How Keir Starmer is about to start unravelling Brexit

Keir Starmer appears to be getting ready to capitulate to the European Union in the name of greater ‘co-operation’, writes Brian Monteith

Last year, in the months before the general election, the leader of the opposition lied about winter fuel payments being safe from cuts, he lied about no higher taxes on working people, and he lied about not reversing Brexit.

Just one of those pledges has not yet been exposed as a deception by his actions as Prime Minister. We can now see – as false negotiating positions are abandoned without explanation, as background briefings drip-feed concessions that amount to capitulation, and as parts of a “deal” emerge – that the British public has been played.

Keir Starmer and his inner circle took everyone for mugs, but Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives were so beyond the pale that the public sought any refuge in a storm and gave him his chance to show he was an honourable man. Just like he lied to Labour party members about the policies he would follow on becoming leader.

What is about to happen in the coming month leading up to the big reveal at the UK-EU summit on May 19 will be a choregraphed routine where various bromides are delivered by European political leaders about world problems of heightened tensions and instability requiring greater co-operation.

There will be fatuous claims made about trade obstacles and frictions, contrary to official statistics – food and animal exports to the EU were 3 per cent of UK total exports before Brexit and are 3.1 per cent now. Vested interests will demand greater freedom of movement when our borders are already porous to those who break our laws.

Keir Starmer, seen with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, is getting ready to row back on Brexit, claims Brian Monteith (Picture: Benjamin Cremel) | POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Fishing and defence

The very politicians responsible for erecting obstacles, maintaining frictions, and weakening our border security will lead the seductive calls.

The answer, we have already been told, is to give even greater access to foreign boats to our fishing grounds or any defence deal will be off – leaving most rational people asking what has fishing quotas got to do with protecting countries that don’t have a sea border or have haddock or herring in their typical diet?

A youth exchange scheme will be claimed as a must-have, yet no one will explain how it might discourage Putin from invading another European country or why the many unemployed young Europeans should have advantageous access to our cash-strapped universities, our healthcare systems or the falling number of vacancies available to our own youth.

Soon it will be revealed to the public that the Prime Minister's negotiation skills have triumphed for the benefit of our national interest – when it is a capitulation of the highest order. It will be claimed he has strengthened our security and defence by establishing a series of agreements – when in fact his achievement will be to hand over what the EU has always wanted – our military muscle and money, and our compliance and supplication to its own interests, world view and strategies.

Horsemeat and foot-and-mouth

As defence commentator David Card put it, “our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, our tanks, our aircraft carriers, our nuclear armed subs, our aircraft, our money to pay for it, our military know how… for what? EU control over us, EU as our tax collector, unelected EU apparatchiks to reign over us, to declare war for us, to use our grandchildren to fight their wars for them not us!”

We will give the EU more fish (the first quota concession on sole in the Irish Sea was announced last week), we will commit our defence spending to EU kit and demote our foreign and defence policy to Brussels commissars.

In return, we will give easier access to our markets through accepting a veterinary agreement (by foregoing our higher standards that we will no longer be able to set). This will be dressed up as us gaining a reduction in trade frictions that are there for the good reason of protecting us from horsemeat and diseases like foot-and-mouth or raising our animal welfare such as banning the import of foie gras (already abandoned).

Yes, it's not win, win, win but lose, lose, lose with the cherry on top being if there are any trade disputes it will not be arbitration that settles matters, but the EU's own activist judges sitting in its own Court of Justice, deliberating over laws we will have had no say in agreeing.

EU only as fast as its slowest state

In truth, if the EU was ever serious about its defence weaknesses, it wouldn’t insist we sign a pact before buying weapons from our manufacturers. Fish would not even be a matter for discussion – imagine Nato defence strategies being dependent on fishing quotas.

Work under the direction of the EU? The same EU that was slow to react to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – because it is only as fast as the slowest state. And let’s not forget that when the UK was trying to strengthen Ukrainian defences in advance of Putin’s military invasion, the pusillanimous German government refused the RAF permission to fly through its airspace to deliver vital supplies. It was only once Putin’s military invasion commenced (note to President Trump and VP Vance) that Germany felt obliged to allow those RAF flights.

Being involved in a European Defence Fund will, like the EU’s educational Erasmus scheme and the scientific Horizon programme, result in the same outcome – we pay more money in than the value we get back and the ability to make optimal decisions in the national interest will be surrendered.

We shall have poorer outcomes in the false flag of co-operation when we already have Nato for defence coordination. We shall have poorer kit as a result of tying ourselves into EU-designed procurement projects when Britain should be free to construct international projects such as Tempest with Japan and submarines with Australia and the US.

Be prepared for the Starmer seduction, but if it looks like a dud, and sounds like a dud, it will be because it is a dud.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org