Keir Starmer is killing the spirit of Brexit

Keir Starmer doth protest too much. He’s been yapping all day about how his ‘reset’ with the EU is not a dilution of Brexit. He assures us he’s not crossing any of the ‘red lines’ set out in Labour’s manifesto about never rejoining the Single Market or the Customs Union. He’s ladling it on. It’s almost theatrical. Noisy denial after noisy denial that his cosying up to the Brussels machine represents a backtracking on the clean break Britons voted for nine years ago. People who engage in this amount of histrionic gainsaying usually have something to hide. And Sir Keir certainly does.

He knows the truth. He knows his ‘major reset’ is just that: a major reset. It is unquestionably a knife in the heart of the spirit of Brexit. Standing alongside the Marie Antoinette of the Brussels oligarchy (Ursula von der Leyen), Starmer unveiled the new UK-EU deal with the knowing grin of a magician who’s about to trick his audience. This deal ‘delivers what the British people voted for’, he said, and I instantly knew that meant it didn’t. I instantly knew that Brexiteers – of which there are 17.4million, let’s not forget – would have good cause to worry.

The ‘reset’ covers fishing, trade, defence, energy and other policy areas. There are some instant hair-raisers. For example, granting EU fishermen a further 12 years of access to British waters. Starmer green-lighted this watering down of Britain’s dominion over its seas – pun intended – in return for an EU promise to ease certain trade restrictions. You couldn’t ask for a better insight into the technocratic mindset, where sovereignty itself, in this case over the contents of our own seas, is treated as little more than a bargaining chip in a trade stand-off.

People are worried that Starmer’s invitation of foreign boats into British waters could prove disastrous for Britain’s fishermen. We’ve been betrayed, fishermen are saying. This is a ‘sell-out on fishing’, says Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. All of which is true. But something even more troubling is revealed by Starmer’s fishing capitulation: the staggeringly blasé attitude of his class towards the very idea of democratic jurisdiction. Starmer’s nonchalance on fish is a testament to the post-sovereignty ideology to which he remains stubbornly beholden.

The reset also signs us up for certain EU rules. It promises – or threatens, rather – ‘dynamic alignment’ with EU regulations on food and agriculture. People who have not yet successfully repressed the memory of all those tortured post-Brexit negotiations will know what ‘dynamic alignment’ means: the UK adhering to EU standards in order to ease customs checks on the food and agricultural fare we export to EU countries. That’s what’s happening here, as the Telegraph explains: the UK will ‘follow European food standards’ and thus ‘unwind a central principle of Brexit’.

The reset even drags us back under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on certain matters. Starmer says it’s all above board because each new EU rule will be put before our own parliament before being adopted. Yet he knows, we all know, that if our elected representatives were to dare to reject an EU diktat, then the EU would threaten to scupper the reset and make trade arduous again. The duress to genuflect to EU rules will be huge.

We will become a rule-taker. We’ll be obliged to adhere to the standards of a bloc we democratically rejected at the ballot box. Call me old-fashioned, but surely a nation that takes the knee to a foreign court is not quite as independent as it thinks? Our 1688 Bill of Rights, after years of civil war over democracy, proclaimed loudly that ‘proceedings in parliament ought not to be questioned or impeached in any court or any other place’. The ‘reset’ resets that. At the very least it pressures our parliament to allow itself to be swayed by the judgements of a faraway court.

The deal also outlines a new youth mobility scheme, where young Europeans will be able to come here and young Brits will be able to go to Europe. Starmer refused to be drawn on how many youngsters from the EU might rock up to Blighty, no doubt fearful that he’d be accused of reintroducing freedom of movement by the backdoor. But fear not – British holidaymakers will get to use more e-gates at EU airports! This is such a transparent sop to Remoaner saps who love tweeting photos of themselves queuing at European airports as a way of damning Brexit and the gammon who voted for it. Yes, how dare the plebs accord more importance to national sovereignty than to the right of a Guardianista tit to glide through border control at Tuscany.

It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of the ‘reset’. And the usual Remoaner cry has already been issued: it’s only food and fishing, calm down! But for me, it’s not only the content of the deal but the tone of it too that leaves me cold. It is so clearly the handiwork of a political class that neither knows nor cares for the principle of sovereignty. That thinks our waters, our laws, even our parliament are all things which, in certain circumstances, if the price is right, can be thrown open to external actors. Starmer can wang on about ‘red lines’ as much as he likes, but the crossing of that red line, of the red line of national independence itself, is what’s telling, and terrifying.

Everything you need to know about this reset is contained in the fact that the Lib Dems like it. These are ‘positive first steps’ to restoring our ties with the EU, say those Brexitphobic fanatics. Remoaners know what’s happening here, and Brexiteers should too: we’re slowly but surely being realigned with that post-democratic neoliberal entity we freely and fairly rejected less than 10 years ago. Starmer always hated Brexit. He agitated for years to have a ‘second referendum’, which was a fancy way of saying we should autocratically void the votes of those millions of men and women who chose Leave. Now he’s playing a longer game of anti-democracy. He’s less wielding a sledgehammer against Brexit than he is chipping away at the spirit of it, bit by bit, rule by rule. The death of democracy by a thousand technocratic cuts.

What’s really being ‘reset’ here is the relationship between Britain’s political class and Britain’s voters. We know what’s best, they’re saying. We will use our expertise to temper that violent break you voted for between us and our friends in Brussels. The British people are being put back in their box as the huge constitutional question of our relationship with Europe is once again made the sole moral property of our ruling classes. This is Starmer’s slipperiest achievement yet: to reduce the great democratic question of Britain’s role in Europe to a technocratic issue best worked out by people like him and Ms von der Leyen. They’re resetting democracy, and that cannot stand.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy