Brussels Offers “Worthless” Clauses to Make Brexit Betrayal More Palatable

Details that have emerged at the start of this week suggest Keir Starmer’s government has been telling fibs about one of the most controversial aspects of its Brexit ‘reset’—or, no less likely, perhaps that it is simply out of its depth.

According to the Financial Times, the European Union has “so far rejected” Britain’s demand that a ‘youth mobility scheme,’ which has been criticised as the effective return of free movement, would be subject to a cap on numbers. So much for the government’s claim that the principle of a cap—and, indeed, of a time limit on the scheme—was “agreed with the EU” last May.

Former Brexit negotiator David Frost said on Monday it was “always” clear that this claim was false.

Brussels is instead offering Britain an “‘emergency break’-style mechanism,” the FT reports, allowing both sides to suspend the allocation of youth visas if numbers became ‘too high.’

This has done absolutely nothing to allay concerns about Brexit—which was largely a result of Britons wanting greater control of the border—being betrayed.

Think tanker Fred de Fossard stressed that such a ‘break’ “is not a cap, nor is it an exit clause,” describing it instead as “meaningless spin to cover the likelihood that the government will sign up to an uncapped scheme.”

Frost himself added that “an emergency brake would be worthless, in practice never usable.”

Reform (and former Tory) MP Suella Braverman suggested that none of these concerns particularly matter, since Starmer “just wants to undo Brexit, betray the 17.4 million [who voted ‘Leave’] and rejoin the EU as quickly as possible.”

Officials are set to meet for the next round of ‘reset’ talks in late June or early July.