Back in By the Back Door

"The truth is simple. This government does not intend to persuade the nation to rejoin Europe. It intends to build a Britain so entangled, aligned and subservient that rejoining becomes the only logical endpoint."

Jim Chimirie

December 5, 2025

There is something revealing about the way Keir Starmer talks about Europe. He doesn't argue or persuade. He hints, dodges, and speaks in code. In his interview with the Observer, he refuses five times to rule out re-joining the EU, then insists he is simply exploring how Britain can "be closer."

It is politics stripped of candour because candour would expose what is really happening: a Prime Minister with 14–18 per cent support quietly preparing the ground to overturn the largest democratic verdict in modern British history – without asking the country first.

Starmer didn't win power on a pro-EU mandate. He won it on managerial vagueness: stability, competence, Labour without Corbyn.

He promised not to reopen Brexit. He mocked those who said he would. Now, seventeen months into office, and faced with collapsing polls, collapsing authority, and collapsing confidence, he is back to the thing that animated his career before he put on the mask: drag Britain back under Brussels, bit by bit, treaty by treaty, until re-joining becomes a bureaucratic inevitability rather than a democratic question.

There is nothing new in governments breaking promises. What is new is the brazenness of doing it while simultaneously disabling the mechanisms that allow the public to punish them for it.

Elections cancelled. Councils merged. Lords packed. Legislation pushed through that never appeared in a manifesto. This isn't persuasion. It is definitely not leadership. It is rule by procedural trapdoor.

Starmer knows he would lose a referendum. He knows he would lose a general election held tomorrow. So he plans to govern around both – to smuggle Britain back towards Brussels in a series of "technical" alignments, "temporary" arrangements, and "closer relationships" that require no consent and can never be undone.

His ministers are worse. David Lammy refused seven times to rule out re-joining the customs union, calls growth "self-evident," then is publicly slapped down for saying aloud what the government is already planning.

This isn't debate, it's a faction arguing with itself because it's too cowardly to argue with the country. Labour cannot defend its intentions openly because the electorate would destroy them. So it buries the policy, softens the language, and hopes a weary nation will sleepwalk back into the very structure it voted to leave.

Starmer is not reckless. He is something colder. He is rebuilding the constitutional settlement of Britain without mandate, without majority, and without shame. He is not frightened by the polls because he no longer sees the public as the arbiter of power. The public had its say in 2016; he intends to correct it. The public had its say in 2019; he intends to erase it.

And when asked directly whether he would undo what millions fought for, campaigned for, and voted for, he dithers, evades, and waits for the interviewer to move on. The truth is simple. This government does not intend to persuade the nation to re-join Europe.

It intends to build a Britain so entangled, aligned and subservient that re-joining becomes the only logical endpoint.

Democracy becomes not a barricade, but an afterthought. A technical challenge, not a moral one. And because there is no intention of asking the public, there will be no danger of being forced to leave again. Re-joining without a referendum means rejoining forever.

Starmer doesn't need to say the words "re-join." He just needs to make leaving impossible.

And he is doing it with the quiet confidence of a man who believes the people who voted for Brexit are old, tired, finished, and no longer capable of stopping him.

© Jim Chimirie, 2025

Image via Author

Jim is right in his contention that Starmer will - and is - slipping the UK back into the EU on the quiet. I would however point out that he leads a government that, whilst due electoral process was followed, is a minority government in that a majority of the population did not vote for it - he no mandate.

He is not concerned about the result of the next general election because he has no intention of holding one. A crisis or a war (with anybody, it doesn't matter who) will enable use of existing legislation to 'postpone' it.

Kevan James

Peter Hitchens has said that Starmer is to the Left of Corbyn. He despises Westminster, politics and Democracy. He intends to irreversibly destroy the UK

TJC (via X)

Corbyn is an old-school socialist with romantic delusions about workers' movements and foreign revolutionaries. Starmer is something colder and more modern: a technocrat with a progressive world-view who has no emotional attachment to the nation he governs and no respect for the idea of democratic permission.

Corbyn wanted to transform society by persuasion. Starmer wants to transform it by procedure. One tried to build a movement. The other is dismantling the constitutional guardrails so nobody can stop him. That's not the sentimental Left of the 1970s; it's the managerial Left of Brussels – borderless, post-national, and contemptuous of public vote.

Peter Hitchens is right about the core instinct. Starmer doesn't just dislike Westminster – he sees it as a nuisance, an outdated theatre that keeps demanding consent and argument. He wants a system where power is centralised, elections are rare, opposition is neutered, and policy is locked in by treaty and bureaucracy so no future electorate can undo it.

Corbyn would have wrecked the economy. Starmer aims to rewire the state so the public can never challenge his project again.

That isn't "Left of Corbyn." It's more dangerous than Corbyn – because it is ruthless, legalistic, and irreversible.

Jim Chimirie

Starmer is not interested in "destroying" the UK, despite TJC's understandable view above. Starmer is a closet communist, hiding behind the veneer of Labour. His intention is to turn the UK into a one-party Communist state. That is why he gave away the Chagos Islands, that is why he pursues acts that restrict and neuter ordinary people, that is why he is as he is - he is not a fool, neither is he without intelligence. Jim is right in that the Starmer gang represent the biggest danger to the country, and to our freedom in history.

Kevan James

Excellent article, I haven’t read the Sunday Guardian (aka Observer) puff piece, nor will I. But on the photo publicising it that I saw, as well as that pathetic punching stance, he looks worn out, tired, and fit for a retirement home. He still try to make us an EU vassal though.

Peter Coglan

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