STEPHEN GLOVER: Britain is being eased back into the maw of the EU

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

60% : Services now account for more of our exports to the EU than goods.
59% : 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.
59% : The defence and security pact also envisages close cooperation between the UK and the EU.
55% : 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.
54% : The EU has other demands.
53% : Last December he assembled a formidable team of 100 civil servants, who were charged with negotiating a 'reset' with the EU.
53% : 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.
52% : 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.
52% : 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.
52% : 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?
52% : 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.
52% : 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.
51% : European Union negotiators can see that Starmer resembles a lovelorn suitor.
49% : Brussels would also like EU students to pay the same, much lower, university fees as our own.
49% : 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.
48% : Nigel Farage famously declared that June 23, 2016 - the day of the EU referendum - would go down in history as 'independence day'.
48% : Defenders of Brexit are already calling it the 'surrender summit'.
48% : The EU as a whole grew by an unimpressive 0.3 per cent.
47% : He knows that many Leave voters are disappointed with Brexit but isn't going to risk their ire by disclosing his real intention.
46% : 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.
45% : 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.
41% : 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.
38% : 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.
30% : 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.
26% : 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.
14% : Israel is a civilised democracy disfigured by a nasty government 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.

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