THIS week, Keir Starmer confirmed that the Labour Party would not seek to rejoin the EU if Labour were ever in power. He also confirmed they would not seek membership of the customs union or single market and would not look to change the damaging freedom of movement restrictions.

It’s been a long six years since Scotland voted 62 per cent to remain in the EU – indeed, polls have shown that support for rejoining the EU is now higher than that. East Lothian voted 65 per cent to remain.

Last week, Boris Johnson secured a 74-vote majority for a bill to rip up the Northern Ireland Protocol element of his Brexit deal. More than 70 Tory MPs either abstained or were excused from voting.

Theresa May led criticism of the protocol bill, condemning it as illegal and warning it would damage Britain’s standing in the world.

The EU has warned Britain against unilaterally ripping up the protocol; they would respond by restarting legal proceedings against the UK and threatening to use “all measures at its disposal”, including a potential trade war, if London acted to unravel the protocol.

The Centre for European Reform (CER) modelled the economic performance of a UK that remained in the EU, using data from countries like the US, Germany, New Zealand, Norway and Australia whose performance was similar to the UK before Brexit. It then compared this with the real performance of the UK economy.

The CER concludes that by the end of last year, the UK economy was 5.2 per cent or £31 billion smaller than it would have been had it stayed in the EU.

John Springford, deputy director at CER, commented “If the economy is five per cent smaller than it would otherwise have been then we are all five per cent poorer. It also means that taxes have to rise to fund the same quality of public services that we had before.”

The fishing industry “which is largely based in Scotland, is expected to decline by 30 per cent” and some workers will face “painful adjustments”.

Brexit has proved disastrous for the East Lothian and Scottish economy. The total UK trade in goods and services deficit widened by £14.9 billion to £25.2 billion in Quarter 1 2022, reaching the largest deficit since records began in 1997.

We need to rejoin the European Union as soon as possible and help our economy recover.