“The people have taken back control,” we were told. Now a Labour prime minister stands in London, signing what’s being sold as a reset. A recalibration. But there’s nothing radical about it. No break, no rupture, no return of power to the people, only the quiet stitching back together of a frayed elite consensus.
Keir Starmer’s new deal with the European Union is framed as sensible, grown-up, a necessary course correction after years of chaos. It aligns Britain with EU food standards again, offers—sometime in the future—a capped youth mobility scheme, extends EU fishing rights to 2038, and promises closer cooperation on defence and energy markets. The Financial Times calls it pragmatic. The business press welcomes the calm. The real question is: calm for whom?
Regulatory Peace, Political Stasis
Starmer hasn’t undone Brexit. He’s tidied it. Instead of challenging the conditions that made Brexit possible. Economic despair, political alienation, declining living standards. He has instead chosen to manage them better.
Fargage and Reform UK must be rubbing their hands in glee.
The youth mobility scheme is modest, in that it will help a handful of graduates and interns. But it’s no return of freedom of movement. Capital can once again cross borders with ease. Workers can’t. The emissions trading merger says it all: this is about re-integrating Britain into the market architecture of the EU, without offering the public much of a say or stake.
There’s no plan here to rebuild domestic industry, no serious proposal for redistribution. Just tweaks.
A Technocracy of the Possible
What Starmer offers is continuity, dressed up as competence. He thinks faith in politics can be restored simply by proving he’s not Johnson, not Corbyn, not chaos. But those are yesterday’s men, and Labour is now facing a different enemy. If Brexit was a symptom of deep political decay, this deal doesn’t cure it. It doesn’t even diagnose it. It merely manages the continued fallout.
The working class. In Britain and across Europe, remains excluded from this new settlement. The message is clear: some mild stability for the markets, nothing for you. The technocrats are back in charge, and they’d prefer you stop asking for more.
Red Rag
Farage and Reform UK won’t see this as grown-up policy. They’ll see it as vindication. Proof that Labour was always going to bring Britain back under Brussels’ thumb. Farage will be on air within the week, pint in hand, smirking: “Told you so.”
It’s not about the details. It never was. For Reform voters, this deal represents betrayal. Not because it gives away too much, but because it confirms the suspicion that Labour never respected the vote. That they’ll sign the country away one agreement at a time, then claim they’ve done nothing of the sort.
This is the terrain Farage thrives on. Starmer has walked straight into it. It hands Reform a narrative they know how to use. About sovereignty, fishing, betrayal, the return of the elite stitch-up. And if Labour has no better story to tell, they may well lose ground before they’ve even begun.
After Sovereignty
You don’t take a country back through alignment protocols. You don’t reclaim democracy with emissions markets.
The structures of ownership.
Land,
housing,
infrastructure,
and labour.
Remain exactly where they were: in the hands of the few.
Starmer’s deal doesn’t challenge the logic of Brexit. It confirms it. That for all the sound and fury, nothing fundamental would change. A restoration, yes—but not for the many.
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