Despite Starmer’s election assurances that the UK would not rejoin the EU or the Customs Union in his lifetime, the country is drifting back into Brussels’ orbit by stealth.
In recent weeks, the drumbeat of Britain’s gradual return to Europe has grown ever louder. The Liberal Democrats carried a parliamentary motion calling for a UK-EU customs union. The Government rejoined the Erasmus+ scheme, signalling renewed openness to free movement in all but name.
Now, Labour is reportedly concocting a so-called ‘Brexit Reset Bill’, which, if passed, would grant ministers sweeping powers to align Britain more closely with the EU on a wide range of issues.
None of this should surprise us. Starmer is a former Shadow Brexit Secretary who voted to block Brexit 48 times. But Brexit was conspicuously absent from the agenda in 2024. Labour swept to power on the back of an uneasy coalition of voters who just wanted ‘anyone but the Tories’.
Now, the realities of governance have quickly become apparent and hard-hitting. Dire polling, rumblings of a leadership challenge, and a public eagerly awaiting the ‘change’ that they were promised leave Starmer’s leadership and the electoral future of his party on rocky shores as we head into 2026.
And so, instead of delivering on domestic reform, he appears to be placating unions and backbenchers by reopening the Brexit wars.
But this isn’t a justification for undoing the biggest democratic mandate in modern British history.
Brexit betrayal is back, and this time it is being smuggled in through the back door - James Hodgkinson | Getty Images
David Cameron promised that the decision to leave the EU was to be one that ‘lasted for life’. The British people took him at his word and voted in their droves.
Turnout in 2016 exceeded every General Election turnout since 1997. Indeed, Brexit received almost 7 million more votes than the Labour Party itself in 2024, underscoring that the decision to leave had more support than the party that now seeks to reverse it.
Our emancipation from Europe should be sacrosanct. For years, brave politicians battled to restore our sovereignty, control our borders, and reclaim our ability to trade freely with countries across the world. Today, those hard-won gains are yet again under threat. Not this time from unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, but from MPs sitting comfortably on the green benches of Westminster.
The so-called ‘Brexit reset’ has already sold out our fishing industry. And in truth, no one knows how far Starmer will go.
Alignment on climate change policy, new constraints on protecting Britain’s domestic industry, and the surrendering of sovereignty to the European Courts of Justice may all be on the table. Brexit may not be destroyed by one dramatic vote, but it risks being dismantled piece by piece in plain sight.
Leaving the EU has not been an unalloyed success. A recent study estimated that Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6-8 per cent and cut economic investment by 12-18 per cent.
It's easy, perhaps even convenient, to saddle the act of leaving with the blame for this. But blaming Brexit itself is fundamentally wrong.
The truth is simpler: The UK has failed to make the most of its Brexit freedoms. Since leaving the European bloc, Britain has secured from scratch just seven active free trade agreements.
Many of the great behemoths of EU law, including GDPR, remain untouched. Only around a third of retained EU law has been meaningfully amended, repealed, or replaced. Brexit was meant to be the starting gun for deregulation, global trade, and economic renewal. Instead, politicians have left the tools to collect rust.
It is not Brexit that has failed; it is the politicians whose role it is to implement it.
Renewed focus on the Brexit debate is welcome, but our government is making a fundamental misstep. Instead of running back to Europe and Ursula von der Leyen with his tail between his legs, Starmer should remember what Brexit really means.
A vote for Brexit was a vote for economic freedom, sovereignty, and a rolling back of the nanny state. All of these promises remain unfulfilled, yet the Government possesses the levers to deliver on each of them.
Brexit is not a ‘problem to be overcome’, or an ‘unfortunate mistake’. It is an opportunity that our leaders have a duty to defend and to use. The mandate was clear. The promise was explicit. And it must not be surrendered through quiet compliance with Brussels.
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