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The EU's humiliating surrender should have been signed in a railway carriage

Brussels has bowed to a tripling of tariffs on most of its exports to the US, while agreeing to cap its own tariffs on American imports at one per cent, or less.

Gerald Warner's avatar
Gerald Warner
Jul 31, 2025
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Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump in Turnberry, Scotland, (via Alamy/ 3C5R117)

It was a familiar image, a classic hostage situation: two individuals seated side by side, one grey-faced and silent unless spoken to, the other confident, expansive and garrulous. Familiar, too, was the relationship depicted in this vignette: one party a high-ranking European Union official, the other a negotiator from a non-EU country. How often have we in Britain witnessed that set-piece ritual of humiliation, with an EU apparatchik dictating terms, de haut en bas, to the rabbit in the headlights apologetically representing the UK?

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Gerald Warner's avatar
A guest post by
Gerald Warner
Former special adviser to the Scottish Secretary.
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