The Mirror’s Associate Editor and politics columnist Kevin Maguire says it’s high time Keir Starmer took a second look at reversing Brexit after US President Donald Trump imposed his rogue tariffs
Rejoining the European Union is the elephant in the room as Keir Starmer and the UK Labour government wrestle with Donald Trump’s hostile tariffs.
That quitting the single market and customs union of our country’s largest trading partner inflicts damage considerably worse than the US hit should be screamed from the rooftops, not ignored.
Because a rogue President treating Britain like he does Guatemala, with a job-destroying unilateral 10% import tax, is no Brexit bonus.
Quitting the EU has had an even worse impact on the UK, calculates global consultancy Cambridge Econometrics. It has made the average Brit £2,000 worse off, cut £140billion from the economy and reduced GDP by 5%.
The Office for Budget Responsibility put Britain on course for a 15% Brexit trade intensity reduction so a tariff half the 20% imposed on the EU by the US is a punch rather than a kick but it was bought at enormous price.
The Prime Minister must know this. He, after all, fought Brexit tooth and nail and passionately advocated a second referendum to stay in the EU until a deciding silence followed by acceptance of national self-harm paved his way to No 10.
Labour’s manifesto promises to keep out of the single market, customs union and freedom of movement must be among the few pledges he’s sticking to, yet reversing them would be in the country’s best interests.
Polls repeatedly finding people Begret departing and would vote to rejoin are why this is a debate worth initiating ahead of the next election.
Trump’s turned the US into a hostile, unreliable power. Europe, closer alliances with neighbours, is where Britain’s prosperity and security are to be found. Starmer wishes to be bold, brave and decisive? Start by telling the truth about this elephant in the room.
Chagos
Trump signing off Labour’s Chagos Islands security deal is embarrassing for bumptious Robert Jenrick, a Tory Shadow Justice Secretary and wannabe Badenoch successor who made a seven-minute video criticising the deal after claiming the US would veto it. Jenrick has proved himself clueless, with zero judgment. He’s exactly what the Tories need.
Uncivil war
Thatcherite Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK party has picked ex-Tories to stand in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection, Greater Lincolnshire mayoral contest and more than 60 council seats, proving they are just another Conservative party. No wonder Farage, himself a former Tory, sees Labour as the opposition and Badenoch’s party as an uncivil war enemy.
Israel
Israel detaining and deporting two Labour MPs, Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed, as phone video footage showed it misled or lied to the world about the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers in Gaza is a once proud liberal democracy lurching into brutal authoritarianism.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy is frequently accused by Palestinian supporters of being soft on the most right-wing reactionary government in Israeli history but even he condemned the pair’s treatment.
Not so Kemi Badenoch, the Tory chancer “cheerleading another country” in Lammy’s words and disgraceful when she – rightly – objects to China targeting Conservative MPs.
She really is an unprincipled disgrace for a leader.