In one fell swoop Sir Keir Starmer has dismissed 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU.
The Prime Minister wants to overturn Brexit says Giles Sheldrick (Image: Getty)
There is only one beneficiary from Sir Keir Starmer’s torturous stay in Number 10. It didn’t take long for Nigel Farage’s new year dreams to come true with the increasingly out-of-touch prime minister hitching up his trouser leg and flashing a little ankle at Europe.
After variously dodging, ducking, swerving, avoiding, and deliberately steering clear of the issue, Sir Keir presented a gift-wrapped present to the Reform leader (and likely successor) by confirming what we all knew but he had hitherto failed to muster the guts to say: Labour is determined to deceitfully nudge Britain ever closer to the single market.
Sir Keir campaigned for a second referendum and his pompous deputy David Lammy has always thought Britain would be better off in the single market.
Labour is so bereft of ideas – and support – it doesn’t have a plan that isn’t ever-closer alignment with Brussels. Unlike the 17.4 million who voted to leave it has never felt comfortable being outside the European Union.
So it should be no surprise that Sir Keir is now embarking on a great Brexit sell-out, slowly strengthening Britain’s relationship with the bloc that will eventually lead to a reworked single market where the UK is part a unified economic area in which goods, services, capital, and people can move freely across borders.
A greater act of political treachery it is hard to imagine.
Nigel Farage is now odds-on to become the next prime minister (Image: Getty)
In one fell swoop our prime minister has effectively dismissed the democratic desires of those who voted to leave the EU.
And as if to rub salt into their wounds he has the gall to say that his vision of a reset relationship would not see a return to freedom of movement.
When asked about “even closer alignment”, Slippery Sir Keir said: “If it’s in our national interest…then we should consider that, we should go that far.”
His thinking is that a tough stance on Brexit will head off the threat of Mr Farage and Reform at the pass in a policy framed as an attempt to undo some of the economic damage caused by the seismic 2016 ballot.
Sir Keir, a fixture of the haughty metropolitan elite that loathed the peasants’ revolt which saw us extricate ourselves from the bloc, has long accused Mr Farage of “peddling falsehoods” about the benefits of Brexit.
But this policy of realignment is surely the most misguided and ill-judged offering from someone with a rich and varied back catalogue in miscalculations.
Sir Keir’s approval ratings are languishing somewhere south of -51, Labour is set to be annihilated at the local elections in May (in areas where they haven’t been postponed), and the chances are he will be ousted as prime minister long before then.
The only winner from his extraordinary obsession to hop back into bed with his brethren in Brussels will be Mr Farage and his seemingly unstoppable Reform people’s army.
Britain unequivocally voted to unshackle itself from the EU straitjacket, yet this feeble flip-flopping prime minister has never accepted the result of a democratic vote because, well, he knows best.
Rest assured this will be his biggest mistake and serve only to hasten his exit and Mr Farage’s entry to Downing Street.
Panicked Sir Keir’s attempts to attack the Reform UK leader have already sensationally backfired.
A previous hit job led to a surge in support and a forecast that Mr Farage would win around 370 seats at a general election.
Attempting to reverse Brexit is the clearest sign yet that Labour is running out of ideas and it is fast running out of road.
