{"id":104244,"date":"2025-05-15T18:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T18:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/104244\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T18:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T18:57:08","slug":"keir-starmer-wanted-a-brexit-reset-but-eu-stabbed-him-in-the-back-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/104244\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer wanted a Brexit ‘reset’ but EU stabbed him in the back | Politics | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keir Starmer\u2019s plan for a great \u201creset\u201d of relations with the EU are floundering after his European friends stabbed him in the back.The Prime Minister is to welcome EU leaders to London for a major summit on Monday<\/a> where he hoped to confirm a new agreement. However it\u2019s now possible the meeting will be a flop – with no new deal possible, or at least a deal which has much less in it that Sir Keir was hoping for.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir\u2019s aim is to show that the UK, under his leadership, can actually make Brexit<\/a> work by cutting trade barriers with the EU at the same time as retaining our freedoms to control our borders and sign trade deals with other countries across the world. He used to be a Remainer but the Prime Minister now wants to prove he can do a better job of Brexit<\/a> than Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson<\/a> ever managed.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s a second reason he wants the \u201creset\u201d, prompted by the war in Ukraine<\/a> and made even more urgent by US President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s lack of interest in Europe. The President wants European nations (which includes the UK) to take care of our own defence while the US focuses on the Pacific and what it regards as a threat from China.<\/p>\n

So Sir Keir hopes for a new defence pact, with European nations working closely together to plan our defences if we need to protect ourselves from Russia<\/a>. This would probably mean the UK and France, Europe\u2019s biggest military powers, taking the lead.<\/p>\n

In many ways, his thinking is perfectly sensible. Yes, there are some who will accuse him of \u201cbetraying Brexit<\/a>\u201d. But free trade with the EU is good for us, just like free trade with India<\/a> and the USA. And we should have realised long ago that we have to defend ourselves, rather than assuming America will do it for us.<\/p>\n

But it seems EU leaders have decided to make impossible demands.<\/p>\n

They want more access to UK fishing waters. They want a full-blown \u201cyouth mobility scheme\u201d allowing young people from across Europe to work in the UK, and not the more limited scheme with strict controls which Sir Keir is apparently willing to accept. And they want the UK to sign up to EU food standards, with a European court enforcing them.<\/p>\n

If they had any sense they would know that Keir Starmer<\/a> can\u2019t agree to all this. For example, he\u2019s just announced plans to cut immigration<\/a>. He can\u2019t introduce a youth mobility scheme that will increase migrant numbers (the Home Office is understood to support a modified scheme with strict controls on numbers instead).<\/p>\n

The attitude of the EU appears to be that if Britain wants something, it should be prepared to give something in return. It sounds fair but in the present situation it\u2019s nonsense, because free trade and strong defence benefits everybody, not just the UK. Measures to deter Russia<\/a> from invading Eastern Europe aren\u2019t some sort of special favour for Sir Keir.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this sort of pig-headedness that helped prompt Brexit<\/a> in the first place. Brussels is determined to push its obsession with centralisation and bureaucracy even though voters hate it – not just in the UK – and it actually damages support for the EU.<\/p>\n

As a result, the Prime Minister\u2019s big meeting on Monday may not be the triumph he expected. That\u2019s bad for him, and it\u2019s also bad for the EU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer\u2019s plan for a great \u201creset\u201d of relations with the EU are floundering after his European friends…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,5322,43523,748,2000,20728,299,5187,1699,4884,807,11508,2916,16,25847,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-104244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-brexit-news","10":"tag-brexit-reset","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-eu-negotiations","14":"tag-europe","15":"tag-european","16":"tag-european-union","17":"tag-great-britain","18":"tag-keir-starmer","19":"tag-politics-section","20":"tag-trade-deals","21":"tag-uk","22":"tag-uk-eu-relations","23":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114513382170977173","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}