Sir Keir Starmer can’t really hide his abiding love affair with the European Union.
His desire for office eventually forced him to pretend to have accepted Brexit. But his political record always made it clear he did not really mean it.
Indeed, as a metropolitan lawyer and lifelong Leftist radical, why should he have anything against the EU?
In 2019 Sir Keir, then Shadow Brexit Secretary, said ‘there are many in the Labour Party who feel we need to be very clear about a second referendum and about making the case for Remain. That’s certainly what I’m advocating.’
The following election result – a smashing Tory victory – spared him from having to try to keep this promise.
Supporters of this plan at the time had the nerve to call the second referendum they wanted a ‘People’s Vote’, a breathtaking dismissal of the actual people who had voted clearly for Brexit in 2016.
In July 2022, with a Labour election victory at last in prospect, Sir Keir pulled back from this position, or at least appeared to, saying: ‘So let me be very clear: with Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union.’
Well, since then, other pledges made by Sir Keir and senior members of his front bench have turned out to be less than wholly reliable, so why should we assume that the visceral opinions of the North London Leftists who run Labour have been forever silenced?
Sir Keir Starmer can’t really hide his abiding love affair with the European Union. He may have pretended to accept Brexit to gain office, but his political record always made clear he did not really mean it
Millions of British people may see the EU as interfering, as stealing our sovereignty and abolishing our borders.
They may see the EU as economically sclerotic and politically hopeless, with almost every major EU country now menaced by far-Right movements scoring high in the polls.
Its two leading nations, Germany and France, are both deep in apparently insoluble political crises. But the Blairite faction which Sir Keir keeps alive still sees Brussels as a shining city set upon a hill, an example of the sort of ‘progress’ they wish to bring to the UK.
So it is shocking and dismaying – but not surprising – to learn a specially recruited battalion of more than 100 civil servants has been given the task of detailed negotiations with the EU.
What for? The new unit is plainly central to the purposes of the PM, as other senior officials have been evicted from privileged positions so that the Brussels squad can be as close as possible to No 10.
The timing is also clearly important. Sir Keir is getting ready for a ‘reset’ of relations with the EU’s 27 members. A key meeting on this is planned as soon as February, the first such encounter since Brexit.
With Donald Trump moving into the White House in January – with momentous implications for transatlantic trade – Brussels would no doubt like to bind the UK by offering looser trade barriers.
But it will also want a backdoor revival of the single market by imposing EU rules on our goods and services.
It is shocking and dismaying to learn a specially recruited battalion of more than 100 civil servants has been given the task of detailed negotiations with the EU (file photo)
No doubt the issue of ‘free movement’ – the reopening of borders to EU citizens – will also be raised.
Lord Frost, our former Brexit negotiator who knows more about bargaining with the EU than almost anyone else, says this is clear evidence of a Labour plan to rejoin the EU. He should know.
We are once again in danger of being a rule-taker but not a rule-maker, and of throwing away all our recently gained freedoms and opportunities – and in return for what?
All we can expect from such a deal is a future chained to a wheezing political and economic invalid.