The Prime Minister will welcome EU leaders to summit talks in London next week. Presumably he will not treat them as “strangers” in this island. Ach, cheap, Brian, cheap.

And yet there is a political connection between the summit and Sir Keir Starmer’s speech declaring his determination to constrain immigration.

The core is caution. Sir Keir’s warning about an “island of strangers” derives from political fear, over the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage. It is borrowed language.

Further, Labour’s leaders still fret that any substantive overtures to rebuild links with the EU may be condemned by critics on the Right and, potentially, unpopular with sections of the electorate.

Certainly, those critics are poised. The Tories have billed next week’s talks as the “surrender summit”. Reform say it is an attempt to reverse Brexit.

Read more by Brian Taylor

To grasp why those claims are potent, it is important to recall the substructure of the original Brexit debate.

After conceding the 2016 referendum, David Cameron sought to redraw aspects of the UK’s formal relationship with Brussels.

But that was a fundamental mistake. Brexit was never about constitutional minutiae. It was about the nature of British or, more precisely, English identity. It was about immigration.

Of course, there is gut racism at the core of some complaints about immigration. But for most it is less visceral. It is querulous disquiet about what it means to be English in today’s society.

That underlying, inchoate concern features in three areas. England’s place in the UK, previously ignored. England / Britain’s place in the EU. And, above........

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