In August last year, I rounded up some of Keir Starmer’s biggest whoppers and within minutes I’d come up with 25. You can see the full list here if your blood pressure can stand it, but highlights included lies about the Chagos Islands stitch-up, the winter fuel betrayal, the Waspi women, the pre-election “no tax hikes” promise and many more. All from a man who pledged to bring decency back to politics while lining his pockets with over £100,000 in gifts and freebies.
And he’s been serving us plates of porkies ever since, particularly about the EU. Even the left-wing Guardian accused him of a recurring pattern of “ducking difficult arguments and calling it pragmatism.” That nails it. He won’t say what he plans to do, and never argues his case. He just shuffles it through, hoping nobody will notice or pick him up on it. All the while twisting the truth with sneaky phrasing, to hide his sleight of hand.
Speaking in China, Starmer said he wanted to “go further” in aligning with the European single market. That may surprise anyone remembering his 2024 election promise. He insisted it wasn’t Labour’s plan to rejoin the EU, the single market, or customs union, adding, “I’ve never said that as leader of the Labour Party and it is not in our manifesto.”
Labour would simply seek a better deal with the EU, he said. And now we see how he’s doing it. Iteratively.
Last year, Starmer agreed for the UK to follow Brussels-set rules in agriculture and electricity. He expected a bigger Brexiteer backlash, but didn’t get it. So now he’s doubling down. Or as he slyly puts it: “I think the relationship with the EU and every summit should be iterative. We should be seeking to go further.”
So what ‘iterative’ mean? Even the dictionary struggles with this one, before describing it as “constant refining and optimisation.”
In practice, this means Starmer is going to drag us back toward EU alignment, summit after tedious summit, hoping we won’t notice or kick up a fuss. Until suddenly it feels like a done deal.
Brussels knows this game well. It’s full of bureaucrats who know the meaning of iterative in a dozen different languages. The EU has expanded its power this way for decades, pushing slowly, exploiting crises, and forcing votes again when people object.
It’s creeping mission has strangled Europe in red tape. The EU is so useless the European economy barely grows anymore. The US has streaked ahead. Washington doesn’t do things iteratively. It does them openly, like it or lump it. That’s not the Starmer way.
Restoring the youth mobility scheme is another part of the process. It’s an iterative staging post on the road to restoring full freedom of movement.
