Photo: Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch and her Shadow Cabinet signs Brexit commitment
Quietly, shamefully, deliberately we are being dragged back in. A future Conservative government will not let this stand
Nearly ten years ago the British people voted to leave the European Union.
That vote was the biggest democratic mandate in our nation’s history – a clear instruction to take back control of our borders, our laws, and our future.
It was a demand for sovereignty, a belief that, freed from Brussels, Britain could shape its own destiny.
And yet, under Keir Starmer’s Labour Government, we are not moving forward. We are being dragged back. Quietly, shamefully, and deliberately.
Starmer has reopened the old wounds of Brexit. Not to heal them, but to surrender ground we had already won.
What he calls pragmatism is really capitulation. What he claims is progress is actually a step backwards.
The EU agreement Starmer proclaimed yesterday is really a deal struck in secret, away from Parliament, the press, and the public, that breaks major promises Labour made before the election.
At the start of these negotiations, the Conservatives laid down five simple tests to protect our national interest. They were not abstract principles. They were red lines – clear, measurable, and rooted in the mandate of the 2016 referendum.
No return to free movement. No new payments to the EU. No loss of our fishing rights. No dynamic alignment with EU rules. And no compromise on Nato’s primacy in European defence.
This deal fails every single one of these tests.
Let’s start with the most obvious. Britain is now poised to become a rule-taker once again – subject to EU regulations without any say in how they are written. It means French politicians will have more control over the laws affecting British farming than our own MPs.
It is an insult to the voters who were promised that “taking back control” meant just that.
And while British farmers struggle with Labour’s disastrous Family Farm Tax, they’ll also face rules written in Paris and enforced by Brussels. This is not sovereignty. It’s subservience.
On fisheries, the situation is even worse. Starmer’s deal puts us in a weaker position than the Faroe Islands, who get to negotiate access to their waters every year. Our fishermen, by contrast, have had their rights signed away for twelve years.
Meanwhile on food and farming we are in a worse place than New Zealand, who have an agri-food deal without comprising their ability to set their own laws.
Worst of all, Keir Starmer has given all this away and is paying the EU for the privilege
And it doesn’t stop there.
Despite once-upon-a-time ruling out a Youth Mobility Scheme, Labour’s deal leaves the door ajar for a return to EU free movement – including the possibility of admitting migrants from some of the poorest parts of Europe, potentially along with their dependents.
At a time when net migration is already unsustainably high, and public services are under intolerable strain, this is reckless in the extreme.
On energy, the Government’s ideological obsession with Net Zero 2050 means they have rushed into accepting EU carbon pricing. The result will be higher energy bills for businesses and families, already dealing with the highest energy bills in the western world.
And what have we gained in return? A vague possibility for British firms to bid into the EU’s defence fund. That’s it. No guaranteed access. No leadership role. No respect for the fact that Britain remains Europe’s largest military power — the nation that led the West’s response to the war in Ukraine, that protects European Nato members with our nuclear deterrent.
This is not a partnership. It’s a humiliation.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Keir Starmer’s record is one of retreat. Whether it was agreeing to pay Mauritius to give up the Chagos Islands, or capitulating to Trump’s tariffs, Starmer has consistently folded under foreign pressure.
Now he has broken his own promises.
He said Britain would never be a rule-taker, now we are. He said he would stand up for our fishermen, and they’ve been sunk. He said he’d take us forward and he’s taken us back.
Whenever Labour negotiates, Britain loses. This deal is no exception.
But let me be absolutely clear – a future Conservative government will not let this stand. We will not accept rule-taking by stealth, or the quiet erosion of sovereignty.
This was not the deal the country voted for. It is not the future we were promised.
And we will reverse it.
