Jeremy Corbyn is on a journey and he is going in the right direction. But he hasn’t yet arrived at the right destination and it’s still not clear that he will.
The Labour leader told the BBC’s Andrew Marr today that: “We would want a form of customs union.” [Watch from 12’30” onwards.] This is the clearest statement he has so far made on the the customs union, one of the pillars on which our prosperity rests. If we pull out of it, as the Tories are planning to, our manufacturers’ supply chains – which criss-cross Europe – will gum up.
Corbyn didn’t just back a customs union with the EU. He added a vital rider: “We would need to be sure that any agreement with the EU gives us the chance to influence the situation we are in and the trading relationships we want.” If not, we would become a rule-taker – or what Tory Brexiters such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg rightly call a “vassal state”.
We would lose our current status as an influential rule-maker if we merely agreed a customs union with the EU. We would then be bound by whatever future trade deals it did even if those were not in our interests – even if, say, the NHS was exposed to competition from American companies in a pact the EU did with Donald Trump.
Corbyn said that in future EU trade deals he would like to see “conditions of environmental protection, conditions of human rights, conditions of workers’ ability to represent and negotiate themselves.”
This is a nice goal. But will we really be able to keep as much influence over the EU’s trade deals with other countries if we quit the club?
The Labour leader made a similar point about the importance of influence when discussing the future trade relationship he would want to cut with the EU itself. He said he was happy for our rules to be aligned with Europe’s but that it was important that “above all [we were] able to influence those regulations.”
This was also why he didn’t want to copy Norway. As he put it: “Norway accepts all the rules of the single market, [but] doesn’t have any ability to influence them whatsoever.”
Again Corbyn is right. But how realistic is it to hang onto as much influence on the rules of the single market if we quit the EU?
Staying in EU is best policy
The logical conclusion of the Labour leader’s position is that we should keep our membership. That way, we will have full access to the single market, which is essential for our world-beating services industries, and full membership of the customs union, which is vital for our manufacturers – while keeping our place as one of the club’s most influential members.
What’s more, given that Theresa May wants to pull us out of the single market and the customs union as well as the EU, the Labour leader should also be saying that the people must get the final say on Brexit. Unfortunately, when Marr quizzed him on this, he sidestepped the question.
That said, the new positions Corbyn articulated today are a step in the right direction. Maybe he will take further steps at a Brexit summit he has called to discuss Labour policy next month. And maybe, he will eventually conclude that he needs to fight a Tory Brexit tooth and nail, since it will be particularly bad for working people and the young, two groups he claims to care for. But he’s not there yet.