Keir Starmer - once the high priest of the ‘People’s Vote’ crusade, now the accidental custodian of Brexit’s legacy - has wasted no time beginning the quiet demolition of what was so arduously won in 2016. For all his pre-election affectations of respecting the referendum result, the mask has now slipped.
And beneath it lies not a statesman, but a man still entranced by the siren song of Brussels.
Many of us suspected this moment would come. But few believed it would arrive with such speed and shamelessness.
We had hoped- naïvely, perhaps - that the political battering Labour took in its former heartlands, that great Red Wall rebuke, might have taught him something. That even now, trailing in the polls and straining to present himself as a man of the people, Starmer might resist the temptation to surrender sovereignty for the warm embrace of the EU. To do so would surely be electoral folly?
But no. With the ink barely dry, we now read the fine print of a deal which amounts not to statesmanship, but submission. A whimper, not a roar.
This is not a “reset” of relations with Europe. It is a rollback. A retreat. A re-entry by stealth into the EU’s orbit, engineered by a man who voted against every single piece of Brexit legislation in Parliament. And now, with barely a hint of irony, he presents himself as the steward of Britain's future.
Let us examine what this deal actually delivers.
First, there is the so-called ‘Youth Mobility Experience’- framed, of course, in the blandest technocratic language.
Who could oppose opportunity for the young? But look closer. What it means in practice is an open invitation to millions of EU nationals - just at a time when our immigration numbers are spiralling, and the public mood is calling for control, not expansion. More than 60 million people could be eligible. This is not a youth scheme. It is a backdoor.
Second, and far more damaging: regulatory alignment. Starmer has voluntarily shackled Britain once more to the EU's agrifood rulebook, surrendering one of Brexit's key wins- our right to set our own standards, tailor our rules, and unburden our farmers and food producers from Brussels' diktats. In one stroke, he has reversed years of hard-won independence.
Then comes the energy trap: rejoining the EU’s carbon trading scheme, aligning with their electricity market. The consequence? Higher bills. Greater complexity. More Net Zero bureaucracy. A field day for the climate ideologues, and another blow to British industry, struggling households, and energy sovereignty.
And perhaps most shamefully of all- he has betrayed Britain’s fishermen.
Along the south coast- in places like Fareham and Waterlooville- fishermen who endured decades of injustice under the Common Fisheries Policy had begun, tentatively, to hope again. Brexit gave them a lifeline, a chance to restore control over our waters. Under the previous Conservative government, imperfect though the arrangements were, we at least retained the right to renegotiate in 2026. That was the moment to reclaim what was ours.
Instead, Starmer has pre-emptively handed over access to our waters for up to twelve more years. No renegotiation. No leverage. No vision. A quiet extinction of a great British industry.
And what do we get in return for all this? A few quicker lines through e-gates? A vague security pact? A pat on the head from the European Commission?
The cost is sovereignty. The cost is principle. The cost is the trust of millions of voters who believed, rightly, that leaving the EU meant something real - control of our borders, our laws, our waters, our future.
Keir Starmer has not just sold Britain short. He has declared, in effect, that the Brexit vote was an error to be corrected rather than a mandate to be fulfilled. This is not reconciliation. It is repudiation.
And the British people- those who voted Leave, and those who simply believe in democratic integrity- will see it for what it is.
They will remember.
And I suspect they will not forgive.
Suella
