UK-EU ‘reset’ is the surrender Starmer always dreamed of
In negotiating the ‘reset’ in UK-EU relations, Keir Starmer has always sat on the EU’s side of the table, writes Steve Baker
Keir Starmer has done what he always intended: he sat down on the EU’s side of the table and gave them everything they wanted. This so-called “reset” is no triumph of diplomacy; it is a clear infraction of the UK’s interests, dressed up in the language of pragmatism and economic benefit.
The most egregious concession is the alignment on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures. Ministers claim this will ease trade and cut costs, but it locks the UK into the EU’s regulatory framework indefinitely. This is not mutual recognition as the EU has with New Zealand, where each party respects the other’s standards as equivalent. Instead, it is dynamic alignment, a commitment to follow EU rules without a voice or a veto.
EU deal will harm our free trade agreements
This decision places us in breach of our free trade agreements which require the UK to maintain control over our regulatory environment. By surrendering that control to the EU, the government has invited litigation through the dispute mechanisms of those treaties. British taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for compensation claims, all because their government chose to become a rule-taker.
Moreover, President Trump’s emerging trade policy is explicitly focused on dismantling non-tariff barriers, including precisely the kind of behind-the-border regulatory distortions the EU imposes. By aligning with the EU’s restrictive, anti-competitive SPS regime, the UK has opted into the very distortions President Trump is fighting against. Far from opening the UK to the world, this deal traps us within Brussels’ anti-scientific regime.
Starmer has also surrendered our independence in the critical area of emissions trading. By linking the UK to the EU’s Emissions Trading System, he has handed over policymaking power in one of the most important areas of economic and environmental governance. Instead of setting our own path on emissions, tailored to British industries and technologies, we will now be governed by EU decisions – regardless of their suitability for our economy.
British fishermen betrayed
Most totemic of all, the Prime Minister has utterly betrayed Britain’s fishing industry. The right to control our waters was a clear prize of Brexit. Yet, under this deal, British fishermen will never know what it means to manage the fisheries of an independent country. EU access has been extended, and the economic future of our coastal communities has once again been sacrificed. All without gains on financial services.
It is not yet clear whether this deal surrenders the independence of our foreign and defence policy. While we are told that a new Security and Defence Partnership will open access to the EU’s proposed £150bn SAFE defence fund, the cost of that access remains dangerously opaque. If it comes at the price of subordinating our defence posture to EU ambitions – undermining our leadership in NATO – it will be a strategic blunder of the highest order.
None of this should be surprising. It was always Keir Starmer’s plan. But what he has delivered is not the clarity and stability he promises, but a mess. While the UK’s global trade strategy rightly continues, this deal directly undermines our independence in the world, creating uncertainty for investors and trading partners alike.
The deal prejudices the vital regulatory reform our economy so desperately needs. The UK has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to sweep away the dense thicket of EU-originated rules that suppress innovation, productivity and growth. Yet this deal binds us back into precisely those constraints on agriculture, preventing the regulatory freedom that would allow Britain to thrive as an agile, competitive economy.
This is not the behaviour of a confident, independent nation. It is the politics of decline. The Conservatives are right to pledge reversal.
Steve Baker is chief provocation officer at The Provocation People, an advisor to Axiom, and a former MP and minister