"So this is Christmas, and what have you done?"

Brexiteers are up in arms again, protesting that Keir Starmer has just taken another step towards rejoining the EU via stealth. The latest news this morning is the Government has announced it is to go ahead with rejoining the EU’s Erasmus scheme starting in 2027, having first agreed to do so in principle at Sir Keir’s famous ‘EU Re-set Summit’ in May.

But there’s nothing to see here for Brexiteers, is there? How is joining Erasmus another ‘Back in by the back door’? It’s just a student exchange programme, isn’t it? We give them one of ours for a year and they give us one of theirs back. What’s wrong with that?

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Well, quite a lot of things, actually. For a start, it is no longer the Erasmus scheme, it is called Erasmus+. And that little ‘+’ sign does a lot of heavy lifting, starting with “+ freedom of movement for the under 30s.”

The last time we looked, freedom of movement was one of Sir Keir’s three red lines, along with the Customs Union and Single Market, which he pledged not to breach in order to get elected last year. Now that the UK is no longer a member, “+free movement for the under 30s” matters a great deal.

In the EU, the original Erasmus scheme was subjected to the Commission’s usual mission creep, where it took on the ‘+’ and included almost anyone under 30 - lecturers, teachers, social work leaders, and anyone who could lead a group of people under 30. In fact, in the UK’s last year of membership pre-Covid (2019), more university lecturers used Erasmus+ than their students did. No wonder it was popular with them, whenever a survey was conducted....

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Talking of numbers, readers will have heard wailing and gnashing of teeth from the UK’s higher education student body when Brexit meant the end to Erasmus+. That body then went awfully quiet when told less than 10,000 of them used it, representing less than 0.5% of all higher education students. It seems they liked the idea of being able to go to the EU, but very, very few actually did.

Then we come to the government’s replacement for Erasmus+, called the Turing Scheme, after the famous mathematician and Bletchley Park codebreaker, Alan Turing. Unlike Erasmus+, which was limited in the choice of countries on offer, Turing offered far more – and they were worldwide.

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So successful was this scheme that in its first year significantly more students used it than used Erasmus+. Its fate is now uncertain, but grants this year stopped at £78m so it seems the scheme is being starved in order to pay for Erasmus+, which is far more expensive. The government’s statement admits to the vast sum of £570 million for the first year. This is around four times the average annual cost of the Turing Scheme.

This brings us to why the EU are so keen to sign us up. The costs of Erasmus+ have exploded. In this EU budget session (2021-2027) they rose 70%. The problem for the EU is that they have opened up membership to all sorts of countries, many of whom are not able to pay their way.

The last time I looked, the EU was having to pay £1.6 billion of the costs of these countries. Finally it seems the EU has the good old UK taxpayer back, to fill in the mighty ‘black hole’ in their accounts…

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So, is this another ‘Rejoiner Rear-Entry’? Of course it is. It represents freedom of movement for around one-third of the mobile adult population. Just ahead of Sir Keir’s ‘EU Re-Set Summit’, Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said their plans are “to enable young people to move without being tied to a purpose” and stated they would not be “quota-bound.”

Translating, this means young people can use the scheme for almost anything and their numbers will not be limited. He was referring to the EU’s wish-list of course, but then we all know how easy it seems to be in EU negotiations to get the PM to roll over and have his tummy tickled.

As for how Sir Keir will get this through Parliament, he could use his walloping majority or if he wants to avoid a debate, as I predict, he will use the ‘Back in by the back door’ technique he has already used several times, and employ what is known as a ‘negative Statutory Instrument’. This goes through Parliament, but not so you’d notice.

And that seems to be just how Sir Keir likes it, in his quest to rejoin the EU via stealth.