Skip to main content

Hello. It looks like you’re using an ad blocker that may prevent our website from working properly. To receive the best experience possible, please make sure any ad blockers are switched off, or add https://experience.tinypass.com to your trusted sites, and refresh the page.

If you have any questions or need help you can email us.

Starmer ducks the inevitable on the EU.. again

At some point soon, the PM is going to have to choose Europe over Trump’s USA

Keir Starmer refuses to listen to sense over Britain and Europe. Image: The New European/Getty

For once, a Daily Mail headline about Brexit actually had the right idea. “What a time to go crawling back to the EU!” said its front page on Tuesday morning. Yes, it certainly would be – if only that was what Keir Starmer had done in Brussels on Monday night.

In fact, what really happened at a time when it is becoming plainly obvious that we cannot trust Donald Trump as far as we could throw him and that crippling trade wars that harm everyone are likely to result, the British PM went to meet our nearest and closest allies and suggested we coordinate our defence a bit better. This is a good idea when Trump’s next move will be to force a peace on Ukraine, meaning Europe and Britain has to spend billions more on security, but it is a) hardly “crawling back to the EU”; and b) hardly enough.

Starmer did not attend the whole day of the European Union leaders’ summit but only turned up for dinner. He was listened to politely, got some encouraging comments and they all agreed to do it again in the UK on May 19. But it was hardly a diplomatic triumph.

Interesting though that this was too much for the Brexit ultras like the Mail and Nigl Farage. Even talking to Europeans is now tantamount to treason.

The progress made at the dinner was almost immediately undermined somewhat by the prime minister then refusing to “choose” between Brussels and Washington, as if we can be besties with both at the same time. I am not sure that will work if and when Trump decides to put tariffs on the EU. 

Starmer is rather pathetically hoping that he will spare Britain from a trade war, although we all really know that if Trump the merciful does, it will only be because he thinks he can split us off from the EU even more than Brexit has done already. 

It is rather hard to ask the European Union for a better deal that involves access for our agricultural products without checks or red tape, plus a much-needed carbon trading deal, when at the same time we are saying “Trump? Not our problem mate”. At some point, we will have to offer something in return. 

While the EU might be asking for more access to our fishing waters or for a free movement deal for students as a sign of good faith, nothing says you can trust us this time more than picking the right side in a battle with President Trump. Appeasing the White House is not going to go down well. As Churchill once said, an appeaser  is one who feeds the crocodile in the hope that it eats him last. 

Sir Keir is obviously hoping that closer collaboration on defence, intelligence and security will play to the UK’s strengths. In short, he hopes that in this area at least the EU needs us more than we need it and that can then be used to “reset” our relationship in other areas.  

But when the PM says  “Let’s maximise the industrial weight and clout we have together. We are ready to work together in all these areas and more” it really does make you think one thing. Why we don’t go a bit further and maybe create an economic alliance across Europe where we could work together, cooperate, remove barriers to trade and take advantage of huge economies of scale?

Whatever deal we cut with Trump it will never be anything like as good as the deal we had and could have again with Europe. The PM is therefore wrong – at some point soon, we WILL have to choose.  

Hello. It looks like you’re using an ad blocker that may prevent our website from working properly. To receive the best experience possible, please make sure any ad blockers are switched off, or add https://experience.tinypass.com to your trusted sites, and refresh the page.

If you have any questions or need help you can email us.