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Given recent polling I think he might be being over cautious.
I reluctantly agree. I think he's making the same mistake that Corbyn made in 2017 when he put hard brexit in the manifesto - making himself a hostage to fortune later by ruling sensible things out now. And Starmer has been quite good at NOT doing that on many other culture war issues - trans rights, for e.g., or the strikes, or immigration - that it feels like Brexit is the odd one out.
I think I do understand what he's going for here - he figures the Tory voting bloc is falling apart and their only hope of pulling it back together is to run the next election on a 'save Brexit' footing. He wants to close that line of attack down the way he has done with all the other attack lines. I do get that. And I'm sure he has polling to show that it's the right move.
But I think he's on the wrong side of the zeitgeist with this one. It's just going to open him up to charges of hypocrisy when he changes his mind.
ReekBlefs-
I think he's making the same mistake that Corbyn made in 2017 when he put hard brexit in the manifesto - making himself a hostage to fortune later by ruling sensible things out now
The difference being that Corbyn had always been in favour of hard Brexit, whereas I am pretty sure that Starmer's "real" views on immigration are very different from what he is saying.
NickCJ
What's so frustrating is the whole thing is so utterly undefinable, because bar not being an EU member, there is no concensus on what our relationship should look like. A Swiss deal is problematic because the EU doesn't like it (and probably wouldn't give us), and it goes back to the rule-taker issue that being a non-member entails.
From a strategy pov I'd guess Starmer's thought process is something along the lines of;
Given recent polling I think he might be being over cautious. Or even worse be missing public sentiment on this. But I can absolutely see why you'd leave the problem to the current government to navigate.