insistence that the party would not seek to block the triggering of article 50 – but did not rule out amending any legislation the government brings to parliament, to force May to reveal more about her negotiating stance.

Tusk highlights growing frustration but has not toughened EU stance Read more

“We won’t frustrate the process, but we do want to put some grip and grit into the process, to ensure that parliament and the public know the prime minister’s starting position,” he said. Asked if that could mean Labour tabling amendments to any bill, he said: “So long as it doesn’t frustrate the process, then it is important to look at options.”

Asked whether Brexit presented “enormous opportunities”, as the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, recently said, Starmer replied: “I think there are huge risks in Brexit; and I see the task of the Labour party as being to ensure that we get the best possible outcome that works for everybody in the UK.”

He also struck a somewhat different tone from the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, on how Labour should tackle voters’ concerns about immigration.



Starmer crisscrossed the country earlier this year as shadow immigration minister – a job Abbott has not taken on herself alongside the home affairs brief.

Abbott used a recent interview to insist that Labour must champion the benefits of immigration, or risk becoming “Ukip-lite”.

Starmer said it was right to praise the contribution of migrants to Britain’s economy and society. But he said hundreds of conversations across the north-east, north-west, east and Wales had convinced him that “Labour needs to have a better answer for those that are concerned about immigration”.

“I don’t think we can hide from that, and don’t think frankly it was just the referendum. I think this has been a growing issue for five or 10 years, and it’s an issue on which Labour needs to get on the front foot, and off the back foot, and that means we have got to listen to what people are telling us are their concerns.”

Abbott and the shadow business secretary, Clive Lewis, have suggested that boosting trade union rights to enhance workers’ bargaining power and prevent wages being undercut could help allay voters’ concerns.

But Starmer insisted the party should also develop new policies on integrating different ethnic groups – an issue likely to be tackled in a forthcoming review by Louise Casey.

“There is a big labour market element to it of course,” Starmer said, but he added: “I do think there is a wider piece about how our communities live together, and we ensure that integration works in a way that benefits everybody, and by that I mean as much those arriving as those who are already here.

“That’s a debate that Labour have not engaged in at all really over recent years. And we shouldn’t be scared of this territory. In a sense, we don’t want to hear what people are saying to us; we just sort of move the conversation on. And my concern is Labour are not seen to be listening on this, and we need to be.”