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Keir Starmer does the least surprising thing ever — he’s way past caring what voters think.uk

Prime Minister Keir Starmer

Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Image: Getty)

So, it’s happened. It was only a matter of time. After all, it took all of a month for Labour to row back on its “no tax increases” promise, only four months to abandon its pledge to have the highest growth rates in the EU, and five months to admit that it has no idea when it will “smash the gangs”, despite confident pre-election assurances.

So, it should surprise nobody who’s not living under a rock that the government has already gone back on its assurance that Brexit was safe. Many of us predicted Labour would U-turn on this till we were as blue in the face as the EU flag. It gives us no satisfaction to be proved right.

But what makes me pull out my greying hair is why anyone, regardless of whether they voted Leave or Remain back in 2016, ever believed that Keir Starmer wouldn’t do this – that he wouldn’t abandon his assurance and go crawling back to the EU, bit by bit, technicality by technicality?

Starmer, after all, labelled Brexit “catastrophic” and led the disgraceful campaign to overturn the referendum by holding a “People’s Vote” – as though a people’s vote isn’t the very definition of a referendum.

He loves the EU scene and is by his own admission more comfortable in Davos than Westminster. It’s his natural habitat. Rule by technocrats.

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Well, it turns out that just about every Remainer knew he would U-turn, but didn’t care, and far too many Leavers got royally conned.

Yet you don’t have to be all that interested in political shenanigans, and Keir Starmer’s in particular, to know that his promises aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. They never have been.

Let’s remind ourselves just how many pledges he made to win the Labour leadership that he abandoned as soon as he’d safely been elected. Continuity Corbyn? Abandoned. Scrapping tuition fees? Abandoned. Abolishing universal credit? Abandoned. The two-child limit? Abandoned. Increasing income tax for the top five per cent of earners? Abandoned. The £28 billion “green prosperity plan”? Abandoned. Abolishing the House of Lords? You get the picture.

He shifted rightwards as soon as those member votes were counted, then leftwards again as soon as he was in Downing St. He’s now between two stools, pleasing fewer and fewer.

That’s the problem when you say one thing then do another. People stop believing you. But too many mistook his dullness for integrity. Well, Sir Keir, I regret to say, is just another politician, exhibiting all their worst faults.

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It’s too late now. He is safely in Number 10 and operation return-to-the-EU is firmly underway. It’ll be the ultimate betrayal of democracy. And it’s starting right now. There is a giant team of British officials ready to surrender to – sorry “negotiate with” – the EU.

The EU’s demands, of course, are completely unacceptable. But Labour looks set to accept them. Fisheries, free movement for anyone under 30, and subjugation to European courts.

We’ll be well on our way to full-blown rule-taking once again, just when the EU’s leading member states, Germany and France, are in the ghastliest political meltdown. Just when we should be looking across the Channel and sighing with relief that we’re out.

Of course, Starmer will deny all this. Then he’ll admit it and come out with the phrase he loves best: “circumstances have changed”. And by the next election he’ll hope we’ve forgotten what he promised in the first place. Tragically, he might be right.

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