Never let a good crisis go to waste, as they say. And Rachel Reeves has made it quite clear that she is going to milk the Iran war for all it is worth. It was Iran wot pushed inflation up to 3.3 per cent, she has hinted (ignoring that the Consumer Prices Index was already above 3 per cent, and has been well above the Bank of England’s target for most of her time in office). It will be Iran (or rather Donald Trump) which destroys British jobs (ignoring that her hike in employers’ National Insurance had already cost tens of thousands of jobs), and it won’t be anything to do with her when the economic growth figures turn sour. ‘Just look at that thundering growth of 0.5 per cent I created in February,’ she will say (ignoring that growth in the year to February was just 0.8 per cent).

But it isn’t just the economy on which Iran is proving useful to Reeves and Starmer. It has provided them with fresh impetus to drive for closer EU integration. Speaking yesterday, the Chancellor went closer than she ever has before to suggesting that Britain’s destiny lies with the EU.

Would we be more food-secure, more inflation-resistant, if we were still in the EU? Hardly

‘There are big power blocs in the world,’ she said. ‘Our closest bloc is Europe and that is where we belong.’ Alignment, she went on to say, should be the default position, and that is what Britain should do unless there are reasons not to.

Reeves cited AI as one area in which Britain may choose to remain outside the EU’s orbit; all well and good, but that is not how the EU will surely see it. Sticking your nose up at EU rules on AI is just a bit too much like having your cake and eating it. You can be sure that Brussels will find some way of punishing Britain if we attempt to pick from an a la carte menu on European integration.

You can see the attraction for frustrated remainers to make the most of the Iran crisis. But would we really be more sheltered from this crisis if we were still in the EU, or at least more closely aligned to it?

What is killing Britain is also killing the EU: a foolish energy policy which puts net zero above all concerns on energy security. Would we be more food-secure, more inflation-resistant, if we were still in the EU? Hardly. Nothing about Brexit has prevented us importing food from the EU, and has made it easier to import food from the rest of the world because we no longer need to apply punitive EU tariffs if we don’t want to. Likewise, it is our choice to take large areas of good agricultural land out of production for rewilding and solar farms. Closer alignment with the EU would make no difference.

This government’s policy on Brexit has become quite clear over the past couple of years. It will pursue a pro-EU agenda by stealth, pretending that it is not reversing our exit from the European Union. But it will try to do this in all but name until we get to the position that we are so intertwined with the EU that full membership becomes a mere tidying-up exercise. The Iran war has just brought the plan forward.