DID you like your Secret Santa gift?
No, I don’t mean the rude mug or the inflatable reindeer antler hat that your co-workers wrapped up for you as a funny present for the office Christmas party.
I mean the Secret Santa gift that Sir Keir Starmer gave you.
Maybe you haven’t unwrapped yours yet, so I hope you won’t mind me ruining the surprise that you have been given the gift of subsidising EU students to come to study here in Britain for a year at taxpayers’ expense.
But, wait, there’s even more in this festively wrapped package.
You also get to fund middle-class students from Britain to enjoy a year’s studying abroad too!
If that doesn’t fill you with Christmas cheer, I don’t know what else will.
Worse value
Despite insisting that Treasury coffers are empty and taxes must go up to fund vital public services, the Prime Minister has apparently found a spare £570million to fund Britain’s return to the EU’s Erasmus programme in 2027.
This was a scheme which, until Brexit, saw 17,000 British students helped to study for a year at a university in the EU, while some 32,000 young people came to Britain to study here.
Quite apart from the fact that twice as many foreign students benefited as Brits, this wasn’t great value for money.
But it’s going to be even worse value for money when we rejoin.
Up to 100,000 students are predicted to take advantage of the scheme on both sides, while the total bill for Erasmus membership will expode, with an expected total cost for eight years’ membership of £8.75billion by 2034.
Yes, EIGHT BILLION QUID.
Which is quite a lot of money that is NOT going to be spent on stuff we might value more, like NHS nurses, policing our streets or mending pot holes.
So why on earth is Starmer so keen to gift away our hard-earned money on EU youngsters and the British middle classes wanting their little Tarquin or Jacinda to enjoy a magical year studying in Paris or Florence at taxpayers’ expense?
Because rejoining Erasmus is about much more than a mere student exchange scheme.
It’s about overturning the biggest democratic vote in our nation’s history.
Yes, this little gift to the nation’s taxpayers is just the latest in a long line of announcements that are aimed at — inch by inch, one step at a time — slowly but surely taking us back into the clutches of the European Union.
This is about Brexit betrayal by the back door.
Never forget that Starmer spent three long years as Shadow Brexit Secretary openly campaigning to undermine the 2016 vote for Brexit and demanding a second referendum.
And despite all Starmer’s soothing words ahead of the 2024 election about how he wasn’t going to take Britain back into the EU, the single market or the customs union, he is still a Remoaner to his core.
And so are most of his Cabinet.
Just a few weeks ago, Deputy PM David Lammy refused seven times to rule out the UK rejoining the customs union.
Their cunning plan is actually very simple: To gradually take us back into the EU’s orbit — with closer trade links, rejoining every EU transnational body and sticking to EU rules — until we are back in the EU in all but name.
This, after all, is the Prime Minister who gave away our fishing waters for an extra 12 years without asking anything in return.
He’s pledged to continue following EU rules on food export standards, to stick by every ludicrous Net Zero policy, and is happy to allow Brussels to keep making life as hard as possible for Northern Ireland.
After five years of this Labour government (even if Starmer is replaced as leader), we will be left as an island of EU rule-takers.
So, Remoaner folk will then argue, we may as well rejoin the EU and become rule makers once again.
Never be fooled
But they will be sorely disappointed.
This Prime Minister may not believe in our future as a proud and independent sovereign nation state, but the British people do.
He may think our future lies inside the undemocratic, unaccountable, failing EU, but Brexit voters know what they voted for and they will never be fooled into agreeing to go back in.
I hope the gifts you unwrap on Christmas day are better than the Prime Minister’s miserable Secret Santa offering — even if the price tag is a lot cheaper.
When it comes to Christmas (or Brexit) cheer, I think we’d all rather be given a cheeky mug than be taken for one.
BEWARE BRANDING BOYS AS BAD
THE Government has finally published its long-awaited strategy for tackling violence against women and girls.
Jess Phillips, the Home Office safeguarding minister, claims the plan will halve such violence in the next decade. Sadly, we all know it won’t.
The plan will include lessons for every schoolboy teaching them how to respect women and address growing misogyny among young men fuelled by online influencers such as Andrew Tate.
It’s a bit rich for many of our politicians – including Ms Phillips – to claim to care about the safety of women and girls after they turned a blind eye to the grooming gang scandal for years, applauded trans-identifying men invading women’s toilets and changing rooms, not to mention welcoming tens of thousands of young men arriving in dinghies from countries where physical and sexual violence against women is often the norm.
But wagging our fingers at schoolboys and telling them that they are the problem isn’t going to make misogyny go away.
It will only make it worse.
Boys are being told every day that men are toxic and useless in equal measure, and that the future is female.
So is it any wonder that so many of them are turning to toxic online creatures like Tate – with his flashy sports cars, MMA background and millionaire lifestyle – as role models?
Yes, he spews disgusting bile and hatred about women.
But he also talks about reclaiming male pride, masculinity, strength and self-determination, the stuff that so many young men are desperate to feel.
Instead of telling boys not to hit or rape women, we need to show them how to be good, strong men who don’t abuse or control women – and they need to see those men in their daily lives.
Far too many boys grow up in homes without fathers, are taught by mostly female teachers at school and told every day by the media that girls are better than them.
If parents – and society – did our job of raising boys properly, Andrew Tate would still be just another anonymous loser living in his mum’s spare bedroom.
