With public trust stretched to breaking point, Keir Starmer’s choices on the EU will rebuild or destroy it

No thanks, just woo the Yanks

IN five months Keir Starmer has stretched public trust to breaking point, as Labour’s dire polling proves. He can now start to rebuild it, or destroy it, with his choices on the EU.

To most people the PM’s desire for a Brexit “reset” with Brussels looks pointless. Relations are cordial enough. Our trade deal, while imperfect, works.

Only the most gullible europhiles would imagine the EU will renegotiate that to our benefit without extracting a price — one fatal to our independence, hard-won by the referendum and its aftermath. And we now know its demands:

Long-term access to our fishing waters. Free movement for under-30s. And the European Court of Justice once again ruling over us. All absurd over-reach. None remotely compatible with Brexit.

The choice of who fishes UK waters must be ours alone. A country gripped by a mass migration crisis cannot possibly accept any free movement. And Britain did not leave only to become subservient once again to an EU court — this time, as non-members, with no say.

Bent on revenge

Some suspect Sir Keir, former “People’s Vote” cheerleader, is the frontman for a long-term Remainer project to drag us back into the EU’s orbit . . . close enough to argue we might as well rejoin.
He must prove that wrong by rejecting these ridiculous demands out of hand.

The EU will never negotiate in good faith. It is too bent on revenge for Brexit, on putting one over on the Brits.

That is not so with our closer and far more successful friends in America. And it is there, plus our partners in the CPTPP trading bloc we have just joined, on whom we must focus our energies.

A US trade deal is a vastly greater prize than smoothing out wrinkles with the EU. America is striding ahead, growing rapidly. Germany is shrinking and France engulfed by political and financial chaos.

The Remainers’ rose-tinted view of Brussels, misplaced enough in 2016, looks positively demented now as the project crumbles.

Downing Street has repeatedly promised no return to the single market, ­customs union or free movement.

But voters are wary of its pledges now.

Remember “no tax rises for working people”? Instead the Budget unleashed other hikes CERTAIN to hammer their finances and even cost them their job.

The fact No10 has a staff unit apparently dedicated to a sellout bodes ill. Our PM must stand up for Britain and our independence, not Remainers in his ear.

If not he will be wrapping up the Christmas gift of the Opposition’s dreams.