Starmer is now trying to get Brussels to offer more concessions. But, as we all know, getting your interlocutor to agree to something that benefits you is not easy. There is always a price to pay when you are the demandeur.
Starmer is also reported to be on the verge of signing an agreement to allow UK firms to bid for military equipment contracts coming out of the €150 billion fund the EU have made available to build up Europe’s defence capabilities. There are reports, denied by Brussels, that the quid-pro-quo is in some new arrangements that will benefit European fishermen.
Now the talk is of a food and drink agreement to ease cross-border paperwork and delays, both at the Channel and between GB and NI. Producers and shippers like The Cold Chain Federation have been pressing the government for some time to help their industries. Again, it will come at a price. The facilities built at Ashford in Kent to check EU food quality will become partly redundant for a start. And don't expect anything quick. The green light for full negotiations isn't expected until this autumn when the European Commission gets a negotiating mandate from Member States.
This will certainly mean dynamic alignment in food standards eventually but it won’t avoid the need for checks on other goods or the customs border formalities. At the moment, there is barely any difference between the UK and the EU in tariff rate schedules. Being outside the EU customs union does allow us to strike separate trade deals but the ones signed so far have had almost zero impact anyway.
It is astonishing to me that Trump's ever more chaotic second term which is seeing a full-blown descent into autocracy and fascism quite apart from the massive global trade issues unleashed by his 'reciprocal tariffs', isn't driving us even faster into renewing our membership of what looks like the last bastion of democracy on earth.
We are edging bit by bit towards the goal but Starmer's timidity will cost him dearly in the end. Next week's local election results will be his first big test. Reform will make big gains for sure and there is talk (by Tory MP Robert Jenrick) of uniting the right. If that happens, Labour's majority could disappear in 2028-9.
People want to see big changes and if Starmer doesn't offer it, Farage and the Tories will.
Ukraine
Trump says America will pull out of the Ukraine peace process unless he can get the two sides to accept his totally one-sided proposal. This would be catastrophic for Europe but is now the most likely outcome. It is Trump’s off-ramp, his chance to wash his hands of the problem that he created by his disastrous handling of the negotiations.
Secretary of state Rubio chickened out of coming to London for a summit because president Zelensky wouldn't agree to accept Russian sovereignty over illegally occupied Crimea:
This was Trump's own position in 2018, as Zelensky pointed out but to no avail. Ukraine has to give up Crimea, most of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson and accept that they cannot ever join NATO. It didn't take much in the way of diplomatic skills to arrive at that point, anybody could have done it. But it would simply be rewarding Putin for his years of terror and mass murder. Ukraine and Europe will never agree to it, hence the need for an escape route.
He boasted last year that only he could end the war and it would take just one day! This was part of his election winning campaign. As anybody with any sense knew, that was never going to be easy. But he could have done it - and pretty quickly if he had applied the slightest pressure on the only party to the conflict actually capable of ending it. And that was Russia.
Unfortunately, Trump has never even accepted that Russia started the war. He has never tried to get a unified position with Europe and the Ukrainians. In fact he has done the opposite, consistently fracturing the NATO coalition, holding warm meetings with Putin, constantly criticising the alliance for not spending enough and attacking the victim for somehow encouraging the aggressor.
If Trump had come in on 20 January with a clear message that America was prepared to increase sanctions, crank up arms deliveries and continue to supply weapons for as long as it takes, that would have given Putin pause for some serious reflection and could have forced him to the table. Trump could have sought a common position with the EU, NATO partners and Zelensky BEFORE any meeting with Russia and then faced up to Putin with a united front.
Ukraine has expended huge amounts of blood and treasure to weaken Russia, the West’s sworn enemy, militarily, economically, socially and diplomatically. There was a massive opportunity to get rid of a despot and eliminate the threat to European security and ease the constant cyber attacks and election interference in the West that Russia is still engaged in. But Trump has blown it all by his sheer ineptitude.
Trump made it all personal and now his own ego and chronic narcissism won't allow him to face up to his own failure. Zelensky will carry the can.
Of course Ukraine would stop fighting tomorrow if it could. But Trump put all the pressure on them and none on Russia, the clear aggressor. The BBC report this morning that Russian missile and drone attacks on Kyiv yesterday killed at least nine people, with another 63 injured, while Donald Trump criticised President Zelensky's approach to peace talks. It is totally insane.
You cannot be neutral between good and evil, but Trump is not even neutral, he has favoured the wrong side from the beginning.
This shameful episode will destroy trust in American security guarantees around the world and do incalculable damage to any sense of trust in America as a reliable partner. Instead of stopping the instigator, as he could have done, Trump has offered Putin a helping hand and attacked the victim.
It is 1938 all over again.
