With all the gloom in Britain over Keir Starmer’s crumbling poll ratings, a potential coup, a battered state media arm and the country’s leaky borders, it would be all too easy to overlook some rare good news.

The British Government has rejected an EU demand to pay over £5 billion to join a continental defence scheme called SAFE (Security Action For Europe). Intended to rearm the EU and its allies — principally Norway and Ukraine — as part of the new cold war with Russia, SAFE is a loan scheme that will support member states’ industries by subsidising their purchases of weapons from European defence firms. In return for access to the SAFE scheme and the potential to thereby win lucrative military contracts in future, Brussels demanded billions of pounds from Britain, as well as a £132 million “administration fee” for good measure.

This SAFE dialogue is part of a larger package of negotiations stemming from the so-called “reset” deal secured at the Windsor summit in May between Starmer’s government and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Other points of contention include efforts to reconnect the EU and UK energy markets and the much-vaunted youth mobility scheme that would restore the cross-border labour market for those aged 18-30.

Given the strain on the country’s public finances, perhaps Britain’s rebuff of Brussels is not all that surprising. Yet these financial pressures have not stopped Westminster from finding money for various other transnational commitments, whether paying Mauritius to expand its territory to the Chagos Islands or housing tens of thousands of asylum seekers at public expense. Why should giving money to the EU be any different?

The Prime Minister’s critics will take the failure to join SAFE as further evidence of a floundering government. But, in reality, this is not a total rebuff — the UK is merely negotiating for a better deal. Britain’s arms industry is so deeply enmeshed with European firms’ supply chains that the country would likely benefit from purchases made through the SAFE scheme, irrespective of whether it is formally a member.

This haggling is not quite a bold assertion of independence, but it is better than meek acceptance. It shows that, as a result of separation and the restoration of British sovereignty, bilateral negotiations between London and Brussels are now conducted on the basis of self-interest in a way that negotiations between member states are not. More importantly, however, the desperation of the EU’s shakedown and its fury at Labour’s recalcitrance will block efforts to subordinate the UK to the bloc once more.

The veneration of the EU among the liberal Left, including within the Labour government itself, is based on the fantasy that Brussels can rescue Britain from all its ills. It is a fantasy predicated on imagining that the EU is far richer, stronger, smarter, more robust and more civilised than it is. Really, it is weaker than ever. It is a continental market being carved up between the US and China, as vulture capitalists circle over the remnants of Europe’s fragmenting industrial conglomerates. In such conditions, how long can the illusion of the EU’s superiority be sustained?

Nearly 10 years after the Brexit vote, there are still plenty of Britons who will always cheer anything the EU does which damages British independence. But it will become harder to do so as the EU appears more desperate, demanding money from outside the bloc to prop up its crumbling economy. Regardless of whether Britain eventually joins SAFE, the sight of von der Leyen beseeching money from London will strengthen British independence in the long run.

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Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. He is the author of seven books, including, most recently: The National Interest: Politics after Globalization.

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