There really is no talking to them. The front pages of some right-wing newspapers this morning are a journey into mania and psychosis. There is no sense of purchase in reality, no hint of the slightest moderation, no trace of reason.
Keir Starmer has come back from Europe with a perfectly sensible plan. A 12-year extension to the existing fishing arrangements, a youth mobility scheme, dynamic alignment on regulation for sanctuary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) goods, UK participation in the EU’s internal energy market and British access to the European joint defence fund.
Yes, there are some sacrifices, but these are more than compensated for by the gains. Some parts of Britain’s fishing industry will be alarmed, but other parts will be assisted by the easing of barriers to export. Agreeing to follow EU rules on agri-food is simply a recognition of how successive UK governments, including the Conservatives, have stuck close to European regulation for trade reasons and can now enjoy significant material advantages for doing so.
Working together on rearmament helps us to fend off Vladimir Putin, but it should also assist the British arms industry. Europeans coming to the UK under a mobility scheme will be matched by Brits going in the other direction – a joint bounty to young people on both sides of the Channel.
This is the world of trade-offs. It is the world in which adults live. We want something, our negotiating partner wants something else, and we try to find a compromise in which we are both happy. We seek mutual advantage and recognise that this will entail mutual concessions.
But some of the right-wing press is obviously unable to comprehend this level of thought. The Daily Mail ran with “Starmer’s Surrender”. The Sun went with “Done Up Like A Kipper”. And The Telegraph opted for “Kiss Goodbye to Brexit.” The commentary from leading Brexit supporters has been similarly deranged. Former prime minister Boris Johnson called Starmer an “orange ball-chewing manacled gimp of Brussels”. Daniel Hannan, a peer of the realm, said: “Starmer is turning Britain into the EU’s gimp, handing us over to Eurocrat control encased in shiny black leather and with a ball gag.”
You’ll notice that all the rhetoric has this unhinged hyper-macho quality – it’s articulated in war metaphors and images of sexual domination. This is a sure sign that something has become terribly broken in the Brexiteer brain; some basic comprehension of mutual advantage and joint endeavour has mutated into a primitive power consciousness.
It’s a version of the world view which you find in the social Darwinism around sexual relations spread by the Andrew Tate-style male influencers or the impotent chauvinism of Trump’s tariffs. This is what happens to the human brain when it gives up on complexity, when it ceases to accept the necessity of trade-offs: it becomes embroiled in paranoid fever dreams of strength and impotence.
Given how excessive the Brexiter reaction has been, it’s tempting to say that Keir Starmer should have gone further. After all, he might as well have rejoined the customs union and single market if this is the kind of response he was going to get.
That reasoning is flawed. The future of Brexit will not be defined by concrete proposals. It will be defined by an emotional narrative about avoiding a retreat to the past. And that required a relatively modest initial proposal to work closely with Europe.
In 2019, Boris Johnson won because he offered the quickest and easiest route to stop talking about Brexit. In 2025, any move on Starmer’s part to bring back single market membership, say, would be seen as reopening the Brexit war. But a trade deal of this type, coming immediately after agreements with India and the US, is likely to be seen as a normal everyday government activity. That then puts the Brexiters on the wrong foot. Suddenly, they are the ones trying to reopen old debates. They are the ones irritating an old wound.
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Johnson, Hannan and the rest think they’re appealing to the great roaring Leaver anger of the post-referendum era. They think they can still marshal their forces with screams about the will of the people and frighten politicians with talk of the Red Wall. But those years have passed. People have moved on. No one wants to go back to the days when we shouted at our father-in-laws across the Christmas table.
Why are the Brexiters so upset? What do we find if we delve into their tortured minds? It can’t really be about such tiny, inoffensive ideas as a youth mobility scheme or health regulations on agri-foods. It’s something deeper. It’s the manner and existence of the deal itself.
The agreement treats Brexit as a painful series of compromises and concessions. It is the product of a country that wants to be an ally and partner to Europe, not its enemy.
This is why they’re so outraged. They pretended that Brexit was a great and majestic dream. Now we see it in all its underwhelming naked reality. Just a scar on the body politic, a hospital patient who chose to go without food. The language of empirical reality frightens Brexiters because it imposes a test upon their political demands that they know they cannot pass.
There is simply no deal that these people will support. There is no arrangement with Europe, no matter how benign and non-committal, which Johnson and Hannan would not call surrender. And that is because the Brexiters no longer have a foot in reality. Their political rhetoric has come completely unmoored from the truth.
The Brexiters must be defeated. There is no point debating with these people and certainly no reason to modify our stance so that it satisfies them, because it is not possible. They must simply be vanquished, so that we can pursue the national interest: a Britain which has more security, freer trade and greater opportunities for its young people. The Brexiters are the past now. They must be left there, for the good of the country. This deal is our first step in doing so.
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