Keir Starmer wants to rejoin the EU by the back door

Telegraph

19-04-2025

Sir Keir Starmer wants to rejoin the EU by the back door. And he is using the most boring-sounding law to do it. His weapon? The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill currently before Parliament- a bureaucratic snooze-fest to bore Britain out of Brexit. But we have caught him red-handed.
The British people voted to break free from the EU to have the freedom to make our own rules, not grovel for Brussels' leftovers. That means making our own laws that allow our country to thrive and its economy to grow.
That doesn't mean kowtowing to Brussels and swallowing their rules. Because what is best for the 27 countries on the continent is not always what's best for us.
Although there was more to be done, in office we Conservatives did use Brexit freedoms to cut red tape on businesses and launch the biggest deregulatory reform of financial services for a generation.
We know that businesses create growth, not more public spending or bloated government. Labour has taken the opposite approach. They have choked British businesses with more regulations and greater costs. The Employment Rights bill, the National Insurance jobs tax hike and the family business and farm death tax. It's one thing after the next.
This Labour law will give ministers the power to shackle our goods and services, forcing British businesses to kneel to EU laws, arbitrated over by European Courts. It is the thin end of the wedge to handing away our sovereignty. It is obvious that is the game Sir Keir is playing here but, like me, Sunday Telegraph readers won't let the wool be pulled over their eyes.
Labour Ministers tried 48 times to overturn Brexit. Now they are in Government, this legislation is nothing more than a Trojan horse surrender bill to do exactly that. This plot to rejoin by any means necessary will give Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, who campaigned for Remain, unchecked powers to bring us back into conformance with the EU. My colleagues and I will, of course, oppose.
This is not a conspiracy theory. Nor is it particularly hidden. It's there in the Bill in black and white. Buried in the small print it says that one of the key purposes of the Bill is EU re-alignment.
Arch-remainer Sir Keir, who campaigned energetically for a second referendum with free movement of people, knows that he can't get public support for another vote again to get back in, so he has gone for this instead. It is his death to Brexit by a thousand cuts strategy. And they were not straight about this plot going into the election. Unlike the madly pro-EU Lib Dems who would re-open the national divisions over Brexit, Labour MPs kept very quiet about their masterplan when campaigning for your vote, they did not once suggest any of this was coming.
The irony is there could not be a better time to have the ability to set our own trade policy. The only reason we weren't hit worse by Trump's initial tariffs is because of Brexit. Although it took ministers far too many months to start to engage with their US counterparts, Britain can and should negotiate its own deal with Washington, protecting vital British interests, such as the life sciences and automotive sectors.
We Conservatives made mistakes in government but bequeathing this country the right to once again set our own laws was not one of them. There is nothing controversial about sitting alongside Canada, Japan and India as a sovereign country, running our economy.
Sir Keir and his cabinet should be thanking their lucky stars they didn't get their way in 2016 – or in the following years when they tried every trick in the book to rejoin. So, rather than cosying up to the EU and plotting for us to rejoin by the back door, they should be making the most of this, shelve the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill and get us a US trade deal.
But now it is more important than ever for the opposition to come together and stand up to this dreadful Labour government, however we can. It's the right thing for you, and it's the right thing for the country.
We forced them to change course on two-tier justice. We forced them to back off scrapping British pints. They need to change course on this too. Or we will all pay the price. The Conservatives are under new leadership. And we are on your side.