Nigel Farage famously declared that June 23, 2016 – the day of the EU referendum – would go down in history as ‘independence day’.

I wonder how the history books are going to remember Monday, May 19, 2025. Will they conclude that this was the day when Sir Keir Starmer began to hand back the independence for which the British people voted nearly nine years ago?

In two days the Prime Minister will host a summit in London that will be attended by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and other EU nabobs. Its purpose, according to Starmer, is to ‘reset’ our relationship with Brussels. Defenders of Brexit are already calling it the ‘surrender summit’.

Are these people being hysterical in saying that Monday’s jamboree will be the first step on a journey that is likely to end with us returning to the heart of the European Union? I don’t believe so.

The reason is Sir Keir Starmer. He is admittedly a political chameleon with few fixed views who has shamelessly reversed what he said about immigration, nationalisation, Donald Trump and much else.

Catholic theologians were once mocked by their Protestant critics for obsessing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Our highly flexible Prime Minister could probably do a pirouette on one.

But on a single issue he has remained steady and unchanging. The man who told his biographer that he felt ‘empty’ and ‘devastated’ after the Leave vote has never stopped dreaming that the clock might be turned back.

As shadow Brexit Secretary he campaigned for a second referendum. When he stood successfully for the Labour leadership in 2020, he advocated ‘full voting rights for EU nationals’ and undertook to ‘defend free movement’ even though the UK had left the bloc.

Sir Keir Starmer last month welcomed President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen outside 10 Downing Street ahead of their bilateral meeting

The question we must ask is why Starmer is so desperate for Britain to get closer to the European Union. We have cordial relations with all of its states. At a time of international instability, most EU countries are, in common with the UK, enthusiastic members of Nato, with Finland and Sweden having both joined the defence organisation recently.

In trade there is some friction, particularly on the EU side, where officious bureaucrats are capable of holding up British food shipments.

On the other hand, UK exports of services to the European Union in 2024 were 19 per cent above their 2019 level in real terms. Services now account for more of our exports to the EU than goods.

There are other reasons why Starmer is wrong-headed to gaze so longingly at Europe. This is our wonderful continent, of course, and the fount of western civilisation – I accept all that. But economically its three largest countries – Germany, France and Italy – are faring even less well than is Britain with Rachel Reeves’s shaky hand on the tiller.

As we learnt on Thursday, in the first quarter of this year the UK easily outperformed those countries with creditable growth of 0.7 per cent. The EU as a whole grew by an unimpressive 0.3 per cent.

Moreover, in many EU nations, including the ones I’ve just mentioned, the hard Right or far Right are either established or on the rise. Is this really a club that we should be yearning to be part of once again?

Yet Sir Keir does yearn. Last December he assembled a formidable team of 100 civil servants, who were charged with negotiating a ‘reset’ with the EU. Meanwhile Rachel Reeves and other senior ministers have been popping over to Brussels for friendly chats.

Again and again the PM and his colleagues have repeated the mantra that the UK won’t become part of the Single Market or Customs Union – God forbid! – while the prospect of our ever rejoining the EU is breezily dismissed.

But the main item on Starmer’s wish list would involve Britain signing up to Brussels’s rules on food and veterinary products, and accepting the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice as it relates to these matters.

This so-called ‘dynamic alignment’ would enable both sides to trade more freely without border checks.

In principle that might be a good thing, not least because it would remove customs checks between Britain and Northern Ireland, which has been left in a kind of economic limbo as a consequence of Brexit.

But there are sound reasons for being suspicious of dynamic alignment. Do we really want to be subject to the rules of a club over which we have no control, and to be at the mercy of Brussels’s court?

Greg Hands, a former Tory trade minister who was far from being a Leave zealot, tweeted on Thursday that accepting EU regulations struck him as a ‘bad idea’ at a time when the Union ought to be deregulating.

Starmer is wrong-headed to gaze so longingly at Europe

Others argue that signing up to the EU rulebook will enrage Donald Trump (who said earlier this week that the bloc is ‘nastier’ in trade than China) and prevent a proper US-UK trade agreement which, despite all the recent hoopla, we still haven’t got. According to some authorities, it would also make trade deals with other countries more problematic.

So why is Sir Keir so eager for dynamic alignment when, to put it mildly, there are at least as many drawbacks as potential benefits? Because he pines to be closer to Brussels – if not quite yet to have a seat at future EU summits, at least to have a chair in the anteroom, as well as the occasional slap-up dinner.

