We must learn the lessons of the Scotland referendum and preserve a Labour voice in the EU vote

The referendum campaign is finally underway.

No – you’re not the only one to ask. I also thought it had already begun.

Today was the formal launch of the 10-week campaign and Alistair Darling and Boris Johnson led the charge for the rival teams.

For Labour voters on either side it seems so far, so good.

But the opening of the countdown to June 23 crystallises the threat to Labour, and the opportunity, as the bulk of our MPs get into bed with David Cameron for the second time in two years.

After the fallout from the Better Together campaign in Scotland, however, their embrace of the prime minister will be cooler than last time.

In September 2014 the unionists defeated the Scots nationalists by a relatively comfortable margin. As we all know, Labour was crushed by the SNP in Scotland in the general election soon after, killing off any hopes of a forming a government in Westminster. The nationalists’ slogan with which to attack Labour was as simple as it was false: “red Tories”.

It worked, however, and Labour faces a decade-long struggle to restore its relevance and its fortunes in Scotland.

Now the party must ensure its voice is not silenced in the EU referendum – and one photograph from this week tells us why. It showed a jovial gathering of Cameron alongside Neil Kinnock, Tessa Jowell and former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown all hitting the phones in the name of the Remain campaign.

It is a picture that might prompt anxiety among those who fear Labour losing its radicalism and being portrayed as the defender of the status quo.

Thanks goodness for Alan Johnson. In him we have a brilliant leader for the Labour In for Britain campaign – but he needs other pro-EU heavyweights to do their bit for the Labour side of the campaign. As much as I am a fan of Johnson, like me a former postman, he cannot do it all by himself and we do not know if he will be on the political frontline in 2020.

Darling did his bit today too, intoning a dire warning of the dangers of the possible impact of a Brexit vote sending market confidence – already weakened – plunging to a level similar to that seen in the financial crisis in 2008.

But Darling, a respected former chancellor who is far from the prophet of doom he sometimes appears, is no longer an MP.

We need other comrades to join Johnson and help Labour to carve out its own identity in the EU campaign. Labour needs its big-hitters in the Commons to play their part. Everyone from the shadow Cabinet, to the centrist backbenchers dubbed the “shadow shadow Cabinet”, must set out the relevant arguments to the Labour movement in this vote.

Some of those may be outers – but the majority are clearly in favour staying In.

So that means making the case to Remain on the basis of workers’ rights and international co-operation, as well as on the importance of the single market.

Of course, Jeremy Corbyn has started to do this, making his first big, belated intervention into the debate yesterday. Despite making the “strong socialist case” for the EU, he remains dogged by the suspicion, however, that he is a reluctant convert to the cause.

The Labour movement must show how many of the things it holds dear, from improving workers’ conditions and tackling tax avoidance, to protecting the NHS, could be put at risk by a vote for Brexit.

It seems the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign has already been doing this – laying out the risks, subject-by-subject, each day – but it is a cross-party organisation.

So Labour can imitate some of this approach. If it is to avoid the prospect of an In victory being dominated by yet more images of a grinning Cameron on the doorstep of No 10 – before he swans off into the sunset of retirement – then the party has to spell out why its campaign is different to that put forward by free marketeer Tories like the PM and Ken Clarke.

The trade unions will be a part of this effort, as Unison was this week, joining Unite in imposing a social democratic fingerprint on the In campaign, but I will talk more about their role in another post.

The challenge for Labour is to use this referendum as a stepping stone to victory in 2020. It will not be easy – the really easy part is simply knocking Nigel Farage – but it has to be done. The alternative, of course, is too grim to contemplate: of Labour again losing its voice and losing another general election which becomes a proxy battle over the EU between our pro-Remain party and a eurosceptic prime minister going by the name of Boris Johnson.