KEVIN MAGUIRE: 'Brextremists can scream all they like – we're safer close to EU'

BRITISH holidaymakers to Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Italy and other European Union countries using e-passport gates to dodge Brexit lengthy passport queues is a deal worth having.

So too are cheaper food and drink from scrapping border red tape, better electricity links, British firms bidding for £150billion of defence contracts, student exchanges and, possibly down the line, visas for touring rock bands and other artists plus recognition of professional qualifications.

The valuable prize could tot up to a valuable £25bn, calculate financial analysts Frontier Economics, while the authoritative National Institute for Economic and Social Research warns drop the ball and falling UK exports would cost us nearly £30bn.

Keir Starmer is entitled to feel pleased with himself at the landmark UK-EU summit in London to improve relations between neighbours. The EU and this agreement are more important to our future prosperity than the over-hyped India trade pact or US compromise to ease the pain of loony tune Donald Trump’s mutually damaging tariffs.

Most Britons accept Brexit was a disaster and wish we were still in the EU which is why politically Starmer has little to fear and much to gain from Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage screaming surrender and sell-out.

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The Conservative and Reform UK leaders are old Generals fighting the last war and confirm they are stuck in the past in a country that wants to move on and build bridges with our closest economic, political and military partners.

Trump’s unhinged behaviour alone demonstrates why Britain will be more prosperous and safer close to the EU and, I hope, back one day in that family of nations.

Brextremist politicians who denounce the deal are entitled to go to the back of the longest queue they can find at passport control instead of going through quicker with the rest of us.

Good riddance to billionaires

TO just be on this year’s so-called UK Rich List topped by the £35bn Hinduja family, a tycoon or clan owns 18,000 times the wealth of an average Brit.

That’s three times a still massive 6,000 times gulf when guesstimates were first published in 1989, according to a Greenwich University study, because inequality soared.

We should rename it the Grotesque List when millions rely on foodbank charity to eat, parents are unable to afford new clothes for kids, homelessness is a national scandal and those with a roof over their head live in fear of bailiffs smashing the door.

Excuse me if I decline to weep for nine fewer billionaires and a drop of 21 since 2022’s peak. I’ll cheer when all 156 are off because Britain will be a better, fairer and happier land if we shared obscene wealth for the common good.

Time to recognise Palestine

STARMER and Foreign Secretary David Lammy will be in the firing line if the UK fails to recognise a Palestinian state next month at an international conference convened by France and Saudi Arabia.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and charges of genocide plus settler and state violence in an occupied West Bank mean further shilly-shallying is complicity when the most Right-wing reactionary regime in Israel’s history pursues its own from the river to the sea drive.

Palestine is recognised as a sovereign nation by 147 countries, about three-quarters of UN members, including most recently Spain, Norway and Ireland. So why not Britain?

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