REEVES LETS CAT OUT OF BAG ON EU REJOIN PATH

Like i pointed out last week that Labour’s manifesto commitments will force the UK into “dynamic alignment” with the EU on rules concerning animal health, food safety, and plants. That would put the UK, for the first time since Brexit, back in the position of a lowly rule-taker. Now Rachel Reeves has gone further in letting the cat out of the bag by telling the FT that she wants a new “improved” deal if Labour gets in, which includes walking back from the “adversarial” and “regulatory divergent” post-Brexit position. These pre-election trails are designed to give politicians large wiggle-room to pursue their agendas. Regulatory alignment is necessarily a path to rejoining the bloc…

Grant Shapps is meanwhile warning that Labour’s simultaneous plan to organise a security pact with the EU risks giving decision-making initiative to Brussels and binding the UK to an explicitly protectionist EU defence strategy. Pushing away NATO…

Reeves says Labour is willing to “upset some people” by pushing for “greater mutual recognition” and “a new regulatory system” closer to the EU. Leading to more than a few Chequers-shaped alarm bells to go off…

UPDATE:

Sir Iain Duncan Smith tells me:

“You simply cannot trust who Starmer really is. He’s the man who called for a second referendum, then told us a Labour government wouldn’t re-enter the EU, then now we learn he wants to re-enter by the back door. You can’t trust Starmer, from pledges on tax to Europe. He is the original left wing leopard who hasn’t changed his spots.”