This was the day the Brexit dream died. Voters will repay Starmer by sweeping his hapless Government into the dustbin of history
Like the deluded emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, Sir Keir Starmer was keen to show off his elegant new European clothes yesterday.
Posing proudly with his cosmopolitan chums, he extolled the virtues of his Brexit ‘reset’ deal, hailing it as a landmark victory.
Unfortunately for him, everyone else could see he was naked. Brussels had not only stripped the shirt from his back but made off with his entire ensemble.
This was the day the Brexit dream died, and with it the vision of a vibrant, confident, sovereign Britain making its own rules and its own way on the international stage.
Everything the EU wanted from these ‘negotiations’ it received, from the UK accepting ‘dynamic alignment’ with its food and agriculture standards to a deal allowing European fishing boats to keep plundering British waters for years to come.
The European Court of Justice will again have the power to interfere in British law and trade deals with other countries will be made more difficult by the necessity to abide by Brussels regulations.
Britain is also expected to rejoin the EU’s emissions trading scheme, which could see heavy industry being clobbered with even higher green levies in the mad race to Net Zero.
What’s more, the hard-pressed British taxpayer will be forced to pay billions for the privilege of once more becoming an obeisant Brussels rule-taker.
Keir Starmer posing proudly with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen… the PM extolled the virtues of his Brexit ‘reset’ deal, hailing it as a landmark victory
Sir Keir claims the deal will give British fishermen ‘stability’ and is ‘good for fishing’, but the fishing industry says it’s ‘absolutely disastrous’ and a ‘sellout’
And on top of all that, there is a plan under active consideration to open Britain’s doors to millions more migrants through a ‘youth mobility scheme’.
EU citizens aged between 18 and 30 would be able to live and work in this country and our young people would have the same right in the EU.
Experience tells us there will be many times more migrants coming here from Europe than going in the opposite direction. Some will come to study, but the majority will be coming to work.
The idea that a 30-year-old should be classed as a youth is absurd. This is not some concession for students, it’s a return to free movement by the back door.
And what do we get in return for all this largesse? The PM boasts that we will be allowed to join EU queues and use e-Gates when arriving at European airports. But even this so-called ‘win’ is yet to be finalised.
Similarly, the much-vaunted defence pact agrees only to ‘swiftly explore’ whether UK firms will be permitted to tap into a £150billion rearmament fund set up by the EU.
Sir Keir has sold the soul of Brexit down the river, yet far from being embarrassed about it, he’s jubilant. He could hardly stop grinning at his own brilliance yesterday.
For while pretending to respect the 2016 referendum result, he has worked tirelessly to undermine and ultimately overturn it. This was the first giant step towards that goal. It was not so much a negotiation as a deliberate and calculated capitulation.
The first to be counting the cost will be Britain’s fishing communities. Fishing may account for only a small fraction of the UK’s GDP but that doesn’t mean it is unimportant.
It’s a crucial part of the British maritime tradition and supports many thousands of jobs in some of this country’s most deprived regions – nearly all of which voted to leave the EU so we could take back control of our fishing grounds. Yesterday they were cynically betrayed.
Under the original Brexit deal, Boris Johnson cut the annual quotas that could be caught by EU boats by 25 per cent. He set a cut-off date of June 2026, after which quotas were expected to be cut further. Astonishingly, Sir Keir has agreed to extend the existing quotas for 12 more years, far longer than had been anticipated – or indeed requested.
Pro-Leave supporters outside the Houses of Parliament yesterday
He says it will give British fishermen ‘stability’ and is ‘good for fishing’. Fishing industry bodies says it’s ‘absolutely disastrous’ and a ‘sellout’.
And if a future government tries to restrict these quotas, there is a nasty clause in the agreement enabling the EU to slap tariffs on all British imports. This is not the behaviour of an ally.
Like the farmers, fishermen are quickly realising that Labour neither knows anything about their lives and livelihoods nor cares about their fate.
They are merely collateral damage in Sir Keir’s obsession with sucking up to Brussels.
His announcement yesterday was spattered with the vacuous language we came to associate with New Labour.
‘Time to turn the page… move on from the stale debates of the past… look forwards not backwards… open a new chapter.’ At no stage did he mention trashing the democratic mandate of 17.4million people.
Perhaps the most egregious of the many lies and half-truths he deployed to gull the public was this one: ‘We are following through on what the British people voted for last year.’
Really? His manifesto pledged to ‘make Brexit work’. To renege on that promise so soon suggests he never had any intention of keeping it.
But the people will not be taken for fools indefinitely. While they may not be directly affected by this reset, they will see it for what it is – a bid to return to the EU by stealth.
True, Brexit has not been an unalloyed success, and the Conservative Party bears a heavy responsibility for that. Instead of capitalising on its vast potential, it was far too timid.
If senior members of the last government had spent half as much time exploring new trade opportunities as they did biting lumps out of each other, skulking back towards Brussels would now be pointless.
Instead, their appalling lack of purpose has provided Labour’s guerilla army of Remainers a window of opportunity through which they have gratefully climbed.
But if Sir Keir thinks the public will thank him for it, he is sorely mistaken. He is already the most unpopular incoming prime minister in history and his approval ratings continue to plummet.
His party was routed at the local elections by a Reform party which is soaring in the polls and his recent Damascene conversions to migration control and protecting women-only spaces are an obvious attempt to limit the damage. He is fooling no one.
The lesson Sir Keir has failed to understand from Reform’s success is that voters are heartily sick of being patronised, ignored and lied to by a political class which scorns democracy.
The Brexit referendum was the most powerful expression of public contempt for the established order yet now Sir Keir has the arrogance to think he can override their wishes.
They will repay him at the first opportunity by sweeping him and his dishonest, deceitful, hapless government into the dustbin of history.
