A year after the UK left the EU in January 2020, we quit Erasmus, the exchange scheme that enabled British students to study abroad at European universities while paying the same fees as their domestic peers.
Given that more than twice as many EU students came to study in the UK as the number going the other way, the scheme cost the British government more than many of its EU counterparts, around £200million a year.
Yesterday, when the Brexit minister Nick Thomas-Symonds announced that we are to re-enter the scheme in 2027, he made much of the fact that he had negotiated a 30 per cent discount, meaning that it would cost us just… wait for it… £570million for the first year!
This latest development is not only fresh evidence that Labour‘s Rejoiners are determined to take us back into the embrace of Brussels but that they are prepared to do so at any price.
Keir Starmer, an ardent Remainer who devised Labour’s doomed plan for a second Brexit referendum (decisively rejected at the 2019 General Election), is embarking on a surrender deal. And Thomas-Symonds – who is well regarded among Labour MPs – will be in charge of running up the white flag.
When the Cabinet met earlier this month for the first time since Rachel Reeves‘ disastrous November Budget, Starmer welcomed a new face to the proceedings. Ministers were told Thomas-Symonds, who doubles as the Paymaster General, would now be attending on a permanent basis.
The PM praised the ‘important work’ Thomas-Symonds was doing on the EU ‘reset deal’, which has seen Britain making a raft of painful concessions on visas and fishing in return for some petty EU restrictions being lifted on trade.
Thomas-Symonds, a friend of Starmer since he ran his leadership campaign in 2019, is also the architect of the controversial plan to revive ‘free movement’ for the under-30s from across the EU into Britain.
Britain’s reintroduction to the Erasmus scheme could cost £570million for the first year
His arrival in the Cabinet, almost 18 months after Labour’s landslide election victory, confirms the worst-kept secret at Westminster. It will be part of a last desperate throw of the dice in Starmer’s bid to shore up his precarious support among his overwhelmingly Europhile backbenchers.
The evidence is quickly mounting. Two weeks ago, Starmer’s closest political ally, David Lammy, said it was ‘self-evident’ that leaving the European Union ‘badly damaged our economy’, adding that while a customs union with the EU was not ‘currently’ Labour policy, Turkey was benefiting from one.
The key word from the Justice Secretary and Deputy PM here was ‘currently’.
Momentum is clearly increasing. Earlier this month, more than a dozen Labour MPs voted in favour of a Commons motion calling for the UK to rejoin a customs union.
The Liberal Democrat Bill (which was tied on 100 votes each way before the Deputy Speaker, Caroline Nokes, voted to back it) will now require the government to begin negotiations about the topic.
This victory will be music to the ears of the group who plot to return Britain to the bosom of Brussels – not by winning the argument, but by stealth. Those, like Baroness (Minouche) Shafik – a former deputy governor of the Bank of England who is the PM’s new chief economic adviser and who supports closer links to the EU – insists a customs union will make it easier for British companies to trade with the EU.
But it would also mean we could no longer negotiate our own trade deals, and would almost certainly require the termination of the agreements already signed with countries such as Australia and India.
It’s worth pointing out that every single member of the current Cabinet voted to stay in the EU – and backed Labour’s manifesto commitment in 2019 to that second referendum.
Tim Allan, executive director of communications in 10 Downing Street – who worked there for 15 months when Tony Blair was PM
This rogues’ gallery includes the Attorney General Lord Hermer, a human rights lawyer and close friend of Starmer, who once joked that his dream piece of legislation would be ‘The European Union (Please Can We Come Back?) Act’.
But I can reveal the loudest voices baying in Starmer’s ear for a return to the EU are not even elected politicians.
They include Tim Allan, the latest executive director of communications in 10 Downing Street, who worked there for 15 months when Tony Blair was PM.
Allan’s boss and mentor in Downing Street the first time round was Alastair Campbell, and they have remained close, united by a burning desire to drag Britain back into the EU.
They also worked closely in the Blair years with Labour ‘strategist’ Tom Baldwin, who published a hagiography of Starmer last year and regularly conducts soft-soap interviews with senior ministers in the Press. He often speaks to Campbell and Allan, and is one of Starmer’s closest unpaid political advisers.
A member of the PM’s tight-knit inner-circle, Baldwin was with Starmer on election night in the Covent Garden penthouse of multi-millionaire Labour donor and media tycoon Lord Alli.
It was Alli, of course, who gave the Prime Minister more than £32,000 of free clothes and designer spectacles, gifts that sparked the first – but not the last – sleaze row of this embattled government.
Like Baldwin, Alli is a diehard Rejoiner who regards Brexit as a catastrophe.
Allan, Alli and Baldwin are all urging Starmer to launch a do-or-die campaign by following the lead of the Lib Dems and embrace a wholesale return to the EU.
One well-placed government source tells me: ‘Campbell and Baldwin in particular are almost hysterical about going back into the EU. They despise Brexit and the people who voted for it, even though many Leavers were traditional Labour voters.
More than twice as many EU students came to study in the UK as the number going the other way, figures from 2020 show
‘Campbell speaks to Starmer through Baldwin and Allan. He dreams constantly of another referendum. But these people will be leading Starmer by his nose to electoral oblivion if they persuade him to turn his back on the people who voted to Leave.’
Baldwin and his co-conspirators have already chalked up some successes. Allan, for example, is credited with Starmer no longer ignoring Brexit in his speeches but now citing it as being as bad for Britain as his perennial refrain ’14 years of Tory chaos‘.
Starmer has repeatedly denied he has any plans to turn the clock back. But, with Labour languishing in the opinion polls, those three Rejoiners have spotted their chance.
Their strategy is to steamroll Starmer into submitting to the yoke of Brussels once again in order to neuter the electoral effect of the pro-Brussels parties.
Only yesterday, Baldwin wrote a piece in The Guardian in which he warned Starmer that, if he failed to be proactive about renewing links with Brussels, his leadership rivals would exploit his hesitancy.
‘The danger is obvious,’ wrote Baldwin. ‘If Starmer rules out more meaningful steps towards a close relationship with the EU, he allows rivals to occupy the space where the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs, members and voters are to be found.’
Since Allan arrived as communications chief early in September, he and his allies have argued that the collapse in Labour support since the General Election has seen more voters lost to the Lib Dems, Greens, the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales rather than to Nigel Farage’s staunchly Brexiteer Reform UK.
The new battle for Brexit comes at a time of growing tension between Allan and Morgan McSweeney, the No 10 chief of staff, who was – until recently –Starmer’s all-powerful consigliere.
Unlike Allan & Co, McSweeney is an implacable opponent of the plan to cosy up to the EU.
He was blamed by some for last month’s botched briefing against the uber-ambitious Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the man the BBC was told by ‘Downing Street sources’ was plotting to overthrow Starmer.
In October, Streeting blamed Brexit for the UK’s low productivity and growth. Channelling the words of Oscar Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas, Streeting declared: ‘I’m glad Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak.’
Backing a customs union would represent yet another explicit manifesto breach – and would risk damaging relations with the EU-hating Donald Trump, always a matter of high priority in No 10.
Starmer may conclude the only way he can repel the insurgents at his door after the May local elections, which are expected to be disastrous for Labour, is to sell out the 17.4 million people who voted Leave in the EU Referendum.
It could save his skin with the Parliamentary party. But it will be a gift for Reform and the Tories, who would ruthlessly exploit Labour’s greatest betrayal at the next General Election.
