Chuka Umunna criticises ‘opportunist’ May for ignoring millions of Remainers

Chuka Umunna today hit out at the Tories’ approach to Brexit and immigration, slamming Theresa May for her political “opportunism”.

The Labour MP for Streatham laid out his vision for a potential post-Brexit compromise on free movement that could keep Britain in the single market, suggesting an alternative “fair movement” approach, at a Progressive Capitalism event.

This would involve allowing “travel as we have at present for short stays and holidays only but… [restricting] free movement to the movement of labour and offers of employment”. He suggested such a compromise could be possible due to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union stating explicitly “its intention to balance supply and demand within the labour market: ‘to avoid serious threats to the standard of living and level of employment in the various regions and industries.’”

Umunna, who chairs Brexit watchdog group Vote Leave Watch, was also critical of Prime Minster Theresa May, describing her conference speech and its dismissal of the “16 million of our citizens who voted to remain” scathingly, criticising her characterisation of remain voters as of a “liberal elite”. He highlighted his own constituency’s strong support for remain in refutation, whilst also having high rates of child poverty and deprivation, which could hardly be described as being part of any elite.

He also highlighted the importance of single market membership, as critical to maintaining “employment protections” stating that every major party made maintaining membership part of their manifesto at the last general election. Hard Brexit could mean “trading with the EU under WTO rules which would lead to tariffs in the order of 12% on exports of British meat, 10% on exports of British cars” which would harm British firms wishing to trade with the European Union.

He focussed on Britain’s unique position as the “fifth largest economy in the world”, suggesting that this fact would make compromise more likely, and that “the challenge for us is to put enough of a big offer on the table – that goes beyond immigration and the economy – from which they would benefit, to secure the bespoke deal we seek. To deny it is possible to achieve any compromise is in essence to basically to make the case for hard Brexit which makes no sense at all if you are pro-European and progressive”

He was also critical of the current state of British politics, saying that it is “caught between two stools”, “a populism which refuses to acknowledge the challenges free movement can pose to local economies and community cohesion, and too willingly puts anyone who does so into the same bracket as bigots and racists; and a populism that wants to pull up the drawbridge altogether, places the blame for all the country’s problems at the feet of immigrants and wishes to turn post Brexit Britain into some off shore tax haven with poor citizen protections.”