Don't believe Starmer. He is about to betray Brexit

Yahoo

16-05-2025

Is arch Remainer Sir Keir Starmer really the right person to be negotiating new terms with the EU? After his humiliation in Albania this week, is the Prime Minister really the right person to be negotiating anything?
Brussels bigwigs will descend on Lancaster House in London on Monday for what is already being dubbed a Brexit 'surrender summit'. Labour insists it's to 'reset' the UK's relationship with the EU because the Withdrawal Agreement 'isn't working', but sceptics sniff the scent of a sell-out. And who can blame them?
We keep on hearing a great deal about what the EU wants from us – access to our fishing waters, a possible youth mobility scheme – but no one can quite work out what Britain is set to get out of this jamboree, beyond unnecessarily conceding yet more to Brussels.
Eurocrats are reported to be already demanding eleventh hour concessions on everything from food standards and fishing rights to access to the UK's universities. The bloc is expected to insist that Britain rejoins its Erasmus student exchange programme, as well as allowing young Europeans to work, travel or study here.
Five minutes ago Keir Starmer was making his controversial warning about our 'island of strangers'. Only last September, he was insisting that the Government had 'no plans for a youth mobility scheme'. Britain is also poised to sign a new defence and security pact, come to an agreement on energy and potentially 'dynamically align' on trade. According to EU sources, Brussels would have accepted a looser 'mutual recognition' arrangement with Britain, but two-tier Keir, ever the Europhile, is playing it strictly by the EU rulebook.
This presents a number of problems. While the Government claims it will not cross its red lines of rejoining the single market and customs union, this sort of New Zealand-style capitulation represents the worst of both worlds, with the UK once again becoming a EU rule taker.
And this would be precisely the opposite of what 17.4 million people voted for in that 'once in a lifetime' referendum on June 23, 2016. Labour fails to realise that the ballot was the only 'reset' voters wanted with Brussels. As far as I can tell, no one has voted for a second one, despite the best efforts of former Remainer-in-chief Starmer and his acolytes.
Let's take the higher education proposals, for starters. British students are already missing out on places at top universities to overseas students paying much higher tuition fees. A series of investigations has revealed that cash-strapped vice-chancellors have been offering courses to foreigners with lower grades than their UK counterparts – simply because they are paying more for the privilege.
This problem will only get worse if we rejoin Erasmus and/or a youth-free movement scheme. In true EU form, there is even talk that while the youth mobility programme would allow European students to study across the Continent, British ones might be confined to just one European country.
The EU wants us to reduce trade barriers on food and agricultural products and negotiate away our hard-fought-for fishing rights amid talk of burdensome red tape at the border, with endless compulsory checks on products like meat and cheese resulting in lorries waiting for hours on end while food goes off. But whose fault is that? Brussels has put up these blocks, not Britain. Perhaps that's why UK exports to the EU are down roughly 18 per cent since 2019, while imports have reportedly seen a smaller decrease.
How quickly Starmer and his gang forget that, before Rachel Reeves's disastrous October Budget, the IMF judged Britain's economy to have grown faster than France, Germany and indeed the whole eurozone since the end of 2020. Contrary to the claims of Project Fear, has anyone had any problems buying French brie, German sausage or Italian salami at the supermarket? Of course not.
I sincerely hope that the UK will stick to its demand that we end the ridiculous Animal Health Certificates to take pets abroad – which need to be signed by a vet, and can only be issued one trip at a time. And all EU nations install Brit-friendly e-gates in their airports in return for any concessions made on our side.
On security and defence, Starmer appears poised to sign a pact that would reattach UK policy to that of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy. According to defence experts, this was a plan drafted under the Conservatives in 2017 but quietly dropped by Boris Johnson two years later.
It is expected that this agreement will form part of a wider pact that would include energy and visas, and would be rolled into the existing EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. But as critics have pointed out, this will make it very difficult to change.
Again, Labour insists it will only sign a deal with the EU if it is 'in the nation's interests' – but the Chagos surrender and net zero zealotry indicate this Government doesn't always fully grasp what's best for Britain.
Then consider who we have got leading the negotiations. Alongside Starmer is fellow Remainer, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Paymaster General and minister for EU Relations. Although a well-respected and well-meaning minister, Thomas-Symonds proclaimed his support for a second referendum instead of a no-deal divorce in 2019, when he described another Brexit vote as a 'preferable outcome'. He has joked to friends that he has been seeing more of EU Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič than his wife since being tasked with negotiating the 'reset'. Both men apparently share a love of wine and whisky.
As former home secretary, Thomas-Symonds is understood to be keen to work with the EU to tackle illegal migration, pointing out that Brexit has resulted in us removing key areas of co-operation, like joint police intelligence sharing. Yet many might question the point of 'mutual co-operation' when the £700 million we have allocated for the French to stop Channel people smugglers since 2014 has only resulted in record numbers of arrivals by dinghy.
Speaking of which, one wonders how David Lammy's chairing of the summit will go after a taxi driver accused the Foreign Secretary of yelling 'F---ing French' during an alleged row over a fare for a journey between Italy and France.
The meeting next week comes amid talk that the Chagos 'deal' has been put on hold thanks to threats of a 'toxic backlash' by Labour MPs – and follows concerns about the UK's newly inked trade deals with India and America. The former appears to undercut British workers while the latter has resulted in us having to pay tariffs five times as high as the US.
Meanwhile, Starmer has returned from Tirana humiliated, having failed to agree an asylum hubs scheme with Albania's trainer-wearing PM, Edi Rama.
I fear this EU 'reset' doesn't just bear all the hallmarks of a done deal – but another dud one.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.