Lisa Nandy: Brexit is “final warning” for Labour

Lisa Nandy has warned that voters sent Labour a “final warning” when they chose to leave the European Union in last month’s referendum.

Nandy, who resigned from the Shadow Cabinet in the days following the Brexit vote and has endorsed Owen Smith in the leadership contest, said that the party has ignored too many genuine concerns of traditional supporters over low pay, unemployment and immigration.

“Labour voters [were] voting out of the EU so they can take back control of their labour market, and our response was to call them stupid or to call them racist,” the Wigan MP said in a speech to the think tank IPPR this afternoon.

She said that the Leave vote “was about jobs and wages, but it wasn’t only about this. When low paid insecure work, unemployment and a sense of sheer hopelessness meets immigration it becomes toxic… throw free movement of labour into the mix and it creates dynamite.”

The party’s attitude to immigration, and in particular freedom of movement, had led to a position where it had “slogans on mugs, not real solutions” – a reference to last year’s infamous ‘Controls on immigration’ mug.

“How did Labour end up in this place where we were defending the interests of capital over the interests of labour? Labour voters voting out of the EU so they can take back control of their labour market, and our response was to call them stupid or to call them racist,” she said.

“A tolerant, modern and fair immigration policy isn’t easy, but it is possible.”

She added that “when unrestricted free movement of Labour and capital allows is happening at the expense of some of our communities, we have a moral obligation to respond.”

Despite the fallout from 2014’s independence referendum in Scotland, the party chose to “learn nothing” from Scottish Labour’s plight in the way it approached its core base. “For Labour, Brexit is our final warning,” she said.

The former Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary argued that people knew what they were doing in choosing to leave the EU, and said that Labour must not patronise them by suggesting otherwise. “People weighed up their choice carefully,” she said. “Their decision wasn’t born out of ignorance. They knew there would be consequences in leaving. They understood there were risks. But they were willing to take them.”

It is now the task of Labour to help shape what Brexit should look like – and appeared to support the option of a second referendum after negotiations have taken place, saying: “the British people must have the power to endorse the terms of our exit.”

“52 per cent of the country aren’t racist or xenophobic little Englanders. They voted against supra nationalism, but not against internationalism.

“The story of the referendum is the story of an entire nation engaged in a debate about the country they want to live in and that must not end now. It is a nonsense to argue – as some leading Labour voices have done – that we should trigger Article 50 and set ourselves on a swift path to an uncertain destination without any plan, or any meaningful discussion about what the future looks like.”

A long-term advocate of devolution, Nandy also made the case that simply transferring power from Brussels to Westminster would not give people what they wanted, and criticised the way powers had been handed to areas such as Greater Manchester:

“Nobody took the risk of voting for Brexit simply to see yet more power concentrated in the hands of Whitehall. Devolution is a buzzword in Britain right now. But it must be meaningful. Not just – as we have seen in greater Manchester – a transfer of power from one group of men in Whitehall to another in the town hall without challenge and scrutiny built into the system.”