Post Segments
Dear Subscribers,
The US and the EU have begun negotiations for a trade deal. The EU is hoping to convince the Trump administration to remove some or all of the recently-imposed tariffs. The bloc had fallen behind other countries in the last two weeks, with Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the UK progressing on to formal talks (and even signing a deal) before the EU had even managed to start negotiations.
Polish voters went to the polls to elect a new President yesterday. The frontrunner, Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, is an ally of Prime Minister (and former President of the European Council) Donald Tusk and is much more pro-EU than current President Andrzej Duda. If Trzaskowski does win, Tusk’s administration will find it much easier to steer Poland back towards Brussels after almost a decade of divergence under the Law and Justice Party.
Poles at the polls.
Romanian voters elected a new President in a rerun of the 2024 presidential election, which was cancelled due to accusations of Russian interference. The frontrunner, George Simion, belongs to the right-wing AUR party, has warned against the federalist tendencies of the EU, and is one of the fiercest critics of the decision to cancel the 2024 election.
President Macron has reportedly demanded a ‘hard link’ between a planned UK-EU defence pact and fishing rights for Frenchmen in English waters. The connection between the two is very hard to discern, but the opportunistic timing shows just how desperate President Macron must think Starmer is for a deal. The long-awaited summit is supposed to take place this week, with the security pact being its centrepiece.
A man with a plan
Media
Lord Frost on Keir Starmer’s EU surrender
Andrew Tettenborn on the EU’s plot to suppress free speech
Blog
The EU Reset Summit, the Defence Pact and NATO by Dr Dan Boucher
Dan Boucher describes Labour’s EU reset proposals on defence as a dangerous recipe for duplication, inefficiency, tension and confusion. He sees EU treaty provisions to respect individual states’ obligations as NATO members as not credible.
In all this what must never be forgotten is that for the EU, efforts to address any policy challenge, including defence, are never just a means to the end of addressing that policy challenge but rather also a means to the end of developing what on 23 June 2016 we voted to leave, the ever-closer union EU polity. Rather than seeking to further undermine Brexit by agreeing to become part of EU defence integration, in the context of spurious assurances about NATO, we should instead seek greater defence co-operation with EU member states by strengthening NATO and co-operating closer with the small number of EU member states that are not in NATO.
Brexit – the scapegoat for everything by Catherine McBride
Brexit has become a convenient scapegoat for bad government policies that have undermined UK exports. Restrictions on oil and gas production, EV mandates, and a high relative currency, coupled with economic malaise in our EU trading partners, are the main culprits, not Brexit. Add to this changes in trade data collection and higher EU subsidies for their agricultural products, and the Governor of the Bank of England should not be surprised if UK exports to the EU are lower.
No amount of ‘relationship building’, ‘regulatory alignment’, veterinary agreements, or capitulation to aggressive EU demands for discounted student fees and greater access to UK fishing grounds will change this. The only way to increase UK exports is to create a better economic environment for UK goods production.
Prejudice and Policy in Ireland by John Wilson Foster
Noted cultural critic of Irish life, Professor John Wilson Foster, describes the ‘Story’ of victimhood, exceptionality and entitlement which underpins Irish political life. This supports a lack of gratitude or even recognition of the importance of the UK or NATO in the defence of Ireland. It also underpins Ireland’s strong antagonism to Israel which builds on earlier incidents of antisemitism.
And as in the UK, a political elite has governed in Ireland in a top-down manner with new hate-speech laws replacing vigorous church and old-style state censorship. The recent riots by Flann O’Brien’s “plain people of Ireland” against the housing and asylum policies of the government took the elite by utter surprise. As a result, it is hard to gauge the truest feelings of the Irish populace on Israel, Jews, Britain (where countless Irish have relatives and friends), Northern Ireland or a united Ireland. In any case, autonomously or not, they still cleave to the Story of victimhood, exceptionality and entitlement — or are encouraged strongly to appear as if they do.
Key Points
Keir Starmer appears to have had a change of heart when it comes to immigration. Having spent his entire political career advocating for freer movement across borders, he has waited until the end of his first year as Prime Minister to come out as a champion of tight border controls. The change is, of course, entirely cosmetic – a panicked response to the rise of Reform. But even the prospect of Nigel Farage being his successor is unlikely to force Starmer to change anything other than his rhetoric. If there is one common thread running through his rise to power, it is his willingness to say one thing to win votes and do another while in office.
Writing for the Socialist Lawyer in 1988, Starmer (then practising as a barrister) argued that all immigration law had racist undercurrents. As a backbencher in opposition, he supported local efforts in his constituency to help immigrants who had arrived illegally claim asylum. Once he was Shadow Brexit Minister, Starmer was a champion of free movement and promised Labour party members an immigration system based on ‘compassion and dignity’ if they voted to elect him party leader. Starmer’s long history of internationalist, pro-immigration views makes his recent conversion all the more implausible.
There is little substance behind the new rhetoric. Despite claiming to want to take control of immigration, there are few concrete policy proposals that are likely to have a significant effect. Salary thresholds and qualification requirements will rise modestly and it will become harder to become a British citizen without learning English. Crucially, there are to be no fundamental changes to the way that asylum claims are dealt with by the law and no active measures to stop Channel crossings. UK borders are unlikely to be any more controlled or any less porous if the proposed reforms are brought into effect. The change in tone seems to be aimed exclusively at winning back disenchanted voters turning increasingly to Reform.
This would be entirely in-keeping with Starmer’s modus operandi. To win the leadership of the Labour Party, he posed as a Corbyn continuity candidate, before ruthlessly eliminating the Corbynist wings of the party from top to bottom, and an unashamed Europhile. To win the general election, he claimed that Brexit was irreversible and that he had no plans to raise taxes. Over the past year, taxes have shot up and he is doing his best to entangle the UK in European schemes and regulations. The one thing that Starmer can be relied upon not to do in office is anything he said he would to increase the chances of him getting there.
In the end, Starmer’s rhetoric will probably backfire. The inevitable lack of progress on actually securing the border and the inevitable increase in the numbers of people coming to the UK illegally will be impossible to hide. The voters leaving Labour to back Reform might delay their departure a little longer, in the hope that Starmer will finally act in their interests, but by 2029 it will be abundantly clear where Starmer’s true loyalties lie.
