COMMENT: Starmer remains a Remainer and will capitulate on Brexit

It's an old naval tactic to "make smoke" - to deliberately generate smoke from a ship's funnel - in order to try and hide your position or intentions from others. This is a very good analogy for what Labour are now doing, trying to hide a major surrender to the EU, on everything from fish to becoming a passive "rule taker" once again - whilst deliberately talking tough on Defence.

Arch Europhile Sir Keir Starmer - 'Mr Second Referendum' himself - has been working closely with our European NATO allies, especially France and Germany, to strengthen European solidarity in defence of the brave Ukranians, in their battle with Putin's barbaric Russian regime. (A regime which even mercilessly targets highly accurate cruise missiles on children's hospitals).

This increased co-operation is now leading to a UK/EU Defence pact, which is being formalised at a major summit, taking place today. We are still awaiting the precise details of this deal.

However, years of personal experience in dealing with the EU have taught me always to read the small print.

However, in a typically cynical ploy, Starmer is also using this focus on defence as camouflage - that smokescreen I mentioned earlier - to try and divert the British public's attention from major capitulations elsewhere, in the hope that nobody will notice.

At this "Surrender Summit" - for that's what it actually is - Labour seem set to make major concessions on continued access to British territorial waters by foreign fishing fleets - especially those of France and Spain.

In return for allowing the British Defence industry access to a supposed new EU €150 billion rearmament fund - something I agree with in principle but I'll actually believe it when I see it - President Macron is apparently demanding major concessions on fish.

This, even though we left the EU and it's bonkers Common Fisheries Policy (by which millions of fish were thrown back into the sea, often dead, every year, in order to comply with EU fishing quotas). This is a total betrayal of our fishing fleet and therefore something Labour will want to avoid discussing, at all costs.

Similarly, they are also due to surrender over "dynamic alignment" - in certain areas such as veterinary science and food standards, which ultimately affects all of us as consumers but especially our farmers.

Dynamic Alignment has its clue in the name. In layman's English it means that if the EU's detailed rules change in those areas we mirror their changes automatically, regardless of Parliament's opinion.

In other words we become, once again, a passive "rule taker" - automatically actioning the EU's rule book - even though we voted peacefully and democratically to Leave it.

This is the truly atrocious part of what Labour are up to; surrendering our rights to self-government, under a smokescreen of trying to talk tough on defence, among both the media and the public.

In short, if we are to return to being an EU rule-taker, what was the point of having a referendum in the first place? How could Labour betray us like this ? Because Starmer remains a Remainer, that's why - and he always, always will.