Following intense pressure from his fellow Labor Party members, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced his resignation.
In Berlin, the news of Starmer’s departure has left some people feeling a little heavy. “For the German government, Keir Starmer has always been a reliable and close partner on foreign policy issues, especially related to Ukraine,” government spokesman Stefan Cornelius said on Monday (June 22). And German politicians are well aware that it was Starmer who worked to rebuild relations with the EU, especially Germany, in the wake of Brexit.
It has now been ten years since Britain held a referendum on leaving the European Union. When the results were announced on the morning of June 24, 2016, there was a wave of shock across the European Union and especially in Germany. Just under 52% voted to leave the EU, while 48% voted against. Then-German Foreign Minister and current Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called it a “disaster”, while then-Chancellor Angela Merkel described it as a deep turning point for Europe.
Very few people in Germany were expecting such an outcome. For most politicians and journalists, leaving the European Union, and with it the benefits of the European Single Market, seemed very strange. However, the British campaign to “take back control” – led largely by the Conservative Party’s Boris Johnson – was severely undermined, especially in Germany.
Brexit supporters also wanted to re-establish controls on immigration. On this issue, Germany attaches some importance to the outcome of the referendum. Merkel’s open border policy, implemented in September 2015, meant that naturalized migrants automatically had the right to settle in the United Kingdom as well.
Christoph Fricker of the University of Bristol in England, who has published widely on the subject of Brexit, says, “Migration policy was a decisive factor in the Brexit decision.” However, he also pointed out, “It is ironic that since Brexit, immigration figures have once again increased significantly – and not just from the EU.”
German-British trade has declined
After years of negotiations, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union on January 31, 2020, but as of January 1, 2021, the country finally broke all ties with the single market and customs union.
Perhaps the best indication of what has changed since then is how trade between Germany and the United Kingdom has been affected. According to the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, trade has declined significantly since Brexit. While the United Kingdom was Germany’s fifth-largest trading partner in 2016, today it ranks only ninth.
However, according to Christoph Fricker, Germany has not only lost a strong trade partner: “What we have lost is a strong defense partner. This is now the key issue around which cooperation is starting again. And, of course, we have lost friends. At the personal level and in civil society, there used to be very, very close relationships. And this has become more difficult and less frequent.” He lamented that, for German youth, the United Kingdom has simply “disappeared from the map.”
New cooperation in defense
However, in the meantime, both the countries have been getting closer to each other for some time now. German-British trade is governed by the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, so it is not in the hands of any one EU member state’s government.
But still the two countries are getting closer to each other bilaterally, especially as a result of two agreements on defence. The first was the Trinity House Defense Agreement, signed in October 2024, aimed at strengthening cooperation in the defense sector. This was extended in July 2025 by the Kensington Treaty, a friendship treaty designed to deepen British–German relations more broadly.
King Charles’s three-day state visit to Berlin and Hamburg in March 2023 also played an important role in bilateral relations after Brexit. During the visit, Charles delivered the first speech by a British monarch to the German Bundestag, part of which was in German.
Burnham is considered pro-German and pro-EU.
The current leaders of both governments, Friedrich Merz and Keir Starmer, come from two different political traditions: Starmer from the social-democratic Labor Party, and Merz from the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
And yet, Lynn Celle of the German Council on Foreign Relations believes they have much in common: “Starmer is just as pragmatic as Merz, and both are united by their strong support for Ukraine,” Celle told DW. “Merz is also strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon traditions, has followed Brexit closely and would certainly like to see closer political relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union.”
But Starmer is now rapidly moving towards the past. However, he is still expected to attend the next meeting of the so-called E5 group (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Poland) in support of Ukraine, which will take place in Berlin on Wednesday.
And his potential successor, Andy Burnham, is expected to pursue efforts to rebuild relations with the EU. Burnham is considered a staunch pro-European and has repeatedly criticized Brexit in the past.
During his long tenure as Mayor of Greater Manchester, he has also supported British-German exchange. In 2021, Burnham signed an agreement with the regional metropolitan area of the Ruhr – the first regional partnership between the two countries. And in 2025, he, together with German representatives, established collaborative efforts in the fields of hydrogen, cybersecurity and digital health.
No plans for a new referendum on EU membership
What will be the outcome of Britain’s referendum today on leaving the EU? Christoph Fricker of the University of Bristol says, “Polls have recently turned the tide and a majority now appear to support remaining in the EU; in fact, public opinion has been leaning in this direction for some time and appears to be strengthening.” “A lot of people here have definitely realized that leaving wasn’t a good idea and that’s hurt them.”
And yet, not a single prominent British politician from any major party – not even Andy Burnham – is currently calling for a new vote on the matter. So the German government will have to live with this situation for the foreseeable future and try together with the British to make the best of it – as long as there is a government in London that is willing to do so.
This article was translated from German.