Precisely what is Keir Starmer going to hand over at tomorrow’s ‘Surrender Summit’ with EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen? It might be fishing rights. Or concessions on the youth mobility scheme. Some of the Prime Minister’s critics believe it could go as far as ‘full dynamic alignment’ with the EU on food standards and other regulatory areas.

But one way or another, something is going to give. Or rather, be given. Because Sir Keir has decided that, regardless of any allegations of a Brexit betrayal, he is going to strike a deal.

‘Keir’s thinking on this is very clear,’ a No 10 adviser told me. ‘It’s about delivery over dogma. His view is people have had it with the Brexit wars. They’re done with all that. What they want is a relationship with Europe that benefits them. All they care about now is something that will put some extra money in their pockets.’

Following Labour’s local election drubbing at the hands of Nigel Farage and Reform, some observers thought Starmer might seek to put a bit of diplomatic distance between his government and the Brussels Eurocrats.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is certainly attempting to leverage the summit, pledging last week she would ‘make it my mission to take back every power he hands over to Brussels’.

But Downing Street is unconcerned. Partly this is because No 10’s focus groups show Labour-Leavers (Labour supporters who voted for Brexit) are pragmatic about some sort of deal with the EU. Especially over an area such as student movement.

‘We have to be careful we don’t look as if we’re completely rowing back,’ confided one minister who had studied the responses. ‘But the truth is a lot of those voters have become pretty disillusioned by the broken Brexit promises. Their view is, “They’ve already let us down. What’s the point in getting angry over it?”’

Which is why Starmer’s advisers are dismissive of the Tory leader’s efforts to gain political capital from reopening the Brexit battles. ‘Badenoch is making herself irrelevant. She’s pledging to tear up the deal before it’s even been negotiated, or she’s even seen it. She’s just not a serious figure,’ a Starmer aide told me.

Correctly. Like so many other issues, Tory criticism of Starmer’s EU negotiations retains zero credibility. Whatever side of the Brexit divide people occupy, they will indeed remember the promises that were delivered, then betrayed.

The pledge to ‘take back control’. To cut net migration to tens of thousands. To strike bountiful trade deals with the US and other global powerhouses. To stop the small boats. To sign off the ‘oven-ready’ deal. And to finally ‘get Brexit done’.

It was all a lie. So frankly, Kemi Badenoch and her colleagues would be better advised to keep their counsel. They had the best part of a decade to deliver on Brexit. And they blew it.

Nor is it legitimate for them to accuse Starmer of rowing back on his own Brexit promises. Much of what appeared in his 2024 manifesto has proven not be worth the glossy paper it was written on. But on this he was clear. ‘With Labour, Britain will stay outside of the EU. But to seize the opportunities ahead, we must make Brexit work,’ he wrote. ‘We will reset the relationship and seek to deepen ties with our European friends, neighbours and allies.’

In fact, if anyone has the right to accuse him of selling them out, it’s Labour’s dwindling army of Remainers. Starmer’s cast-iron commitment to ‘defend free movement as we leave the EU’ went the way of each of his other nine pledges. And there is no prospect of any return to the single market or customs union.

But tomorrow the Prime Minister will still be delivering concessions. And he will do so for a simple reason. He doesn’t have any choice.

This morning Britain is a country more isolated than at any time since the 1930s. At the mercy of Putin and his reckless and overt international terrorism. Of Chinese expansionism. Of America’s increasingly poisonous mix of isolationism and populist fanaticism.

So, yes, Starmer is going to have to give ground to the EU. Because that’s the reality of the world he now lives in.

'Starmer is going to have to give ground to the EU. Because that’s the reality of the world he now lives in,' writes Dan Hodges

Anyone who wants to know how precarious our global position now is needs look no further than the spectacle of the recent White House press conference.

Britain’s ambassador Peter Mandelson was forced to stand and genuflect as Donald Trump’s

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gleefully pointed to a chart demonstrating how UK tariffs on US goods had been slashed from 5.1 per cent to 1.8 per cent, while US tariffs on UK goods had been hiked from 3.4 per cent to 10 per cent.

It’s why the Government gave ground to India on business taxation. It’s why ministers continue to turn a blind eye to the construction of a Chinese super-embassy in central London, replete with a sinister ‘intelligence dungeon’.

The days when British foreign policy was conducted with Churchillian bravado – or braggadocio – are over. The belief Britannia rules the waves is rubbished every day as another overloaded dinghy washes up on our shores.

So, yes, people can become outraged at the spectacle of President Macron attempting to link defence procurement with French fishing quotas. But he’s doing it because he can.

People have drawn direct parallels with the dangers we now face, and the dark days of the Munich crisis. Rightly. But what they fail to realise is that we are not the Britain of 1938, but the Czechoslovakia of 1938. When the storm clouds of war were last gathering, we weren’t negotiating trade deals with India, we were governing her. We had an empire to call upon in our defence. And the largest navy on the planet.

Today we really are standing alone. So this week the Prime Minister is going to have to surrender sovereignty. He is going to have to give ground in pursuit of his EU reset.

But that is what it means to be Prime Minister in a world where Putin’s tanks plough through the fields of Ukraine, Xi’s warships menace the islands of the Pacific and Trump outsources ownership of Air Force One to Qatar.

We were promised Brexit would see Britain standing tall in the world again. But the reality is we are a nation that has been forced into an apprehensive, defensive crouch. And that represents the biggest betrayal of all.