No10 has, after a long lead-up, effectively scrapped Starmer’s red lines on EU rejoin. It says ‘nothing is off the table,’ including a pledge to rejoin the EU fully or moving back into the customs union or single market. Burnham said that he will set out options around November:
“So, I will take the opportunity around the summit to lay out to you, to lay out to the country, what I believe the different options are for Britain’s long-term relationship with our European partners.”
You’re on…
Enjoy…
Blair’s Institute for Global Change has put out a paper overnight pushing for Britain to rejoin a “reformed” EU over ten years. The old believers are seeing the entire project fall apart before their very eyes…
There are numerous ways in which the proposals set out would not work. Guido takes them in turn:
It is simply the case that the preferential treatment Britain enjoyed prior to Brexit was not palatable to the public. Whatever is offered next will be ten times worse…
There is a new push for Burnham to select rejoining the EU as his wedge issue in an election. Good luck…
European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen has backed Canada’s accession to the EU as its first “associate member.” Stunt…
Mark Carney has been posturing towards Europe amid a bad relationship with Trump’s White House. Seeing as there is no framework for an ‘associate’ membership it will have to be unanimously approved by all 27 member states…
The EU-Canada trade deal is still waiting for ratification by ten EU member states ten years after it was signed. Waste of time…
Brussels is threatening to walk away from Burnham’s EU ‘reset’ talks until after the next general election unless Britain makes even more concessions than Labour is already offering. Give an inch, and they’ll take a mile 1.6 kilometres…
Labour has reportedly offered to slash tuition fees for European students in British universities, along with lifting the cap on a youth mobility scheme to let in up to 100,000 under-30s visa-free. The EU wants all of that, thank you very much, and is still refusing to let British steel and car firms into its “made in Europe” scheme, which hands EU companies priority for public contracts and subsidies. Brussels wants an even “wider reset”…
Buried underneath the summit row is the SPS agreement, which would hand Brussels the rule book on British food and farming, give the European Court even more power, and asks British taxpayers to cough up for the privilege. It would also make a US agriculture deal practically impossible…
The European Commission has designated Roblox a ‘Very Large Online Platform’. Yes, Roblox. It’s a game rather than a platform for a start…
This means the makers of the block-based universe will now be required to produce systemic risk assessments covering illegal content, harm to minors, mental wellbeing, fundamental rights, electoral processes and public security. ChatGPT and Reddit were also declared VLOPs in the latest sweep…
So far X, Temu and AliExpress have been fined under the DSA – so the Californian makers of Roblox will likely be shortly paying a huge amount of cash to the EU. Brussels bureaucrats can’t keep the lights on or stop small boats, but they can force an American games company to produce a 200-page document explaining why its dancing ducks won’t collapse European democracy…
Burnham said in his main conference speech: “For the historic victory he achieved for us, I am here to say: thank you, Keir.”