Anybody thinking that Labour might act as a brake on the hard Brexiters inside the Tory party should think again. Jeremy Corbyn may be lording it over his party after his triumphant reelection as party leader. But he is an astonishingly weak leader of the opposition, who won’t give Theresa May any trouble. That will then leave her even more exposed to those within her party who want us to give up our membership of the EU’s single market, as well as of the EU itself.
What’s more, both the Corbynistas and the Labour moderates are pushing for things incompatible with soft Brexit. That will pull the government in the direction of hard Brexit.
Look first at Corbyn and his right-hand man, John McDonnell. The shadow chancellor says Labour wants “access” to the single market. That’s very different from being a member of the market. Every country in the world has access – at some level or other. But only countries which are members of the single market have the deep access that allows for intense trade, especially in services, where rules rather than tariffs are the main barriers to business.
Corbyn, who was never enthusiastic about Britain’s EU membership, also wants a free hand to subsidise British industry. That is incompatible with membership of the single market. How could the Germans or French possibly allow us to throw state aid at our firms and then undercut their own companies, potentially putting German and French workers out of jobs?
One might have hoped that Labour moderates, who were overwhelmingly pro-Remain in the referendum, would constitute a bastion in favour of staying in the single market. But they have been so stung by the fact that many of their working class constituents voted Leave that they are now abandoning their commitment to free movement of people.
Over the past week, four of the most prominent moderate MPs – Stephen Kinnock, Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds, and Chuka Ummuna – have said to varying degrees that we have to end free movement. Given that this is incompatible with single market membership, these moderates have, in effect, made common cause with the Brexiters on one central post-referendum issue.
There’s also scant chance that Labour will push for a referendum on the Brexit terms. Given that the Leave camp promised a fantasy “have your cake and eat it” Brexit – and certainly didn’t secure a mandate for hard Brexit – the people should have a chance to say whether they really want to leave once we know what Brexit means. But Owen Smith, who advocated such an approach, failed to win the leadership. Other prominent Labour figures, including Lisa Nandy, are now backing away from this position.
The party conference, meeting in Liverpool, did back a motion that leaves open the possibility of such a vote. But it does so in such a hedged way – calling for the final settlement to be “subject to approval, through Parliament and potentially through a general election or a referendum” – that there is no reason to suppose Corbyn will put any effort behind it.
All of which means that the chance of hard Brexit – already high – has gone up a notch or two.
If there will be a “hard brexit” and the economy or – at least – the social status of the labour voters (also of those who voted brexit, but more so of those who voted remain) will get worse (de-regulation, low tax system: things totally disadvantageous to the British general public) those flipping labour MPs will pay a high price at elections. In thruth they could and should have by now, after the referendum have public debates on about the issues that pushed people to vote for brexit: mainly the immigration issue which for me personally can be faced in 2 ways. 1): as Corbyn and McDonnell say, reassuring the public that a) migrant worker’s won’t be undercutting British wages and b) investing in infrastructure such as schools, social housing and NHS, 2): making people understand that every time in history the blending of cultures (and UK-EU culture already share a lot of basic things. But this can be true also with non-EU cultures) has always brought progress to a country as a way to gain new ideas, new prospects, new ways of going forward (but rigorous demands are paramount as immigrants need to respect and must be willing to respect and integrate in the indigenous culture/fabric of society). Conversely simply voting for brexit won’t impede the risk of “losing your own identity” as all of us are now exposed to internet and all types of instant communication and interaction devices (unless the brexit will want to ban for example internet). Therefore either the people who are fearful will be prepared to face such things prepared, reassured and comforted by proper rational conversations, proper investments, etc, or they will really get more and more left behind as the world will go forward regardless and will go forward even in the remotest of the village in some sort of the smallest “shire” of UK. History is full of such examples and warnings.
A glaring example of my earlier post can be drawn for history is the period of the Crusades.
