Keir Starmer has carried out a bunch of u-turns since becoming PM, but Aaron Newbury argues his latest will be the worst.
Starmer is intent on betraying Brexit (Image: PA)
Sir Keir Starmer must wake up each morning, spin a wheel, and decide precisely what pledge to dial back today. It’s like a game show, except all the prizes suck and you and I are still asked to pay for them. The man has u-turned more times than a learner driver in a cul-de-sac. At this stage I half expect him to announce that up is down, just to keep us on our toes.
When he slammed up National Insurance contributions, despite the monotonous pledge he wouldn’t put taxes up on working people (made 52 times, I was counting), a lot of people believed him. That one went out the window in a matter of weeks. Later he sacked-off the two-child benefit cap after his own backbench MPs bullied him into it.
Then he binned the winter fuel payment, before a tidal wave of fury forced him to row back on that as well. But not after leaving millions of pensioners distressed after Starmer’s masochistic government decided that freezing the elderly was a form of character building. Not content with cheesing off the elderly, he came for farmers as well.
Months of protests followed, after Sir Keir decided that rural Britain was a piggy bank for his Government’s long list of wasteful spending projects. Eighteen months later and he u-turned on that, saving some farms from inheritance tax but not others. The details remain as clear as mud, and understandably, a lot of farmers are not entirely convinced he’ll follow through.
Rumoured rate relief cuts for pubs are suggested to be his latest u-turn. Most people need a stiff drink to listen to Starmer, but he appears to have decided that shutting the nation’s boozers by slamming their rates up, might not be the best idea. After threatening to scrap the relief that keeps many locals alive, word has it that ministers are now backpedalling faster than a circus bear on a unicycle. Apparently shutting down the nation’s pubs turned out to be less popular than anticipated. Who knew?
Starmer even planned to leave pensioners in the cold (Image: GETTY)
Then we have the grooming gangs inquiry. One week it was a “far Right bandwagon” that serious people should ignore. The next week, after public pressure became unbearable, suddenly an inquiry was precisely what the nation needed. The Waspi women got similar treatment. Sir Keir would not back their compensation claims. Then he would. Then he might. The man treats principles like a game of hokey cokey.
But the worst U-turn of all looms on the horizon. Extensive reports suggest that Sir Keir is planning to drag Britain kicking and screaming back into the EU single market. Having already signed us back up to Erasmus+ without so much as a by-your-leave, he now appears intent on surrendering control over our own market to Brussels.
This would be the ultimate betrayal.
And he went after farmers (Image: GETTY)
Perhaps Labour appear to have forgotten, but we voted to leave the Brussels-mafia? Not half leave, not sort of leave, not leave but actually sort of stay. Leave. Take back control, govern ourselves, make our own laws, and control our own borders.
Surrendering to the single market would mean accepting EU rules over which we have no say. It would mean free movement by the back door and it would mean meddling European courts having jurisdiction over British law.
It would mean we left in name only. Whilst that might be what arch-remainic Sir Keir wants, it is, in fact, not what we voted for. It would make the entire Brexit battle utterly meaningless.
Rejoining the single market would be a deliberate choice to override the democratic will of the British people. It would be telling 17.4 million voters that their decision counts for nothing, that they can vote all they like, but the establishment knows best.
Sir Keir can spin his wheel as often as he likes on taxes and benefits and pubs. He can reverse and pivot and recalibrate until his head spins, but if he takes us back into the single market, he will have betrayed not just his promises, but the country itself.
And that, unlike his other reversals, cannot be undone with another U-turn when the polls turn sour. That would be permanent, and final.
It would be the worst betrayal of all.
