Here We Go Again

So, Keir Starmer’s gone and done the unthinkable – he’s managed to negotiate a trade deal with the EU that actually makes things slightly less terrible. And as sure as night follows day, the right wing has reacted in exactly the way you’d expect: by throwing itself down the nearest metaphorical staircase while wailing that Brexit has been murdered in its bed.

Let’s pause to consider what’s actually happened. Have we rejoined the Single Market? No. Have we handed control of our laws to Brussels? Not in the slightest. What we’ve done is agree, quite sensibly, to align food standards with our nearest and largest trading partner to avoid having lorryloads of perfectly edible British produce turned back at Calais like diseased contraband. It’s not treason. It’s logistics.

But of course, the usual suspects – Kemi Badenoch, the Daily Express, that man on Facebook with a Union Flag in his profile picture and the strategic insight of a pigeon – are all shrieking “betrayal” as though someone’s just torched the Magna Carta and sold the ashes to Macron.

Let’s be clear: nothing in this deal erodes our precious, abstract “sovereignty”. The EU hasn’t been given a key to Downing Street. We’ve just agreed not to poison each other’s sausages. That’s it. And for this modest, technocratic step forward, Starmer is being called everything short of “French.”

But of course, these are the same people who think sovereignty means being allowed to suffer in splendid isolation – who think that working with other countries is weakness, but selling ourselves to the lowest bidder in a chlorinated trade deal with the US is “Global Britain.”

They shout that fishing’s been sold out – again – as if 0.1% of GDP should dictate 100% of our foreign policy. Never mind that the rest of the country quite likes affordable food and young people being allowed to spend a few years in Spain not picking fruit. Oh no – Geoffrey from Bridlington demands revenge for cod wars lost and haddock dreams deferred.

The new trade deal maintains much of the existing framework for the UK fishing industry, with some enhancements in trade facilitation and economic support. While it doesn't represent a significant shift from the previous arrangement, it aims to balance the interests of trade, industry sustainability, and international cooperation.

And what about the youth mobility scheme? Cue more fury. “Why should our young people go to Europe to work?” they ask – in between moaning that British workers won’t take jobs in hospitality and agriculture. A Remain-voting 23-year-old going to Berlin to pour craft beer is apparently a threat to national identity. But importing tomato pickers from Nepal is fine, because they’re outside the EU and that, somehow, makes it patriotic.

Honestly, if Starmer negotiated world peace, the headline in the Mail would be “TRAITOR SELLS OUT BRITAIN TO FOREIGNERS WITH DOVES.”

Meanwhile, the same people who crashed the economy with a hard Brexit now demand we all pretend it’s been brilliant, and that any attempt to make it slightly less absurd is a betrayal of the people – by which they mean themselves, and the imaginary flag-waving queue of Britons who’ve been gagging to eat only British-made goods, sold in ounces, while living in permanent queue-based ecstasy.

We are governed by ghosts – the ghosts of Brexit fantasies never realised and never questioned. Starmer, to his credit, hasn’t tried to exorcise them. He’s just quietly tried to make the ghost sheet a little less flammable. And for that, they scream. Not because it’s bad. But because it’s not them doing the negotiating – and because if things improve, even slightly, the jig might finally be up.

And so the shrieking must continue. For in the Brexit cult, reality is the ultimate heresy.