Starmer's Europhile plot to shackle us to Brussels will see Britain suffer immensely, says Craig Whittaker

This wasn’t even a party political problem; we saw bedfellows of all colours, shapes and descriptions climbing into bed with each other to thwart whatever the debate of the day was. It took a General Election in 2019 to undo the paralysis in Parliament, and the British public overwhelmingly wanted Brexit done.

It is too early to see what the true benefits of Brexit are, but early signs, particular around some of the exceptional trade deals that have been signed since the UK left the European Union, are promising.

UK/Australia has seen our trade boosted by 17.8 per cent to £19.5billion in the last year alone. Similarly with Japan, our trade has increased to £27.8billion annually. Contrary to the gloomy predictions of the so-called experts, the UK has seen better growth than all European counterparts who have seen quite deep recessions, despite the whole world suffering from the same global pressures of war and pandemic. We’ve even leapfrogged the French into 8th place of the world’s biggest manufacturers.

Why then, having witnessed all the above in close quarters, would Keir Starmer want to take us back down that path of destruction if he became Prime Minister? The signs appear to be so, but as we’ve seen from his ‘Teflon physique’, who knows truly what he stands for on anything apart from what the flavour of the day is with his increasingly populist politics? The man is void of a spine and doesn’t have the leadership skills or quality to stand up to those in his party who shout loudest.

The diabolical show with the Speaker a couple of weeks ago shows exactly what he will do to paper over the shoddy cracks that haven’t disappeared nor forgotten from the days when he backed left-winged Corbyn as his leader.

We’ve heard him say that he doesn’t want the UK to diverge from the bloc’s (EU’s) regulation regime in certain areas. We’ve heard him say he will re-write the Brexit deal when it is due to be reviewed in 2025. We’ve heard him say he wants closer ties with the EU but he hasn’t articulated what that means. We heard him say he wanted a second referendum before 2019. We heard him vow to defend freedom of movement as we left the EU. In addition, we saw the SNP launch a broadside at Starmer this week saying ‘Starmer backs Brexit’. Instead of standing up and saying he did, we saw Starmer deflect away from the topic - and not for political gain in Scotland.

Much like my young granddaughter’s rag doll, we have seen Starmer turn one way and then the other so many times, that we don’t really know on which side of the fence he’ll fall on any topic or policy. The list is endless; gender recognition; nationalisation of water, rail, mail and energy; Universal Credit; outsourcing; Unions; tuition fees; Banker’s bonuses; windfall tax and, of course, who can forget that screeching U-turn on his £28billion green policy?

Unlike his usual policy U-turns, Starmer’s one consistency is that his magnetic compass has always pointed to closer ties with the EU.

Quite simply, Starmer is a Europhile. Even after various U-turns on Brexit, he can’t help but return to it with yet another rehashed position.

If Starmer is to be our next Prime Minister, the end result for Britain will be disaster. Neither in nor out. Strangled by bureaucracy, paying through the nose for the ‘privilege’ and every ounce of breath strangled out of any potential growth and opportunity that Brexit can bring if we only grasped the nettle.

He doesn’t realise it, but if he does manage to form a government at the next General Election, and continues to go down this route, history tells us that he will likely end up being a one-term Prime Minister - and it will be Britain’s economy that will suffer immensely.