European Union negotiators can see that Starmer resembles a lovelorn suitor. If leaks are to be believed, they are driving a hard bargain that could leave the EU in a more advantageous position than Britain after Monday’s summit.

For example, the Government is understandably anxious that British defence companies should be allowed to bid for EU weapon contracts under a new 150 billion euro military rearmament fund. You’d think that Brussels would want UK firms to be part of this vital programme since they are among the best in Europe.

But no. President Emmanuel Macron has declared that Britain should be excluded from a defence and security pact unless it opens its waters to French and other EU fishing boats. According to reports, Macron is now pushing for the UK to be excluded from 85 per cent of the rearmament fund.

The defence and security pact also envisages close cooperation between the UK and the EU. There’s nothing wrong with that in these increasingly dangerous times – except that we already have Nato.

Fish is also a bargaining chip for the European Union in negotiations over dynamic alignment. The UK will reportedly be required to allow generous access to French and other EU vessels when the present fishing agreement expires in 2026.

Wasn’t the protection of our fishing industry, which had been cruelly betrayed by Tory prime minister Ted Heath in negotiations to join what was then the Common Market, supposedly one of the cornerstones of Brexit?

The EU has other demands. It wants 18 to 30 year olds to be allowed to work in Britain for a limited period (young Britons would get reciprocal rights in Europe). Brussels would also like EU students to pay the same, much lower, university fees as our own.

In normal circumstances many of us might be pleased to see young French, Italian and Spanish people thronging our cafes and streets, though I don’t see why they should enjoy reduced tuition fees. But in view of public alarm that immigration is out of control, and given the Government’s frantic attempts to curb it, to throw open our borders to tens of thousands more people would be the height of foolishness.

Even former Labour Cabinet minister Ed Balls said on Thursday that it would be ‘a big mistake’ to cave in to EU demands on youth mobility.

We can’t of course be sure exactly what deal will be agreed on Monday. It’s possible that the EU has overplayed its hand in talks before the summit, and that even the besotted Keir Starmer won’t be able to agree to all its requests.

Yet it seems likely that Brussels – which will know how low our hapless Prime Minister is in the water – will get more out of the deal than the United Kingdom. Perhaps the only sensible request from Starmer is for the UK to rejoin the EU pet passport scheme, which would benefit British tourists. Will he even achieve that?

Nor should we forget that in other negotiations the PM has shown himself a distressingly soft touch. The Government has agreed to pay Mauritius a minimum of £9billion for a 99-year lease on the military base of Diego Garcia, despite a previous administration having already bought it for £3million in 1965.

The recent trade bill signed with India included a provision for Indians to work in Britain for three years without paying National Insurance – a concession which the last Tory government sensibly resisted. It’s unfair on British workers, besides being liable to foster more immigration.

As for last week’s trade deal with America, that was less favourable to Britain than the arrangements we had before Donald Trump unleashed his blizzard of tariffs. Arguably Starmer was simply caving in to force majeure in order to protect our car industry. But his enthusiastic description of the agreement as ‘historic’ was way over the top.

The lesson is that if you are engaged in an important negotiation, best not to call for Keir. This is all the more true if the matter under discussion is his beloved European Union.

But such considerations won’t trouble the PM. For him the point of the exercise is to inveigle us back into the EU without it ever being admitted that this is his ultimate goal. He knows that many Leave voters are disappointed with Brexit but isn’t going to risk their ire by disclosing his real intention.

Monday’s summit is wholly unnecessary. It will obtain few, if any, advantages for the United Kingdom, and impose new burdens. It will be a decisive first step towards our reintegration in the sclerotic, bureaucratic, failing, often petty EU.

Once it is accepted that the European Court can have jurisdiction over some of our activities, it will become harder to argue that its powers shouldn’t extend to others. Sir Keir Starmer knows that.

It is a huge thing to accuse one’s country’s leader of fundamental dishonesty, but I am afraid it is true. He and other Labour comrades were unable to obtain the second referendum on which they had set their hearts. This is the other, devious way.

Slowly – sometimes so slowly that only the wary will realise what is going on – we are being eased back into the maw of the European Union. Our Remainer Prime Minister is a furtive, determined, and deluded Rejoiner.