Starmer Says Surrender Summit Is Just the Start – Guido Fawkes

WATCH: Starmer Says Surrender Summit Is Just the Start

Starmer has clearly been listening to Stella Creasy’s band of EU rejoin campaigners in the Labour Party. Replying to Ed Davey in the Commons the PM said the surrender deal was just the first step:

“It is intended that this is beginning of a process to complete on what we’ve already agreed but also to have annual summits so that we can take our cooperation and coordination further step by step and we will do that whilst keeping to the red lines that we had in our manifesto.”

One example from yesterday has raised eyebrows in the UK defence community. The existing defence statement doesn’t commit to the Barnier 2018 template on defence cooperation and there are no binding commitments to European Defence Fund, European Defence Agency, and Permanent Structured Cooperation systems. Von der Leyen hinted yesterday there is worse to come on defence:

“Then there comes the second step that is necessary to negotiate a second agreement and here we detail out it’s again a process of detailing out budget contribution reciprocal market access and rules on security of supply and this will give that’s important in the end the UK industrial participation this is the goal that we have together.”

There is more to negotiate – on youth mobility Starmer refused to set a timescale and said Labour was aiming to “move at pace” to reopen the border to EU under-35s. Annual summits will demand annual progress towards the EU…