\u201cSix-seven, yeah! Everybody here, six-seven! Are you doing page six-seven?\u201d Keir Starmer\u2019s in-no-way staged moment in a Peterborough classroom was an exercise in sphincter-tightening cringe that even Elon \u201cI have become meme\u201d Musk might have thought twice about. But to be honest, it wasn\u2019t the most annoying thing said by a Labour politician this week.<\/p>\n
That came when Nick Thomas-Symonds, Starmer\u2019s EU negotiator, told the Spectator: \u201cWe\u2019re not revisiting the single market, the customs union or freedom of movement.\u201d At a time when the US National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that Brexit has reduced UK GDP by 6-8%, and House of Commons library research says it has cost the average Brit between \u00a32,700 and \u00a33,700, it\u2019s a quote about as welcome as\u00a0 \u201clet\u2019s have all the relatives round for Christmas\u201d or \u201cgreat news, I\u2019ve scored Mumford & Sons tickets for Hyde Park next summer\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Put the doomed \u2018make Brexit work\u2019 mantra to one side though, and there was plenty to be encouraged by in an interview by Tim Shipman, once the Sunday Times\u2019 Boris-and-Dom whisperer. Thomas-Symonds sounds hopeful that the new food and animal products (SPS) deal with Brussels will be in place in the first half of 2027, eliminating red tape, easing food price inflation and adding \u00a35.1 billion a year to the economy. Talks are ongoing (with a Sunday deadline) on the UK\u2019s defence industry joining a lucrative and necessary EU scheme to arm Ukraine, but he claims defence partnerships are on the way regardless.<\/p>\n
Most interesting of all, perhaps, were Thomas-Symonds\u2019s thoughts on how Brexit will be a battleground issue at the next general election. He told Shipman that he\u2019d had a few run-ins with the \u201calways respectful\u201d former Brexit secretary Lord David Frost, and that voters would be given a clear choice between their views in 2029.<\/p>\n
Thomas-Symonds said: \u201cMy challenge to Lord Frost was simply this \u2013 it is a perfectly reasonable position to oppose a deal, of course, but I will want to have the debate at the next election. If the \u00a3200 per consignment is gone (for British exporters), the \u00a31,400 cost if you are selected for sampling, and other fees are gone \u2013 are you seriously saying you were going to go into an election and put these back?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSimilarly, if there is downward pressure on food prices \u2013 that\u2019s what the supermarkets expect \u2013 are you seriously going to put them up? We\u2019re sharing criminal records of third-country nationals. Are you seriously saying we don\u2019t want those tools any more?\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas-Symonds added that he thought some Brexiteers were already running away from the issue. \u201cI can\u2019t help but notice that Nigel Farage seems to have gone into a vow of silence on it. As far as I can make out, he\u2019s done something like two tweets (about Brexit) in six months. He barely said anything in the days after we secured the agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet Farage plans to strip EU citizens living in Britain of their right to claim universal credit, and to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These would almost certainly torpedo Thomas-Symonds\u2019s Brexit reset as well as Frost\u2019s original pact with the EU, leaving the UK deal-less and friendless in Europe, and even worse off.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see Farage selling that at a general election. After all, we don\u2019t want another prime minister at sixes and sevens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSix-seven, yeah! Everybody here, six-seven! Are you doing page six-seven?\u201d Keir Starmer\u2019s in-no-way staged moment in a Peterborough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,807,528,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-597791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-keir-starmer","16":"tag-labour-party","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115623466550319172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597791","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=597791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}