BRITAIN is prepared to align even more closely with the EU’s single market, Sir Keir Starmer insisted today.

The Prime Minister said the country should “go further” in strengthening ties with the bloc after Brexit and indicated that this would be the next step following a trade deal agreed earlier this year.

But he appeared to dismiss previous statements made by Health Secretary Wes Streeting about rejoining a customs union with the EU.

“I think we should get closer,” he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show. “And if it’s in our national interest to have even closer alignment with the single market, then we should consider that, we should go that far.”

He said: “What I would say about the customs union is that I argued for a customs union for many years with the EU, but a lot of water has now gone under the bridge.

“I actually think that now we’ve done deals with the US, which are in our national interest, now we’ve done deals with India, which are in our national interest, we are better looking to the single market rather than the customs union for our further alignment.”

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Robert Griffiths told the Star: “Keir Starmer is running around like a chicken in search of an extra head.

“He takes orders from would-be master of the universe Donald Trump when it comes to foreign, military and trade policies, from City bosses on financial matters. 

“And now he wants EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and her bureaucrats to police Britain’s economic policies.

“We need a government with its own foreign and defence policy based on peace, sovereignty and solidarity, not diktats from Brussels and the White House.”