The Labour leader’s latest move means more than £500m will be handed to Europe
Keir Starmer seems hellbent on reversing the historic 2016 referendum decision (Image: Getty)
Slowly but surely, Keir Starmer is unpicking Brexit and will ultimately usher Britain into a miserable new era of meddling Brussels rule. Wednesday’s announcement to spend more than half a billion quid in a single year on funding students’ gap years on the continent is the latest decision by a Prime Minister hellbent on reversing the historic decision to leave the EU.
He is simply laughing in the face of 17.4million voters who wanted to leave. Sir Keir’s latest surrender will see him reverse part of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, taking Britain back into the EU Erasmus+ scheme for university students. It’s a decision that is likely to have Brexiteers choking on their full English breakfast.
Before Brexit, Erasmus saw twice as many EU students come to Britain to study as British students in Europe, costing the UK taxpayer more than £200million a year.
This is just the latest in an ever-growing list of decisions by Sir Keir to cosy up to Europe.
Earlier this month, the Labour leader stepped up his anti-Brexit war by blaming it for the current economic mess the country finds itself in.
In a speech, he said leaving the European Union has strangled the economy, restricted growth and left Britain poorer.
That, he insists, was one of the reasons why Rachel Reeves hiked taxes in last month’s Budget and why he wants Britain to move closer towards the EU.
Few will be surprised that the man who voted for, campaigned for, and backed remaining in the EU has finally said what he really thinks about Brexit.
But Sir Keir is so catastrophically wrong on this one.
Blaming voters for a decision they made is political suicide and one that will come back to haunt him time and time again.
Instead of blaming others for his and his Chancellor’s woes, Sir Keir needs to get a grip and start using our economic freedoms, flexibility and opportunities to get the country firing again.
Once he realises that Brexit is the solution, not the problem, then we can start moving in the right direction.
Keir Starmer meets European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen (Image: AP)
But it seems to be one-way traffic for the PM, who signed a major new deal with the EU in the summer.
With the stroke of a pen, Sir Keir ensured a return to European Union regulations and interference, which many voters hoped had been consigned to the dustbin of history.
The grinning Prime Minister proclaimed his reset deal a “win-win” as he stood alongside European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at the UK-EU Summit.
In it, he agreed to restart payments to the EU budget, which could run into hundreds of millions of pounds a year.
Boris Johnson has derided Sir Keir as a ‘manacled gimp of Brussels’ (Image: PA)
To the fury of Britain’s beleaguered fishermen, he caved into French demands to allow access for EU trawlers to UK waters until at least 2038 – more than 20 years after the vote to take back control.
The agreement also paves the way for a “youth mobility deal”, which could potentially grant 80million young Europeans the right to live and work temporarily in the UK.
Unsurprisingly, Sir Keir’s reset was met by a furious backlash, with former PM Mr Johnson describing him as the “orange ball-chewing manacled gimp of Brussels”.
