Will the UK Have to Pay the EU Under Starmer’s New Brexit Deal?
No. It’s a load of rubbish. Total drivel.
The Starmer Brexit deal EU payment story doing the rounds in the Brexit press is pure disinformation. In reality, the new UK-EU agreement saves British businesses and taxpayers billions by undoing the costly chaos Boris Johnson baked into his “clean break” hard Brexit.
The Cost of Boris Johnson’s Hard Brexit
Under Johnson’s deal, the UK volunteered to impose full phytosanitary checks on all goods entering and leaving the UK — including food and drink moving between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.
This meant every single product needed inspection and certification by an expert. It was a hammer blow to the UK food and drink industry — one of our biggest export sectors — and it pushed up food prices across the board.
Remember the stories about truck drivers having their sandwiches confiscated at the border? That wasn’t the EU being petty. That was Johnson’s “clean break” Brexit in action.
Billions Wasted on Pointless Checks
- £2 billion a year – the cost to UK businesses for pointless checks, passed on to consumers in higher prices.
- £4.6 billion – wasted on building customs infrastructure that now sits idle.
- £1 billion a year – the planned operating cost of those empty customs posts.
All told, billions were thrown away to maintain a political fantasy.
How Starmer’s Deal Saves Billions
Starmer’s Brexit deal creates a joint UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Area, scrapping the need for duplicate checks.
- UK exporters save billions in compliance costs.
- Food prices drop as supply chains become smoother.
- Taxpayers pay less, because the costs of running the new joint SPS system are shared with the EU.
This shared fund is hundreds of millions cheaper each year than Johnson’s mess. It’s a win-win.
The EU Payment Myth
This shared SPS fund is what the Brexit press — and their mates in Reform — are calling a “UK payment to the EU.”
They know it’s not true. But Brexit politics runs on outrage, not facts.
Understanding how international trade works and what phytosanitary checks actually are is complicated. Fake outrage about “sending money to Brussels” is simple. And sadly, outrage gets more clicks than the truth.
And, depressingly, a lot of people don’t care about truth anymore.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-secures-new-agreement-with-eu-to-benefit-british-people
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_25_1267