Keir Starmer is walking into a trap in talks with Ursula von der Leyen (Image: PA)
Sir is going to Brussels to “re set” the UK’s relationship with the . He needs to be careful. As soon as a UK Prime Minister says he wants something from the EU out comes the EU shopping list. This time will be no different. They will dress it up in convivial language to lull the PM into accepting a bad deal as an act of friendship.
The EU has long seen the UK as Treasure Island. They levied big fees on for us for being members, and got away with more large fees as we left. They arranged trade and business rules so we ran a permanent large deficit in goods, closing down many of our home industries to buy European. They plundered our seas for fish. They designed a farm policy which grubbed up our orchards and stopped us producing as much milk as we needed.
Now we are out they want us to take more of the migrants and asylum seekers they allow in across their wide southern borders. They still want more of our fish. They would like more of our money.
Sir Keir has said the right things about a partnership that would make sense. If the EU will co-operate fully with the UK in smashing the criminal gangs that run a trade in people across frontiers at great risk to the travellers, that would be progress. If closer working as we have with the USA helped alert us to more terrorists and to their threats, that would aid our mutual safety. If the EU would take back illegal migrants they had allowed to come to the UK that would be good. It rarely happened when we were members.
The EU seems determined to send us more people. They have dressed up the plan as a Youth Mobility scheme for people under 30. As many of the illegal migrants paying the people smugglers are under 30, it seeks to legalise a trade they should help us close down.
I am all in favour of student exchanges and access to UK universities and skilled job opportunities for young people from the EU as from elsewhere. The UK already grants permits to many talented young people from around the world to our mutual benefit. There should be no automatic scheme to allow in people admitted to the EU just because they are under 30.
The EU wants us to give them rights to more of our fish. The delay in taking full control of our fishing grounds has been unfortunate. The UK needs to build back its lost fishing fleet that was damaged by the Common Fishing Policy, not cede more of our fish to their damaging supertrawlers.
The EU wants the UK to make a bigger contribution to European defence. We should decline to do this by bilateral deals with or with the EU, but keep our collective defence firmly under which is committed to defence of the European continent. The UK has been the second largest European contributor after Germany in helping . The issue should be how do Germany and the UK get countries like and to do more to share the burden.
The UK says it is a global climate change leader, setting a great example the rest should follow. What example? This week the UK government took the rash decision to close the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station, when we might need it on days of no wind or sun. There is no sign that we have any influence over Germany, planning to continue to run most of the 58 coal stations it had open last year.
The EU may offer us words. But the UK needs to be realistic. What are the wins it wants? Will there be any change in the approach to illegal migrants? Signing up to the EU taking more fish with us accepting more young migrants would be another humiliating climb-down.