In 2025, the Starmer Government will place the UK under EU rule in the key policy areas of foreign affairs and defence
A December 2024 headline states: 'EU leaders warn Trump it's bad timing for a Ukraine deal'. Subsequent headlines have said the same - the EU is actually seeking to dissuade the US from ending the Ukraine war.
Why would they do this? Do they believe Ukraine is about to win?
Or could it be because they often talk about the war as a reason for more centralised EU control of defence policy in Brussels?
The EU's message is not likely to persuade the US, but the most interesting aspect of the message is what it says about the EU's direction of travel. They are happy to push for more war and extension of the killing if it fulfils a political purpose.
The 'EU defence architecture' has arguably been the top priority of Brussels in the last decade and in 2025 the EU is heading towards what it calls 'fully-fledged' defence union, the final crucial phase of a decade-long development.
Ukraine is increasingly cited as the reason for this change even though in truth the development has been planned all along.
The EU's aim is to use various EU political structures to integrate member states' militaries into a common platform whose decision-making is 'strategically autonomous from NATO'.
(Surely, more NATO would be a more useful and more immediate measure - but when has actual good sense guided the EU integration project?)
An observer sitting in their home in the EU wouldn't have gleaned much about the EU's developing political powers over defence simply by reading news headlines.
The subject of the EU's developing powers in this area has moved on in such small and gradual steps that it has barely featured in any news headlines. Few politicians either in the UK or EU ever speak up about it because they don't notice it either. When they seek advice from researchers, they receive dismissive reassurances from EU-funded thinktanks or the pro-EU Government blob.
The result is that most mainstream journalists are angrily dismissive of any talk of the EU as an actor in international defence contexts, even though EU texts and agreements say it in black and white. To really understand it, those journalists would have had to keep up with not only agreements but the policies and budgets quietly created at the same time.
The EU defence architecture in 2024 is enormous and powerful - in a political way at least. Next year, the EU institutions will consolidate their powers via what they call the EU 'Strategic Compass', the intentionally well-disguised name for the completion of the EU Defence Union.
The name Strategic Compass is classic Brussels language. Thoroughly vague, it sounds like it could be the title of a vision statement or a series of conferences. Indeed, many observers have believed its an irrelevance.
In reality, Strategic Compass is a 62-page document requiring member states to grow multiple other EU joint policies and budgets, combine them to make them a single functioning mechanism for defence outputs of the EU member states, incentivise EU member states' participation, disincentive non-participation - and to do all of this on a strict timescale, focused heavily on the end of 2025.
But why is any of this our problem in the UK?
Answer: PM Keir Starmer is using the same justifications to drive the UK back under EU rule on foreign policy and defence policy (rather than drive the UK's defence spending within NATO as it should be doing).
The current public statement from ministers is that they are willing to consider rejoining EU political frameworks on defence and foreign policy, as well as programmes designed to create joint EU defence capabilities.
However, privately, ministers will know that these frameworks require full UK adherence to EU policy and the UK would in effect rejoin the EU in matters of foreign policy and defence.
The same outrageous sellout was proposed by Theresa May in 2018, but removed from the UK-EU talks by David Frost after Boris Johnson took office.
For a time in early 2019, it looked as though the UK would lose its military sovereignty and diplomatic sovereignty to the EU while technically achieving some measure of independence. Most of the Conservative Party unthinkingly voted for this, including Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and most of the current Tory front bench.
The full gravity of the problem was exposed in The Sun newspaper in March 2018. Sun reporters had heard a Cabinet Office civil servant promising EU diplomats that the UK would not leave EU foreign and defence policy - meaning that the UK would not become a fully sovereign nation after exit.
When Frost dropped this promise from the exit talks, the EU were livid. Barnier made angry speeches. The EU's stooges in the UK Labour party were fuming too, saying that they would have accepted the 'deal'.
Fast forward 4 years and it's all happening again. Ever a willing stooge for the EU, Starmer has set a course for his government to revive the same defence and foreign policy deal put forward by Theresa May.
This requires the UK to align with a lot of EU policies, diktats and strategies and even pay into EU coffers. In effect, it means rejoining a section of the EU treaties known as Title V Chapter 2, which includes EU Common Security and Defence Policy and the wider EU Common Foreign and Security Policy.
