Labour’s EU Reset contradicts its own 2024 manifesto and is economically unnecessary. UK exports to the EU hit record highs in 2025. The real damage comes from Net Zero, not Brexit.
Labour’s Reset is both contrary to their manifesto and completely unnecessary: It has already cost the UK over £9 billion in lost fish stocks, and now the Government is negotiating to pay the EU £2.9 billion a year for the privilege of allowing them to make UK rules.
The Scotsman 07.04.26
Brexit is a smokescreen for Miliband’s Net Zero de-industrialisation
The Labour Government will deliver the greatest democratic betrayal in living memory when in the next King’s Speech a Bill will be announced for what it calls the “EU Reset”. It is not so much a reset as it is a carefully calculated beachhead to rejoin the European Union.
This will happen without Labour any such mandate and its manifesto promising the exact opposite during the general election of 2024. It said, “Britain will stay outside of the EU… There will be no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement.”
Yet this Labour government, elected on less that 34 per cent of those voting (9.7m out of 28.8m), will begin a journey to overturn a previous 52.1 per cent majority vote of 17.4m people – without a referendum to seek public opinion or establish endorsement.
For those that doubt there are any benefits from Brexit one only has to look at the growing list of concessions Keir Starmer is willing to make in order for the whole of the UK to align with EU laws. Those potential concessions can only be given away because Brexit allowed us to choose a different path more appropriate for our country.
Trite platitudes about regulatory alignment, veterinary agreements and exchange schemes are evolving into inferior and more expensive alternatives.
The EU’s Erasmus+ exchange courses will be poorer than current support for UK students through the UK’s world-wide Turing scheme. It means opening the door to freedom of movement for under 35s just when youth unemployment in the UK is on the rise.
Labour’s commitment to banning the export of animals for slaughter and the importation of Foie Gras is up for grabs, while adopting EU food laws means having to rebrand and relabel jars of Marmalade even in our domestic market.
And for the privilege we have already given up our (mostly Scottish) fish stocks until 2038 – worth £9bn – and are negotiating to make an annual £2.9bn permanent payment to deprived regions of the EU. All while we have no money – the UK currently borrows over £125bn annually and has a ballooning national debt of £2.9 trillion
The reset is justified as a vital economic necessity on the basis our economy suffers from restrictive trade barriers that have impacted upon our exports to the EU. It is an utter fabrication belied by hard evidence and a clearer understanding of the self-harm our own politicians have committed to Britain’s industrial capacity through policies such as Net Zero.
The real trade figures, available from the ONS and HMRC, show consistent improvements that cannot be denied (although many still try to or simply ignore the facts).
In 2025 the UK exported more goods and services to the EU than ever before, and 19 per cent more than it did before the referendum in 2016. In real terms, total UK exports rose by 23.1 per cent from £735 billion in 2015 to £905 billion in 2025, while exports to non-EU countries increased by 26.9 per cent from 2015.
There is, therefore, no need for an EU reset. We have an EU trade agreement the EU Commission calls the best it has ever signed. What we should end is the economic house arrest of Northern Ireland where the Windsor Framework enforces unaccountable EU law over British citizens and causes trade displacement in Ireland’s favour – for which Article 16 allows the UK appropriate safeguarding measures.
Contrary to what Keir Starmer said on April Fool’s Day, Brexit has not done “deep damage to our economy”. It is a falsehood, we ought instead to be looking at Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act of 2008 and the laws and ever-higher taxes it propagated, not forgetting the Covid-lockdowns and Putin’s Ukraine War, have all been exceedingly more damaging than Brexit.
A new paper I have contributed to, “Premeditated industrial destruction”, authored by Catherine McBride and David Turver, reveals the true extent to which the policy decisions of successive British governments have priced our industries out of business or forced them to relocate overseas.
We need to change our policies away from Net Zero so we halt and reverse the de-industrialisation that has seen two petroleum refineries and two ethylene crackers close. We still rely upon hydrocarbons for nearly 80 per cent of UK energy consumption. Why import oil and gas when we our own production supports over 100,000 jobs, sustains families and raises much needed tax revenues?
The UK’s energy-intensive industries have fallen to the lowest level in 35 years: steels mills, aluminium smelters, glassworks and potteries, refineries, car, chemical and fertiliser plants – along with their direct employment, economic spin-offs and the tax revenues they provide – have been lost. Even ice rinks and swimming pools are closing.
The impact has been to not only cut domestic output but also reduce exports of goods to the EU – including oil and gas falling by 35 per cent. In turn, that fall is blamed wilfully on Brexit and used to justify the need for an EU reset.
We should reverse the course Labour’s Ed Miliband started and the Conservatives accelerated. According to Offshore Energy UK over 50 new fields in British waters that could be feeding domestic supply are currently “unviable” due to government policies, such as the windfall tax and a ban on exploration licences. In addition, some 60 extensions to existing fields are being held back for the same reasons.
We also ought to look at opening our onshore gas fields, such as Lincolnshire’s Gainsborough Trough, and exporting our prized metallurgical coal for industrial processes requiring heat, such as smelting.
Resetting Net Zero makes more sense than paying billions to the EU and taking its unaccountable laws.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and senior advisor to the Tax Reform Council.
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