Starmer, the Don Quixote of British politics

In the great novel of classical Spanish literature, Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, widely considered the first modern novel in European literature, the eponymous hero Don Quixote (an older spelling of Quijote which has become established in English ever since the book was first translated into English in 1612, in 17th century Spanish x was pronounced like sh in English, in modern Spanish the sound has evolved into ch as in loch or h and is spelled j) is a humble hidalgo – a free man without wealth or land – called Alonso Quixano who loses his mind after reading too many chivalric tales and comes to believe he is a noble knight called Don Quixote who is on a mission to save Spain. The iconic scene from the novel is when Don Quixote famously tilts his lance at windmills on the plains of La Mancha in the delusional belief that they are ferocious giants to be vanquished. The phrase tilting at windmills has come to mean fighting an imaginary battle.

That is exactly what the Keir Starmer has been doing, even before he became prime minister in July last year, fighting imaginary political battles, and that’s why he is the Don Quixote of British politics. Starmer’s most quixotic political battle is his doubling down on Theresa May’s Brexit red lines and his refusal to countenance the UK rejoining the European single market or customs union. Starmer continues to tilt at the windmills of rapprochement with the European Union in the delusional belief that this will boost the electoral prospects of the Labour party.

However, in reality, regret about Brexit has been strong in the UK ever since the ill-fated referendum of 2016 after which right wing Brexit fanatics seized upon the narrowest of victories for leave and used it to foist a radical and extreme form of Brexit upon the UK even though prior to the referendum they had insisted that a vote for leave did not mean leaving the single market, the customs union, or ending freedom of movement. As we all know, they lied, and have since rewritten history to insist that they had always intended these things and that they had always been completely transparent about it.

A new opinion poll from YouGov has laid bare the extent to which Starmer is fighting an imaginary political battle. According to this new European wide poll, 55% of people in the UK support rejoining the EU. with only 34% opposed.

This finding is statistically identical to a previous YouGov poll this year which found that 56% of people in the UK believe that it was a mistake to leave the EU, compared with only 31% who believe it was right to leave.

What these findings strongly suggest is that Starmer would do considerably better politically if he took the UK back into the single market and customs union, restored freedom of movement and took on the right wing press and the Conservatives and Reform who would naturally scream betrayal. They lied to get the hard Brexit which is so unpopular, they were the ones who betrayed the people to begin with, all Starmer would be doing would be to restore Brexit to the status which was originally promised by the Conservative Eurosceptics and Ukip. But Starmer lacks the political courage to take them on. Don’t give us the line that Labour promised voters prior to the general election that it would not seek to rejoin the single market and customs union. Keir Starmer has never shown any reluctance to break his word on anything else when it’s in his interests to do so.

The percentage of those who want to rejoin the EU in Scotland is even higher. 62% of Scots voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, this percentage has only increased. A Panelbase poll in 2023 put the percentage of Scots who want to rejoin the EU at 68%. Another poll in 2022 put the figure at 69%. Every single poll on the issue in Scotland has shown a majority for rejoining the EU with majorities over staying out ranging from 29% to 40%. Given figures like these there can be no doubt that a desire to rejoin the European Union is the settled will of the people of Scotland.

The recent YouGov poll also tells us that Europeans would welcome an independent Scotland into the EU with open arms. While a majority of people in EU countries are also willing to welcome the UK back into the EU, although it’s clear that their patience has run out with English exceptionalism and they are not willing to offer the UK the same opt outs and special treatment it enjoyed before 2016, a significantly higher percentage of people in all EU countries polled would support an independent Scotland joining the EU. In the case of France, one of the most influential and important EU countries, there is a 10% difference. Scotland is not considered by the French to be as unreliable, duplicitous, and demanding of special treatment as La Perfide Albion.

The Spanish, Germans, Danes, Italians and Spanish would all also support an independent Scotland joining the EU, all with substantial majorities ranging from 63% to 75. This gives hard evidence to counter those anti-independence campaigners who baselessly assert that European countries would deny a Scottish application for membership.

%. While we are on the subject of tilting at windmills, the country which most comes up in this context is Spain. Anti-independence campaigners, the vast majority of whom have little to no understanding of Spain and its politics, love to look on Spain as their ‘keep Scotland in jail free’ card, asserting that Spain would veto Scottish membership of the EU in order to discourage Catalan independence supporters. This is based upon a profound and willful misunderstanding of Spanish politics. At this juncture I should point out that I lived in Spain for a decade and a half, am fluent in Spanish, speak reasonable Catalan, and remain a keen observer of the Spanish political scene.

The Spanish constitution explicitly prohibits any part of the territory of the Spanish state from becoming independent without a change to the Spanish constitution. Spain would thus veto the EU membership of Catalonia on the grounds that it had achieved independence “unlawfully”. Spain cited a similar objection to Kosovo’s application for EU membership as Serbia insists that Kosovo remains legally a part of Serbia. However these objections do not apply to Scotland. The British Government continues to claim that Scotland has a right to self-determination even if it places obstacles in the way of Scotland exercising that right – there’s that Perfide Albion for you.

The key point here is that Scotland would achieve independence legally, unencumbered by any British constitutional prohibition, and therefore Spain would have no legal grounds to block Scottish membership of the EU. Indeed if Spain were to do so, and this is the key point, it would damage its own case against Catalonia because it would prove that Madrid’s objection to Catalan independence had nothing to do with constitutionality after all. The YouGov poll tells us that a substantial majority of people in Spain, 65%, would support Scottish membership of the EU, with a mere 13% opposed.

This very much accords with my own experience with Spanish people. Even Spanish people who vehemently oppose Catalan, Basque, or Galician independence would support Scotland becoming independent. Partly this is due to widespread distrust of England over issues like Gibraltar and the EU, but partly it’s also due to a recognition that unlike Catalonia, the Basque Country, or Galicia, Scotland was an independent state for most of its existence as a nation. That’s a status that Scotland will recover, and it will enjoy the fulsome support of most of Europe when it does so.

The novel Don Quijote ends with the title character returning to sanity and renouncing his fantasies. It’s far too much to hope that Keir Starmer will ever do the same. He’ll forever be remembered as the Prime Minister about whom we had very low expectations but who still managed to disappoint.

_____________________________________________________________________

A reminder that I am currently running the annual fundraiser for the blog. You can donate to my GoFundMe fundraiser, the link is here. Please consider making a donation.

I’ve added a new method to make donating easier, you can now donate via Ko-fi

Or click the following link https://ko-fi.com/weegingerdug

https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-crowdfunder-2025

Alternatively you can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. I hope that you will consider making a regular monthly donation, there is an option on PayPal which permits that. It’s an immense help to me when it comes to budgeting. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address [email protected]. Or click the Pay Pal donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. You can also donate by PayPal by using my PayPal.me link PayPal.Me/weegingerdug
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/weegingerdug

If you would like an alternative method of donation, please email me at [email protected] for details of how to donate by direct bank transfer or cheque.

Thank you all very much, whether you support this blog by donating, or by reading and sharing my work. It means more than you know.