Labour’s Brexit shift isn’t democratic – and risks losing our Leave voters

The public will view Labour’s dramatic shift on Brexit as undemocratic and unprincipled. Back in April, when the Tories called a snap election, Labour faced a clear choice.

The party could have sided with the Remain Establishment, including some trade unions, by pursuing a so-called soft-Brexit. This was the choice offered to voters by the Liberal Democrats. A position, it turned out, rejected in all but twelve parliamentary constituencies.

If Labour had adopted the same position as the Liberals, an incoming Labour government would have secured a democratic justification to pursue a future relationship with the EU similar to that of Norway or Switzerland. But that is not the path the party chose or the mandate that we put to millions of voters.

Instead, the shadow cabinet and the NEC – which included representation from every section of the party – backed a great manifesto that committed the party to ending free movement, leaving the single market and the customs union. The manifesto also committed a future Labour government to a range of popular policies, such as the re-nationalisation of various industries, which were all predicated on Britain being outside the economic straight jacket of a neo-liberal European commission and the jurisdiction of the European court of justice (ECJ).

It is not possible to respect the letter of the referendum result if you are still effectively committing Britain to a form of ‘membership’ of EU structures and institutions, including being a part of the single market.

After the election, the party’s international trade spokesman, Barry Gardiner, wrote an article in which he framed Labour’s approach within a principled policy framework of four key objectives. Even though he campaigned for Remain, Gardiner recognised that any final deal, which did not enable Britain: “to have control over our borders, to have sovereignty over our laws, not to submit to the European court of justice (ECJ), and not to pay money into the European budget” would be seen as a betrayal of Leavers’ main concerns. “The 52 per cent would almost certainly consider this a con”, he said.

Following Keir Starmer’s policy shift, the party now finds itself open to the accusation it has conned the electorate after all. The collapse in the UKIP vote, with many returning to Labour, was in large part due to the party’s seemingly unequivocal respect for the referendum result. In our heartlands of the Midlands and the North, voters largely kept faith with us because they could see a political party that was truly on the side of ordinary working people.

The biggest loser in all this could be Labour’s credibility to be trusted on any major policy statement it now makes at a general election. Theresa May’s election campaign turned to farce when she junked a key part of her manifesto halfway through the campaign. The Tories paid the price with their House of Commons majority. May’s personal credibility with the public has never recovered since.

If there is one thing we have come to learn about the British voting public, they do not like parties that say one thing to get elected and then do a complete about turn once they are back within the fold of the interests that fund and support them.

Labour’s latest Brexit policy looks ambiguous, expedient and unprincipled as it comes just weeks before the party conference season. The whole manner in which this “shift” has occurred may only serve to underline why so many people voted to leave the “undemocratic forces” of EU in the first place. Whether or not couched in the ‘nuances’ of a barrister’s words, Starmer may have done little to overcome the corrosive cynicism out there about the state of our politics.

Indeed, it should alarm the democrats within our party and everywhere that the only people who are crowing about this announcement are the ones who have never accepted the result of the referendum in the first place. For them, the device set up by Starmer, of an unspecified time limit on “transitional arrangements”, where we will continue, in all but name, to be a part of the EU, is simply a down payment on Brexit never happening at all.

Tom Bewick is a Labour councillor on Brighton and Hove council and campaigned for Leave during the referendum.