The single market: pressure builds on the Labour leadership to favour the soft option

Pressure is building on Jeremy Corbyn and the rest of the Labour leadership to clarify their position on Brexit, and to commit to fighting for a softer Brexit, specifically including membership of (and not just access to) the single market and the customs union.

Last week, 50 Labour MPs and Lords put their names to a letter calling for any Brexit deal that would retain the UK’s membership of the single market. This group of Labour parliamentarians, led by Chuka Umunna, argues that access to the single market is both “different and inferior” to membership of the single market. The group has been termed “the anti-hard Brexit PLP”. It broadly reflects the more pro-European strand of the PLP, and includes Lord Peter Hain, Stella Creasy, Rushanara Ali, Chris Bryant, Maria Eagle, Wes Streeting and David Lammy. Interestingly, it also extends to several wings of the Party that are united in their opposition to a hard Brexit, and includes front-benchers generally seen to be on the soft left of the Party, such as Andy Slaughter and Ruth Cadbury, as well as Lucy Anderson MEP, who has been a strong supporter of Corbyn’s leadership. Anderson was Unite backed and formerly worked for the NUT. Notably, one of the signatories is former TUC head Lord John Monks. Frances O’Grady, the current general secretary of the TUC was a key figure in the Remain campaign.

According to a report in the Guardian, the anti-hard Brexit PLP is likely to meet fortnightly and will try to organise in respect of parliamentary votes and early day motions. Members are also likely to talk to backbench MPs in other parties about how to coordinate action in favour of the softest possible Brexit.

It does seem increasingly likely that the path to resolving the Brexit problem will, one way or another, have immigration at its heart. The letter states that, “The argument for leaving the single market is often focused around the need to end the free movement of people. However, we argue, and many experts agree, that changes to our immigration system can be made while keeping us inside it.” It goes on to cite the case of Liechtenstein, which is outside the EU but in the single market and legally imposes quotas on immigration from the EU.

While Corbyn appears to have successfully skirted the issue since the general election, John McDonnell was clearer when he explicitly stated on the Andrew Marr Show that the UK would be leaving the single market. Keir Starmer, the Shadow Brexit Secretary, has shifted his position several times, but is now arguing that by definition we will be leaving the single market but may be able to stay in the customs union.

This is deeply problematic, given that the Corbyn surge was partly down to unprecedented numbers of young people voting for the first time, and voting Labour. And it was not just the young. Many other voters flocked to Labour because of the perception that a vote for Labour was the best way of blocking Brexit. The emphatic repudiation of Theresa May and her policies by young people and some voters motivated by their commitment to “Remain” poses a great danger in terms of the risk that Corbyn and the Labour leadership may in due course come to be perceived as having betrayed those voters and indeed, potentially, a whole generation. The leadership, on the other hand, would no doubt point to the strong showing by Labour in many of its northern heartlands, which voted heavily for Brexit.

The reality is that Labour did unexpectedly well both because of its perceived anti-Brexit position and because of its clear anti-austerity policies (including its offers to younger voters). Clive Lewis, who is on the left of the Party but resigned from the front bench in order to vote against triggering Article 50, has spoken of Labour having to “walk the tight-rope of Brexit politics”. The million-dollar question is whether Corbyn and McDonnell, in their apparent alignment with what is in effect a hard Brexit, are bluffing, or whether they are truly and ideologically committed  to that position. If the latter, the risk is that Labour’s newly built coalition of the young and the Remainers could crash catastrophically against the rocks of a hard Brexit.

The better approach surely would be for Labour to push for a soft Brexit, and to give the people a veto on any final deal, thereby preserving its progressive, democratic credentials and protecting its fledging electoral coalition.

This article was amended to better reflect the TUC’s position.