“Ladies and gentlemen, Britain is back on the world stage!” Keir Starmer doesn’t really do triumphalism, but this was pretty close. He was standing on a platform with not one but two European Union leaders, announcing [a new closer relationship/the betrayal of everything we fought two world wars to secure].
This was it. After close to a decade of [daft rows/stalwart defences of the very things we all hold dear], a prime minister had sat down to [talk sensibly/surrender our daughters]. The result, EU Council President António Costa said, was “real, tangible progress”, which was a [welcome sign/warning of the disaster to come].
Costa went on, thanking Starmer for “the new tone you have brought to our relationship.” There it was: Britain was acting like a [grown-up/vassal] country.
Ursula von der Leyen was gushing. Britain and the EU were “pursuing the same objectives, like-minded, sharing the same values,” she said, suggesting she has learned nothing at all from the recent past. “Dear Keir,” she went on, “what we have agreed today is historic.” By this point even Starmer was looking a little shifty.
A government press release explained the key gains. Queues at EU borders would be reduced, which was [good news for tourists/not what we voted for]. Businesses would find it easier to sell into the EU, a [boost for exporters/defeat for people who hoped to make Europe disappear].
This was, Starmer told us, “unprecedented access to the EU market”. Although those of us with longer memories could, if we pushed our minds back six or seven years, think of at least one precedent.
The press release was notable in another way. Since 2019, one of the eccentricities of the British government has been its claim that it can project the value of a trade deal with Easter Island out to 2050, but for some reason it is unable to tell us what is happening to trade with France right now. So it was jarring to read, in a statement from the prime minister’s office, that trade with the EU had fallen dramatically since Brexit. It was an acknowledgment that the principal focus of the British government for the last ten years has been to make it harder to sell things abroad. How long have officials known this? Why did they feel unable to say it in the years 2016-24?
Within hours, Kemi Badenoch was explaining that she would have got a better deal
Not everyone was convinced that this was a great moment. On the radio, [“Lord”/Lord] David Frost, the [idiot/genius] behind Britain’s previous EU agreement, was scathing about the agreement on fishing. And in fairness, if anyone would know that it’s a bad deal it’s him, because it’s identical to what he negotiated.
Within hours, Kemi Badenoch was explaining that she would have got a better deal. By tomorrow, she may be claiming that she had in fact already negotiated an agreement where British tourists could not only use EU passport gates, but would have each been handed €100 spending money when they did so. Asked which bits of Starmer’s deal she would keep, she replied: “We’ve got to look at the detail”. Though she seemed confident that when she did so, she would find it was a disaster. It will be interesting to see if the Tories really do fight the next election on Getting Brexit Done Again.
“It’s time,” Starmer had said at the end of the summit, “to move on from the stale old debates and political fights.” Or was it? The return of Brexit to the agenda acted as a summons to people who had more or less disappeared from our consciousness. It was as though some beacon had been lit, or the mayor of Gotham had thrown the switch on the Batshit Signal. Brexit called for aid, and Daniel Hannan and Boris Johnson would answer.
Both arrived at the same unpleasant metaphor. “Starmer is turning Britain into the EU’s gimp, handing us over to Eurocrat control encased in shiny black leather and with a ball gag,” declared Hannan, who is, we must remember, the one all the others think is an intellectual. Johnson, never a man to come up with his own simile if he could nick someone else’s, declared the prime minister to be “the orange ball-chewing gimp of Brussels”. Quite why their minds went in this direction is for psychiatrists to explain, though it is of course possible they’ve misread the coverage, and believe the government has negotiated away Britain’s fisting rights.
Interestingly, Nigel Farage was more restrained. He denounced the fisheries aspect of the deal, but was quieter on the rest of it. He may doubt the wisdom of trying to fight the next election on the issue, especially given that polls show voters think Brexit has been a [disaster/disaster].
