Open Britain: Sticking with Labour values means staying in the single market

Francis Grove-White is deputy director of Open Britain

As Labour meets in Brighton for our annual conference, all eyes and minds are on an issue that largely sidestepped on the conference floor – Britain’s exit from the European Union. We meet in a city that voted strongly to Remain, and comprehensively rejected Theresa May’s plans for an extreme Tory Brexit in the general election. Which perches on the English Channel, the lifeblood of our economy where trade with Europe will be more difficult due to a hard Brexit, putting jobs at risk. Which depends for its commerce and public service on the hard work of EU citizens, whose rights have still not be guaranteed and whose status in our country is uncertain as the Government prepares for a draconian crackdown on immigration.

Labour owes it to our supporters in Brighton, and the huge majority of our voters who voted Remain, to stand up unambiguously against the Tories’ plans for hard Brexit. How best to do that will be the subject of debate at Open Britain’s fringe event, hosted with LabourList tomorrow morning, which will bring together senior pro-Europeans like Chuka Umunna and Alison McGovern with the Leave-supporting Kelvin Hopkins.

Yesterday, senior figures from across the Labour family, from over 30 members of the PLP to the General Secretary of the TSSA and the Mayor of Liverpool, signed a letter organised by Open Britain and the Labour Campaign for the Single Market calling on Labour to fight unambiguously for membership of the Single Market and the Customs Union. It is deeply unfortunate that factions within the Party organised to prevent a debate and vote on this, after dozens of CLPs passed contemporary motions calling for a say on Labour’s Brexit policy.

We should be in no doubt that Single Market and Customs Union membership is a progressive policy that chimes totally with our Labour values. The European Union is our largest trading partner, buying nearly half of everything that we sell. Any new barriers to trade – in the form of tariffs or new red tape – will make that trade harder and more expensive. This is about whether we create jobs or lose jobs; whether small businesses expand or fold; whether workers get a pay rise or a pay cut. It also has a bearing on prices. Any new barriers to trade will raise the cost of food, for example, as 70 per cent of our agricultural imports come from the European Union. That will mean the pay packets of working families being worth less and less as they do the weekly shop.

Some within our party argue that Britain needs to “take back control” of powers over nationalisation and state aid; that the task of building an economy that works for the many will be somehow held back by Single Market membership. Not a bit of it. Just look at France’s state-owned railway network. At Germany’s ecosystem of powerful regional banks. Increasing public direction over our economy is not blocked by Single Market membership – it is blocked by a Tory Government wedded to outdate laissez-faire economics.

And don’t believe that the Single Market and Customs Union are incompatible with respecting the result of the referendum. Brexit was on the ballot paper last year; what form Brexit takes was not. Norway and Iceland are in the Single Market but not the EU. Turkey is part of a European customs union but, contrary to what Vote Leave said, they are nowhere near becoming members of the European Union.

The fact is that Labour’s programme for government will be more difficult to implement, not less, if we leave the Single Market and Customs Union. The economic damage it would cause would make our goal of full employment harder to achieve, not easier. The £15bn a year hit to the public finances would mean less money for the NHS, not more. Falling business investment would hinder our chances of rebalancing the economy, not help them.

Keir Starmer and his front bench team have done good work over the summer in shifting Labour’s policy towards membership of the Single Market and Customs Union for a limited transitional period – a stance the Tories have now adopted wholesale. Keir’s speech today, floating the idea that Labour could back continued membership of a customs union with the EU was welcome. But the time has come to go further, to back the best model of Brexit for our economy and our Labour values, and put real red water between ourselves and the Conservatives. I am absolutely clear that that means membership of the Single Market and the Customs Union in the long term.