Analysis
With UK-EU agreement, military rearmament triggers a ‘Brexit Reset’
Whether this amounts to a real “reset” of UK-EU relations, Starmer obviously sees Brexit for what it is: a pesky provincial gnat on the back of a rampaging global-geopolitical elephant.
There was something for the uniform-wearing crowd, little or nothing for everyone else. On Monday, Keir Starmer welcomed the EU’s top brass to Lancaster House for the first post-Brexit bilateral summit, whose centerpiece – and driving force behind the whole EU-UK agreement – is the so-called strategic partnership with Europe, that is, military synergy between the UK and EU in the ReArm Europe program. This was the first concrete step in the reset of relations with the Union that Starmer had promised as soon as he took office.
After the customary bars of Ode to Joy (in which Beethoven’s genius almost presages that of Wagner, who once made Woody Allen “feel like invading Poland”), Starmer stood beside von der Leyen, Costa, Šefčovič, Kallas and his Minister for European Relations, Thomas-Symonds, and presented a flurry of agreements. Beside the military partnership – in which giants such as BAE Systems could benefit from the €150 billion re-armament fund allocated by the program — the parties negotiated a reduction in customs checks on British goods sold in Europe (hamburgers and sausages first of all), a muddling of British and European CO2 rules, the end of grueling passport queues for Britons travelling to the Continent and a mobility window for under-30s, so young Italians can keep being exploited in those “little jobs” in which they at least learn English. Still no return to Erasmus, and British universities will remain the preserve of the offspring of the one-percenters due to their prohibitive fees.
“It is a deal where everybody wins,” Starmer stressed, like in the good old days of free trade, not the current Trumpian manner of “your loss is my gain.” Everybody except, perhaps, in the vexed question of fishing quotas, a topic whose importance is bizarrely overinflated (amounting to only 0.04 per cent of GDP) and a rallying point of Faragist and Conservative euroscepticism: Starmer has granted European trawlers access to British national waters for a full 12 years.
Regardless, “Britain is back on the world stage,” Starmer declared, while von der Leyen echoed him: “This summit shows the rest of the world that we Europeans remain united” — all in the name of “our common values,” despite British tabloids spitting venom over Starmer’s “surrender,” accused of squandering the priceless freedoms Brexit supposedly won for the country.
Although mainstream outlets – first and foremost the BBC – dwelled at length on the European fishing quotas in UK waters, an issue on which negotiations had dragged on into the early hours of the morning, the tiny number of cod that can still be found in the North Sea are nothing more than a diversion from the strategic partnership: the first tangible display of the military Keynesianism with which Europe is trying to revive its economies, helped along by multilateralism lying in tatters, China and Russia ready to swallow the free world in their totalitarian embrace, and the United States freeing itself from hypocritical liberal modesty and revealed at last as the rogue superpower it long denied being.
SAFE, the €150 billion fund approved by the Commission (without the vote of the Parliament) to comply with the American decree that Europe should pay for its own protection, is still merely a pittance – €30 billion a year for five years – compared with the numbers Washington and London want. The Commission has likewise noted that Europe, having outsourced much of its defense needs to the US and thus accumulating a frightening “deficit” in military spending, is paying more for salaries and overhead in the defense sector than for actual weapons. The horror.
Whether this amounts to a real “reset” of UK-EU relations, Starmer obviously sees Brexit for what it is: a pesky provincial gnat on the back of a rampaging global-geopolitical elephant. Always an ardent pro-European – after all, Remain and the antisemitism row allowed him to storm Corbyn’s stronghold, which was his main function – he can now afford to let the right wail about “surrender”. Only 30% of voters think the UK was right to leave the EU, only 11% call it a success, and 64% are in favor of a closer relationship with Europe.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/accordo-unione-gran-bretagna-il-riarmo-fa-scattare-il-brexit-reset on 2025-05-20