At that time the Christian warriors were like the ISIS fanatics of today while the Islam culture was way ahead of the European/Christian one. The contact (albeit through decades and decades of extremely bloody conflicts) with such a different culture (which by the way was appreciating Roman and Greek ancient cultures much more and much more diffusely than the Europeans were doing) has brought and “forced” new ways that eventually kick started the Renaissance (in truth in the XII-XIII centuries and not just in the XV-XVI centuries). Universities were starting to open more widely in Europe, question were starting to arise conflicting with dogmas emanating and basically remained stuck since the early stage of Middle Ages (V-VI centuries), scientific approaches were starting to come into existence after lying dormient since the fall of the Roman Empire and so on. Consider for example that as consequences of such interaction with Islamic culture from many century ago, still today we have the number 0 (zero, also from an arabic word), the word “cypher”, “magazine” (not intended as a reading tabloid, but as used in Italy and in other countries as the naming of storage units or shopping malls), “bazaar”, “zenit”, “nadir”, names of stars like for example “adelbaran”, etc. Now this is just an example but from history others can be taken as to show that interaction means progress and improvement, isolationism means regress and being left behind because the willingness of the human spirit to go forward taking ideas and blending with others (even through previous conflicts) cannot be voted off.
So Labour MPs are meant to ignore their constituents with UKIP snipping at their heels are they? In Ed Miliband’s own constituency I believe about 70% of people voted for Brexit, though of course we don’t know whether that was a hard or soft Brexit. The reality is that the Johnson (Alan) campaign was weak and lacking in a positive vision for the EU – and this campaign should definitely have been fought over a longer period. If Corbyn had been a bit more enthusiastic for the ‘remain’ cause, it might have made a bit of difference, but probably not enough to bridge the gap as Corbyn’s strength is in the cities, where the percentages for ‘remain’ were higher anyway. Smith’s arrogance was to demand a second referendum, irrespective of people’s views and I think whatever your view of the lies told by Brexiters, people are coming to the view that people’s views must be respected. The best case scenario is for a referendum on the terms and conditions, particularly given May’s essentially undemocratic ways – or for it to be a strong component of a future election. Either way, the rebate has gone, and if we have to resubmit ourselves for consideration as an applicant state my guess is that the other member states will make the UK crawl, despite it being a democratic decision – which we are not bound by nevertheless.
Hugh, since you posted this the NEC has put out a statement saying that there was a ‘compositing error’ with yesterday’s conference motion, whatever that means, and that a 2nd Brexit referendum is not Party policy. But no one said it was. Clearly it is not Corbyn’s policy, nor Seumas Milne’s (in so far as that is a meaningful distinction), but events are showing that despite his victory Corbyn does not exercise dictatorial control over party policy – not yet anyway. It remains the case that this little-reported item in a composited motion will be fed into a further policy forum process, during which its proposers (the TSSA union) and others will have a chance to have their say. What in any event struck me as seriously encouraging, as well as long overdue, about this intervention was the recognition by the drafters that ***the negotiated terms of any Brexit deal may be so unfavourable that the option of not leaving, when this becomes clear, has to be kept open*** – whether the final decision is taken by referendum, parliamentary vote or Crown prerogative.
The fact that several prominent Labour MPs are now unwilling to publicly endorse unmodified free movement should not, I would suggest, be a cause for too much despair in the Remain camp. Chukka Umunna’s position may have been mischievously spun by the Huffpost, and he is clearly not wanting to give up on single market membership. There is a fair amount of quite rational fear of seat losses to UKIP in a snap election.
I think some people including these MPs may still be hoping that a way can be found to reconcile majority UK public opinion with EU free movement, if it should turn out that more leeway is in fact available within the existing rules than UK politicians have previously found it expedient to notice. This post has some interesting thoughts on this which might merit closer attention:
https://brexit853.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/fom-isnt-the-problem-the-problems-are-uk-governments-failure-to-implement-properly/
There is a danger of being rushed or bounced into despair following the Labour result and the subsequent ritual kickings administered to the loser by the assembled sages of our commentariat. Due credit should in fairness be paid to Owen Smith for his sustained and vigorous challenge to Corbyn’s diastrous record and position over Brexit.
The media for their part have been culpably negligent in investigating the strand of Lexit thinking which has run, overtly and covertly, though elements in the Momentum-Corbynista phenomenon including Corbyn’s own behaviour, and the contribution of this factor to the threatened national catastrophe. Some of the media may have been intimidated from performing their proper investigative duty by the flood of online abuse from the above-mentioned forces whenever these question have been raised – as they have been by you, for example. But Smith’s defeat should not become a reason for capitulation within the Labour party to this kind of thinking. And there is no compelling reason why even most Momentum supporters should feel passionately attached to the pursuit of a hard Brexit, whatever the consequences. BW Colin
Hugo – sorry for mistyping your name in my previous comment. BW Colin