Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.20-190214/https://www.ft.com/content/5bc7c761-e6c7-4459-892c-fb72c54212d1
Relations were dented earlier this week when the European Commission revealed it would exclude British arms companies from a new €150bn defence spending fund until London and Brussels agreed a fresh security pact.
Asked about the move, Starmer said he was “really pleased that the EU has brought together such a successful package”, saying Britain wanted to play a full part in boosting Europe’s collective self defence.
He said he was speaking to Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, “pretty well all the time” and was looking for ways to “take this forward together”. Starmer wants to negotiate a security pact with the EU as part of his wider “reset” of post Brexit relations.
EU officials have sought to downplay the UK’s exemption from the initiative and stress their desire to swiftly sign a deal with London that would allow British companies to take part, in a bid to rectify the irritation at Brussels’ Wednesday announcement.
“There is good momentum with the Brits on defence and we want to keep that moving,” said one of the EU officials, adding that bilateral discussions with senior UK counterparts had taken place since the publication of the terms.
If the Russian invasion of Ukraine could start to revert the Brexit process, that would a pretty good outcome. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum
Let’s not forget decades of blaming everything on mainland Europe and EU. Russia isn’t that good when it comes to creating new divides but they are amazing at exploiting existing ones.
In the Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life film there is a restaurant scene with an obese gentleman consuming copious amounts of food which makes him vomit repeatedly. It ends when a waiter brings him a wafer-thin mint which makes him explode. Russian social media campaigns are kind of like that mint.
We need to fix underlying stuff rather than blaming it on a boogeyman. The boogeyman will be powerless then.
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