Little by little, Labour is sneaking this country back into the European Union. You'd think Brexiteers would complain but we barely hear a squeak of protest.
The Government has already 'reset' our relationship with Brussels. Last week, it proudly announced that Britain will join the EU's ruinously expensive Erasmus scheme, which will lead to many more European students studying in the UK on favourable financial terms.
Labour yearns to return cap in hand to the EU. It is extremely likely that the process will speed up if, as almost everyone thinks inevitable, the Prime Minister is removed from office next year.
Starmer is of course passionately pro-EU, and in opposition tried to undo the 2016 referendum. But his zeal has been tempered by caution. He has edged step by step into the maw of Brussels, insisting that his 'red lines' will prevent our reintegration.
His likely successors would be more daring. Yesterday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting told the Observer newspaper that Britain had 'taken a massive economic hit by leaving' the EU (an habitual assertion by Remainers, not often challenged by Brexiteers) and that we should rejoin the customs union.
When Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy made the same proposal a few weeks ago, no one took much notice because he is unlikely ever to be very close to the levers of power, and wouldn't know which one to pull if he was.
Streeting is different. This bumptious and ambitious politician could be Prime Minister in six months. But if he were to slip as he reaches for Starmer's crown, the other contenders would prove no less determined to ease us towards the EU.
Keir Starmer is passionately pro-EU, and in opposition tried to undo the 2016 Referendum.
Andy Burnham (ridiculously styled the 'King of the North') said in September that he hoped to see 'this country rejoin the European Union' in his lifetime. Since he is already 55, that could be quite soon.
Ed Miliband (another contender - God save us) is also a paid-up Europhile who would willingly surrender powers to Brussels. Angela Rayner is perhaps less infatuated with the flagging economic bloc that is the EU, but in a remotely sane world she is surely unlikely ever to be Prime Minister.
Whoever succeeds Starmer would hasten our reabsorption into the EU. But that's actually only the beginning of the nightmare. What haunts me is the thought that the next Government could be a Labour-Lib-Dem-Green coalition hellbent on rejoining the European Union.
Don't imagine, if such a coalition were to emerge, that there would be any guarantee of a national referendum on the issue. The electorate would be in the role of gullible tourists being subjected to the three-card trick. One moment we would still be a sovereign nation, the next we wouldn't.
If I'm even half right, you would think that Brexiteers would be mustering their forces. You'd hope they would be tackling the endless falsehoods about how leaving the EU has terminally damaged our economy. There's little evidence of their doing so.
Nigel Farage, who can lay claim to being the architect of Brexit, seems oddly quiet. He may think defending the status quo isn't an election winner when, according to YouGov, 56 per cent of people believe that leaving the European Union was a mistake, and only 32 per cent the right choice.
Besides, Farage himself injudiciously said in 2023 that 'Brexit has failed', though he rightly blamed Tory ministers for not taking advantage of the new powers won by escaping from the grip of Brussels. He doesn't appear eager to don his old armour and climb on to his trusty steed.
We don't hear much from Kemi Badenoch either. A few weeks ago - much to the delight of the fanatically pro-EU Financial Times - she listed Brexit alongside Covid-19 and the financial crisis as being 'shocks' that had damaged the UK. She could have been Alastair Campbell or Michael Heseltine in full flood.
To be fair to Kemi, she reacted sensibly to the Government’s announcement about rejoining Erasmus, even though many Tories probably think the scheme is a good one that might benefit their children.
It won’t - or at least not more than Britain’s existing Turing scheme. It will, however, be a great boon to EU students, twice as many of whom are expected to flock to our shores as go in the opposite direction.
Why not, some will say? Aren’t we all Europeans? Yes, we are. But the cost of Erasmus will quickly rise from £570 million a year to nearly a billion. EU students will be the main beneficiaries since, according to authoritative rankings, the UK has as many universities in the world’s top 100 as all 27 EU nations combined.
The foolishness of signing up again to Erasmus is dwarfed by the prospective idiocy of our rejoining the customs union, as Streeting, Lammy and many Labour (and all Lib Dem) MPs want us to do.
We would be required to accept the rules of the customs union without having any say in their development. Even more seriously, we would have to scrap trade deals with India and Australia plus any in the pipeline. We’d also have to quit the CPTPP, a free trade bloc of mostly fast-expanding Pacific Rim countries.
Joining the customs union would also entail Britain tearing up its interim trade deal with the United States, which gives us much more preferential tariff rates on our exported goods than those enjoyed by the European Union. Why would anyone but a lunatic agree to that?
Brexiteers should also rebut Streeting’s charge (parroted by almost every Rejoiner) that we have suffered massive economic harm by leaving the EU. This is largely based on a prediction by the Office for Budget Responsibility of a 4 per cent reduction in the potential productivity of the UK economy over 15 years.
However, that is only a forecast, and one from an organisation with a remarkable track record for wonky forecasts. And yet its flawed stargazing is cited by Rejoiners as though it is established fact.
Granted, there have been downsides, not least in the export of agricultural produce being impeded by EU red tape.
And yet, to quote the House of Commons library: 'In 2024, UK exports of services to the EU were 19 per cent above their 2019 level in real terms. Exports to non-EU countries were 23 per cent above their 2019 level.'
Since Britain left the EU, its economic growth rate, though sluggish, has been roughly the same as France's and Italy's and significantly higher than that of Germany, Europe's largest economy.
How convenient for the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and Wes Streeting to blame Brexit for Labour's failings!
Nor should we forget many other Brexit bonuses - from the power to control our borders (admittedly abused) and our fishing grounds, to relief from paying tens of billions of pounds into the EU budget.
Brexiteers with unstiffened spines would do well to read 75 Brexit Benefits, an excellent new book by an author using the nom de plume Gully Foyle.
A huge battle lies ahead in which a blizzard of twisted statistics and half-truths and downright lies will be unleashed by a Labour Government pining for EU membership.
Unless those who believe in an independent Britain wake up, we'll soon be back under the heel of Brussels.