CNBC's UK Exchange newsletter: Starmer’s EU push faces a harsh political reality

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Wpa Pool | News | This report is from this week's CNBC's UK Exchange newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here. The dispatch Next month will mark a decade since Britain voted to leave the European Union but, as last week's local elections demonstrate , the vote continues to cast a long shadow. The results highlighted the extent to which the governing Labour Party's support has fractured along lines echoing the referendum. Labour's younger voters, chiefly in London and university cities, defected in many cases to the pro-EU Green Party. But even larger numbers of socially conservative white working-class voters in Wales, Scotland and northern England — the traditional bedrock of Labour's support — switched to Reform, the insurgent party founded by Nigel Farage, the renowned Brexit campaigner. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as he battles to save his premiership, is promising to set a "new direction for Britain" at his summit with the EU in July. "The last government was defined by breaking our relationship with Europe," he said. "This Labour government will be defined by rebuilding our relationship with Europe by putting Britain at the heart of Europe so that we are stronger on the economy, stronger on trade, stronger on defense." That doesn't sound like the kind of pitch to entice a former Labour voter in Sunderland, St Helens or Barnsley — all former Labour-run councils that fell to Reform — back. …