DANIEL HANNAN: The real reason Burnham and his Remainer ministers want an EU reset? They just want to wipe the grin from Nigel Farage's face

Why tie ourselves more closely to the one continent on the planet that is experiencing no real economic growth? To what problem is the EU reset a solution?We already have the most comprehensive trade deal that the EU has ever struck with a country not in the process of joining.What else do we need so badly that we must pay the monstrous price demanded?We have a good idea of what will be announced later this week, because Brussels has more or less leaked the communique.Britain is accepting the kind of deal that an occupied nation signs under duress. We are giving away our money, sovereignty, competitiveness, fisheries, freedom.We are also giving away our right to deport foreign criminals.As The Mail on Sunday reports today, according to a leaked draft of the agreement, the UK ‘commits not to proceed with such removals and deportations [of criminals to their EU country of origin] in the future’.For what? To what end? Largely, as far as I can see, so that ministers can feel good about expunging the sin of the 2016 referendum.Consider what a normal negotiation between two partners would look like. Each side would come to the table with objectives and potential concessions.The EU, for example, might want to tie Britain in more closely to its rules. It might not like the idea of us signing more competitive trade deals or outperforming it through deregulation. It might want to restore free movement. 'To what problem is the EU reset a solution?' asks Daniel Hannan. Brexit critic PM Andy Burnham is seen meeting with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in Dublin this weekIt might want taxpayers to cover the university fees of its students (this matters disproportionately in Brussels, as the chief beneficiaries are the offspring of Eurocrats – Eurobrats, so to speak).Britain, similarly, would come to the table with its own asks. It would want the removal of the goods checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland – a concession that was agreed only because most MPs were, in effect, voting with Brussels against their own government.It would want sovereignty over its territorial waters. It would want to return illegal migrants to the country from which they had crossed into Britain.Then there are the issues that both sides would gain, and which should be straightforward: recognition of professional qualifications, airport e-gate use, acknowledgment of each other’s food standards, a common energy grid.That, though, is not what has happened. If Britain had any asks of its own, they were plainly ditched at the outset. The EU’s demands have been met without demur, and then presented as something that Britain had wanted all along.The areas of mutual benefit, even when the benefit is mainly on the EU side, have been settled on only after the UK agreed to make further concessions.Let’s start with the abject surrender on food standards. In the original disengagement talks, Britain proposed a straightforward mutual recognition agreement, such as the EU has with New Zealand. It was hardly an unreasonable demand: Britain’s food standards are much closer to the EU’s than New Zealand’s are – unsurprisingly, given that they were identical for half a century.You might think, from the coverage, that we are a big food exporter, and that getting such a deal is critical for our agri-businesses. In fact, food accounts for just 1.3 per cent of our total exports, and the EU’s share of that is diminishing. On the other hand, Britain is a huge importer from the EU. In other words, a deal here was more in the EU’s interests than our own.According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, British exports to the EU in food and drink, live animals, plants and seeds are worth £15billion a year; our imports from the EU in the same categories come to £51billion. Why, then, did the EU not agree to such a deal at the outset?Because, listening to the stream of anti-Brexit MPs who made pilgrimages to Brussels between 2017 and 2019, Eurocrats decided to demand the whole farm. Britain, they said, must agree to any regulations that they or their successors might adopt at any time in the future. If Brussels decided, perhaps under pressure from a rival company, to ban a particular technology or pesticide, Britain would have to do the same.British negotiators, understanding what the trade balance was, declined. So their European counterparts decided to wait and see whether they might deal with a more compliant government. Now, incredibly, they have got one.What goes for food standards goes across the board.In energy, for example, Britain is abandoning its carbon trading scheme (where firms that pollute over an agreed limit buy carbon credits from companies with greener emissions).It’s joining the EU version, instead, even though that will mean a hike in prices over-polluting firms pay of between 15 and 20 per cent. This, of course, will be passed on to customers. No cost-benefit analysis lies behind the move, simply a vague and vibesy desire to be more European.As if this were not enough, Britain is making extra payments into the EU budget for the privilege. Remain fanatics want to scrub away that memory, to advertise their cosmopolitanism, to own the gammons, to wipe the grin off Nigel Farage’s face, writes Daniel HannanTo see how outrageous that is, imagine it happening anywhere else in the world. Suppose a Canadian energy company wanted to invest in Alaska, and was told that it would not be allowed to do so unless the Canadian government made cash payments to Alabama.Elsewhere, Britain is junking its excellent Turing Scheme, which pays for young people to study overseas, and joining the EU’s Erasmus Programme, and subsidising foreign students’ study here. It will cost us £570million next year and billions after that, because we have more good universities and the EU has more students.The same goes for our agreement to accept 750 laws a year (on top of the thousands we shall have to upload from before).This EU ‘reset’ is not a deal; it is a diktat. Why would any self-respecting country agree to something so servile?The answer is that we did not come to the table with an agenda. We came with a sense of embarrassment and self-loathing, and the other side could smell it.EU membership is not assessed as an economic proposition. The fact that ministers still use the 2016 propaganda that Brexit has had a four per cent hit to GDP, as if it had not already been falsified, tells us that.No, this is much more to do with an internal culture war, with scratching an itch that has been tormenting a minority of Remain fanatics since they woke up on 24 June 2016. They want to scrub away that memory, to advertise their cosmopolitanism, to own the gammons, to wipe the grin off Nigel Farage’s face.Perhaps there is also a political calculation. Perhaps the PM thinks that vague but strenuous rejoinery is the way to unite Left-of-Centre voters behind his candidates.Yet full re-entry would cost us £750million a week in contributions as the new campaign group Stay Out has calculated.Sure, a gross not a net figure. Given that there would be no more budget rebate, good luck arguing the toss over that one.But Stay Out needn’t have bothered. This week’s deal gives Brussels control over our money, our laws, our waters and our sovereignty with no British veto that blocked so much of the European Union’s statist dreams when we were members. Why would they want us back?Lord Hannan of Kingsclere is an independent peer and director of the Institute of Economic Affairs