This is Starmer's most unforgivable Brexit betrayal to date
That is because, buried in the small print of this new agreement, Starmer's subterfuge has been laid bare. The financial contributions that the UK will now make are, as the Telegraph has discovered, the result of aligning UK food standards with EU standards and the carbon market rules that Britain will have to follow.
Of course, as has now become the norm when dealing with Starmer and co, none of this was even mentioned when he came back to the Commons to trumpet his agreement. Neither have we had any chance to vote against this shabby betrayal. In one arrogant swish of his pen he has demeaned the UK by placing it in the worst situation possible – having to accept rules and financial contributions to the EU budget without any say in what the rules should be or how much we should pay.
The EU has exacted revenge on the UK by spelling out that one of the great trading nations of the world will have no right to involve itself in deciding the rules or even being involved deciding the amount we will have to contribute.
What is absurd is that this cave should have been unnecessary. The EU has for a long-time imported lamb and other meat products from New Zealand without being forced to suffer delayed checks at the border of its phyto-sanitary food. That is because as part of their deal with NZ they allow compliance checks to be carried out by local vets prior to their despatch. This could have been a model for a future relationship had the Prime Minister bothered to place even the slightest degree of pressure on his idolised friends in the EU.
As if that wasn't bad enough, it calls into question our ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world. After all, this makes it impossible to negotiate a third country agreement because we will not be able to change any of these regulations, instead having to defer to Brussels. This is a shameful and humiliating position for the UK to be in, and a slap in the face to the people of these islands.
Ironically, handing back this power to the EU at a significant cost to UK taxpayers actually now favours the EU producers and hardly helps us. The EU exports €54 billion of agricultural products to the UK, whereas we export only €15 billion. When you look at the detail our exports are largely things that require no animal health paperwork, such as whisky.
It is also worth noting that this deal will also be at the expense of our own food standards. The reality is that the UK had throughout our time in the EU had higher standards than the other member states, a situation which post-Brexit still continues.
As Churchill once said, 'This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year…' For this is only the beginning of the betrayal. After all, Keir Starmer called for the British People to be forced to have another referendum because he disagreed with the original result. He is also surrounded by people who are for the most part in favour of re-joining. Together they will find further reasons to cave in, as they have done on extending access to our fishing waters.
Remember, Starmer wouldn't have been able to agree a trade arrangement with the US if Brexit hadn't happened. Dynamic alignment will lose that hard-won victory.
This is not what the British people voted for. They voted for the UK to make its own rules and take back control, not hand it back.
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