UK could adopt EU single market rules under new legislation

Quietly, without much fanfare, Sir Keir Starmer is drawing up legislation that could fundamentally reshape how Britain adopts rules from across the Channel. And Parliament, it seems, won’t necessarily get a say.

The proposed law would allow the UK government to align with EU single market regulations automatically, bypassing the usual parliamentary scrutiny that most legislation requires. It’s the kind of constitutional shortcut that would have had Brexiteers reaching for the smelling salts not so long ago.

The logic from Downing Street is straightforward enough. Closer regulatory alignment with the EU would smooth trade, reduce red tape for British businesses, and help repair some of the economic damage done since 2016. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimated Brexit had reduced UK trade intensity by around 15% compared to a counterfactual where Britain stayed in the single market. That’s not a trivial number.

But critics are already sharpening their arguments. The concern isn’t necessarily about which rules Britain might adopt; it’s about how. Handing ministers the power to import foreign legislation without a Commons vote is, at minimum, a significant constitutional question worth asking out loud.

“This would effectively make us a rule-taker,” one senior Conservative source suggested, “adopting laws written in Brussels with zero democratic input from Westminster.”

Starmer’s team would push back on that framing. The argument from Labour’s side is that much of what the EU produces in terms of product standards, food safety rules, and trading regulations is essentially technical housekeeping. Why bog down the parliamentary timetable with that?

There’s something in that. Parliament is famously overstretched, and not every piece of EU regulation is a grand political statement. Some of it really is just deciding the permissible dimensions of a lorry tyre.

Still, the optics matter. For a government that came to power promising a “take back control” reset rather than a reversal, granting ministers the power to adopt EU rules on the quiet is a genuinely bold move. Whether bold translates to brave or reckless will depend entirely on what rules actually end up being adopted.

The bigger question now is whether Labour’s own backbenchers, some of whom represent Leave-voting constituencies, will let this pass without a fight.