Sir Keir Starmer, a man whose personal magnetism is often compared to a wet spreadsheet, has embarked on what his spin doctors are calling a ‘Brexit reset.’ To the uninitiated, this sounds like a bold new era of diplomacy. To anyone with a functioning prefrontal cortex, it looks like a quivering supplicant crawling back to the scene of a self-inflicted crime, clutching a wilted bouquet of 'red lines' and hoping the neighbors have forgotten the screaming match on the front lawn circa 2016. The Prime Minister’s recent jaunts to Berlin and Paris are less a masterclass in international relations and more a pathetic attempt at bureaucratic foreplay. He wants closer ties, he says. He wants to tear down trade barriers. He wants a security pact. But—and here is the part where the comedy turns into a tragedy of the absurd—he absolutely, pinky-promise, refuses to rejoin the Single Market or the Customs Union. It is the political equivalent of insisting you want to rejoin the marathon but refusing to put on running shoes or leave the snack bar.

The sheer audacity of this position is a testament to the cognitive dissonance currently suffocating the United Kingdom. On one side, we have the remains of the Right, a collection of ideologically bankrupted grifters who spent a decade convincing the public that sovereignty was a magical substance you could use to pay for heating bills. On the other, we have Starmer’s Labor: a party so terrified of its own shadow—and more specifically, the shadow of the 'Red Wall' voter—that it has adopted the 'vague gesture' as its primary governing philosophy. Starmer’s 'reset' is a masterpiece of performative centrism. He is attempting to fix a shattered vase with a glue stick and a prayer, all while loudly proclaiming that he has no intention of actually touching the pieces. The EU, meanwhile, watches this spectacle with the weary patience of a kindergarten teacher dealing with a child who has just realized that eating glue was a bad idea but refuses to admit the glue was ever in his mouth. They know the UK is desperate. They know the British economy is currently performing like a car with three square wheels. And they know that Starmer, for all his talk of 'growth' and 'stability,' is operating within a cage of his own making.

Let’s dissect the 'security pact'—the shiny object Starmer is dangling to show he’s a serious boy. It’s a classic move: focus on the one thing everyone can agree on (not getting invaded) to distract from the fact that you have nothing to offer on the things that actually matter (the price of cheese). The Prime Minister’s rhetoric suggests that by simply being 'not the Tories,' the gates of Brussels will swing wide, and the golden age of frictionless trade will return. This ignores the inconvenient reality that the EU is a rules-based club, not a charity for former members who’ve realized that 'splendid isolation' is just a fancy term for 'lonely and broke.' The European leadership—Scholz, Macron, and the bureaucratic hydra in Brussels—have their own burning houses to tend to. They are not interested in Starmer’s 'nuance.' They are interested in the Four Freedoms. If you aren't talking about freedom of movement, you aren't talking to the EU; you’re just talking to the wall and pretending it’s a conversation.

Ultimately, this 'reset' is a symptom of a deeper, more terminal malaise. Britain is a country that has forgotten how to be a country, led by a man who has forgotten how to be a leader, attempting to rejoin a continent that has largely moved on. Starmer’s insistence that he can achieve 'the benefits' of the EU without the 'costs' is the same delusional cake-ism that fueled the original Brexit catastrophe, just dressed up in a better-fitting suit and delivered in a more monotonous tone. It is a cynical play for time, a way to appear busy while the structural rot of the UK continues unabated. We are witnessing the slow-motion collapse of a post-imperial fever dream, and Keir Starmer is the man tasked with narrating the descent in the most boring way possible. He isn't resetting anything; he’s just hitting the 'snooze' button on a reality that is eventually going to scream the house down. It’s not a new chapter; it’s a desperate footnote in a book that everyone else has already finished reading.