David Lammy has disclosed that Labour would attempt to bind Britain to an EU security treaty, raising fears that he intends to return Britain to Brussels’ control via a “EU Army.”
Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary was speaking at a fringe meeting of the Tony Blair Institute during the Labour Party conference.
Sir Tony has made no secret of his intention to reverse Brexit, and Mr Lammy was a key member of the Second Referendum movement to overturn the 2016 outcome.
Mr Lammy informed the audience that Labour would not re-enter the EU, single market, or customs union, but then went on to outline a variety of factors that would bind Britain to the bloc.
Mr Lammy chastised the Conservatives for refusing to sign up to a security accord, which many analysts fear could pave the way for an EU army.
His ideas for military integration would build on previously exceptional collaboration, such as NATO and Britain joining one of the streams of the EU’s Permanent Structured collaboration (PESCO), which allows troops to travel freely across the continent.
It is no secret that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, and French President Emmanuel Macron, whom Lammy and Sir Keir Starmer met last month, are both staunch supporters of a European Union army.
It comes amid suspicion that the Labour conference is providing the UK with a long term pathway to return to the EU.
Mr Lammy insisted that “structured conversations” could be a route for the two to come back together.
He said: “We have a very bitter divorce [from the EU]. It was a divorce that went on for years and years and years, you could argue that it only came to an end, effectively when the winds
“No one in this room, in all seriousness, would suggest that you can get married again without even going on a date.”
He suggested that new regular conversations would be “a date”.