Judging from the reaction, you might think that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had just lost a war. One former cabinet minister labeled Starmer’s team a “surrender squad,” while a former prime minister called on Britons to “fight, fight and fight again for the freedoms the people voted for.”
In truth, Starmer had not surrendered anything. He had merely proposed a few tweaks to the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with Europe. His so-called reset is, if anything, too modest. It risks missing an opportunity to repair the UK’s economic wounds and strengthen its ties with the enormous trading bloc next door.
Brexit’s economic costs are now well documented. By official estimates, leaving the EU imposed a 15 percent reduction in trade as a share of the economy, leading to a 4 percent loss of GDP over the long term. Trade remains largely tariff and quota-free, but layers of bureaucracy — from rules of origin to value-added tax requirements — have hurt businesses on both sides of the English Channel.
Starmer’s proposals, such as boosting food and agriculture trade, securing mutual recognition of professional qualifications and easing mobility for performing artists, aim to chip away at these barriers. A deal with the EU — which wants visa-free travel to the UK for young people and access to UK universities at local tuition rates — is not hard to envision.
Yet even those small gains are far from certain. Starmer’s stance on youth mobility — oddly equating it with the “free movement” of people, which he opposes — could stifle any such progress. His refusal to rejoin the EU’s Erasmus+ exchange program is another missed opportunity. In any event, such measures would raise the UK’s GDP by 0.3 percent to 0.7 percent over 10 years — hardly making a dent in the lost output imposed by Brexit.
Both sides ought to think bigger. Starmer should ignore the hysterical voices in UK politics and listen to voters. Regrets over Brexit have grown more pronounced, as the economic wounds have become undeniable. He should do a better job of pitching repaired ties as, effectively, a much-needed stimulus measure.
For their part, the EU’s negotiators — still smoldering over Brexit — have been slow to acknowledge that closer cooperation could serve their own interests: boosting competitiveness, reigniting growth and rebuilding defense.
A recent survey found that many Europeans think a closer security relationship is worth making concessions in other areas. That could be a starting point for bolder dealmaking.
The key is to start small, as Starmer has, and focus on the mutually beneficial. Investment in electricity interconnectors would improve energy efficiency and reduce price volatility, for instance; the two sides should not wait until the expiration of an existing energy framework in 2026 to renew and improve that cooperation.
Similarly, aligning the UK with the EU’s carbon border adjustment would avoid incurring new trade barriers when it kicks in two years from now.
Ultimately, the UK should aim to rejoin the EU’s single market, restoring the economic benefits that were needlessly squandered after Brexit. In the meantime, the faster both sides embrace pragmatic steps to remove barriers, the sooner voters could see tangible benefits. A win-win, as they say.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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