Brexit threatens the hard-fought rights of my generation. Labour must take a stand

Brexit will turbo-charge the Tory assault on jobs, public services and workplace rights. My generation, who didn’t experience the destructive policies of the 1980s, are set to experience their uglier Brexit upgrade.

The Brexit we are heading for is a deregulation spree carried out by a bunch of Margaret Thatcher tribute acts, and the Labour Party must act now or watch decades of achievements secured by our movement go up in flames.

Before the referendum, Jeremy Corbyn was clear on what the Tories would do post-Brexit: “They’d dump rights on equal pay, working time, annual leave, for agency workers, and on maternity pay as fast as they could get away with it… It would be a government that would negotiate the worst of all worlds: a free market free-for-all shorn of rights and protections.”

The European Union, for all its faults, is now the one thing that stands between this government and the bonfire of regulations they have always dreamed of. The EU is no longer the great opponent of the working class that it was once seen to be in the early 1980s. The far greater threat is a right-wing Brexit.

Within the EU, we get a safety net of rights that no UK government can undermine unilaterally. We get a minimum standard of health and safety conditions in the workplace, and a bedrock of rights at work such as maternity leave, rights to time off for urgent family reasons and rights for outsourced workers.

These are rights that level the playing field for those typically at a disadvantage. Anti-discrimination laws and equal pay for equal work, for instance, have been strengthened by EU directives and subsequent rulings by the European Court of Justice. And there are extensions to existing rights already being discussed in Europe.

These are not rights that have been implemented by faceless politicians in Brussels – these are rights that our Labour movement has championed and secured throughout Europe, and we must uphold them. We cannot risk sending my generation and generations to come into a workplace without the rights that the Labour Party has spent decades fighting for. These rights are not irritating bureaucratic red tape. They exist for the safety and dignity of our workforce.

Brexit will remove our European safety net of rights and protections. Of course, that’s what people like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab want. But this is a Brexit that the government’s own reports show will damage our economy, will hit the poorest, most vulnerable, the young and the working class the hardest. All groups that the Labour Party swears to protect.

Within the EU, the Labour Party has worked with other like-minded parties across Europe to secure rights and prevent a race to the bottom. These rights underpin the single market, which would cease to function if member countries were allowed to compete in a way that would result in fewer workplace rights and worse working conditions.

It’s no surprise then that trade unions representing students, steelworkers, engineers, doctors, nurses, midwives and more have come out in favour of a people’s vote. It’s also unsurprising that an overwhelming majority of Labour members and voters support a referendum on the final deal, which is now the only realistic option left that could save the UK from a destructive Brexit in March.

So many young people like me are inspired and mobilised by Labour’s vision for Britain and would like to see it implemented. We want thriving public services, a world-class healthcare system, nationalised public transport and a society for the many, not the few.

I am a firm believer in investment over cuts, but Labour’s transformative public spending commitments are incompatible with the economic hit from Brexit. After all, it is estimated to cost us over £100bn in upfront fees and even more in long-term economic damage.

Even worse is the notion that we could somehow comfortably fall onto World Trade Organisation rules as if they are some kind of blanket trade deal. They are not. Most horrifying is the prospect of losing an EU negotiated opt-out from key WTO rules, which would open the door to wholesale privatisation of public services such as the NHS and possibly education.

A vote on the final Brexit deal would take power from the hands of the far right of the Conservative party and put it in the hands of the people. The Labour Party must be the champion of the many not the few, and back a people’s vote.

Tessa Milligan is a Labour member and activist for Our Future, Our Choice.