It's good that every now and again we have something to celebrate. If then I raise a glass to anything today it will be to Labour finally shifting off the fence on Europe.
As reported in this morning's Observer, Keir Starmer has persuaded Labour to do three things. The first is to have a position on the single market and customs union after March 2019. Now Labour wants us to stay in both during a transitional period. The argument is not that we should now negotiate a complex transitional arrangement before a final deal is agreed with the other EU member states but that we should instead stay in the arrangement we have until such time as a final deal is agreed.
Second, this gives a clear indication that any final deal will be one that prioritises protecting the UK from the massive and dogmatically opposed economic and social shocks that Brexit threatens to impose, even if no further detail on what that might mean is disclosed.
Third this means that at long last Labour will be opposing the government on what has, unfortunately and wholly inappropriately, become the only issue of political significance in the UK.
Literally millions will be relieved as a result. Political sanity demands that Labour oppose a government so riven by incompetence, division and straightforward fear of what they're doing. This policy lets Labour do that. It so happens it also makes sense.
Pragmatically there is no realistic chance of a bespoke transitional arrangement because there is not a hint of one being put on the table as yet. Indeed, no one has even got near the table. In that case what Labour is suggesting is the only viable option there is. But at least it's claimed first mover advantage, at last, by claiming the only big political prize in town.
Then there is the obvious fact that it's right to set no end date for a transitional deal. That's not cowardice, or incompetence at work. It's just that there is no way at present that anyone can know how long it will take to resolve issues. In that case Labour has claimed the consolation prize on this issue as well.
And there is a third factor. This policy lets Labour move over time, as Brexit becomes an ever bigger nightmare for the government, towards suggesting EU reforms that may well keep the UK in membership as other states begin to realise that compromise on some issues is also in their interests. Do not doubt the impact another economic downturn, which is surely coming, might have on this process.
Labour has taken a long time to get to a logical position. It may be, given that Brexit is such a disaster anyway, that the logic of the position remains only that it is streets ahead of anything the government has to offer. But that's progress. And I'll take that as cause for facing the day with a slight smile on my face. At least there's going to be a debate now. Hallelujah. Raise a glass, mug or anything else. Tea will do. There's some political progress this morning.
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Corbyn is the problem, he is anti Eu and until he is kicked out as leader, there is little hope of Labour promising to rejoin the EU.
I voted to Remain, I had to walk a mile in the pouring rain to vote and proud I did.
I don’t think Corbyn is so much ‘Anti EU’ so much as anti the silly bits of the EU that most ‘right thinking people’ are anti.
Free movement of labour (nb not ‘people’ as it became) was an afterthought because Italians and Germans needed to be able to pop over the common border in the aftermath of the second World War; punishing elderly Greeks whilst their shipping magnates shift their capital unburdened by taxes is not what anyone’s dream, or ‘vision’ was.
I share Richard’s joy at this news. I suspect the other EU member states understand we sit on the brink; that there is strength of feeling behind the UK vote (which might still spread) and that, on balance, we are all ‘better together’ no matter how strained that union may be at the moment. And I suspect those member states are rather more likely to welcome a Party – a government?! – which suggests that the best way forward (rather than telling them to ‘go whistle’!) might be to sit down and talk about how we might make things a bit better for all our people and perhaps make fresh concessions/amendments to treaties which would allow them enthusiastically to propose, support, and win a second vote on whether we should Remain.
Define ” silly bits ” .
Corbyn is anti Eu, he voted to leave the then Common Market, elected on manifesto to leave the Common market in 1983 and so on.
Respectfully, I did things in 1983 I may not do now
And vice versa, come to that
Corbyn’s position in the referendum campaign was “remain and reform”. Of course he was a victim of the ludicrous and equally disgraceful position of the mainstream media, who decided that they would focus on the internal disagreements of the pro and anti factions in the Tory party as the main, if not only angle worth covering. This completely overshadowed other views, and thus left Jeremy Corbyn at a disadvantage, and has given space for daft ideas about his stance to gain traction.
Of course it does mean that, in turn, we can pin any blame for our current predicament firmly where it rightly belongs, with the recent and current Tory leaderships, their varying levels of deep incompetence, and the Tory penchant for putting party above national interest.
As a Brexiter (and a hard Brexiter at that) I fully endorse this policy at this moment… and for all the reasons you have given.
It should also be stated this gives reformers within the EU political support in that UK policy leaves open the door to easily walk back in within 5-10 years…. if the EU has transformed significantly.
I certainly dismissed this possibility 18 months ago as it would be seen as a “no-exit” policy.
Although I voted to leave I fully support Keir Starmer on this. He’s a great asset to Team Corbyn. It’s not Labour who created this mess. The only reason to hold a referendum on EU is if you want to change the status quo and have a plan to do so. Labour now has a sensible sufficiently detailed plan to cope with the mess.
It’s a pity that some will still insist on continuing to rubbish Corbyn. I dare say the Labour First rabble will do their best to sow discontent at the conference next month.
No surrender. Not until the whole stupid, irresponsible, dishonest Brexit is called off for good, and Farage and Johnson are sewing mailbags in Wormwood Scrubs.
Labour now committed to an Anti-Austerity programme
Labour also pro-prosperity & pro-Europe
No platform for the Chukkas & Yvettes
No room for a Zombie Tony Party
Only one way now for May
Every Social Democratic party in Europe watching & learning
Sea changing
Boats in position
I’ll drink to that.
Tetley (tea) this morning
Cotes du Rhone this evening
Cheers!
“..a government so riven by … straightforward fear of what they’re doing.”
I’m frightened for the UK, particularly when the Brexiteers tell us it will all be alright without offering a shred of evidence, but I think your insight that they are frightened too is likely to be spot on.
It goes to explain some of the incompetence and a lot of the procrastination. And it suggests that those of us who thought Brexiteers had a blind and visceral opposition to the EU without any thought of or even regard for the UK’s interests were also correct.
And as you say, at least Labour will now have to provide a more resolute opposition on the Brexit front.
I too support this shift in Labour policy, and raise a Sunday morning coffee mug with you to this announcement. I also agree with the points you make about the advantages of this approach. However, I tend to believe that this change also reflects sound long term political strategy in the face of the impossible position Labour faced in the run up to the last general election.
Labour was facing a trap set by the Tories, which Jeremy Corbyn’s stance over Brexit at that time deftly avoided. Telling many of their traditional voters that they were wrong to vote leave would have been political suicide, leaving them open to being derided as “anti-democratic”. It was correct to allow more time for the political tide to turn, to let more people gradually realise that that the “experts” were not “fear-mongering” after all; the dangers of leaving the EU are real. Labour’s previous ambiguity over Brexit enabled them to fight the last election on key issues such as health, housing and pay, successfully pushing the Conservatives onto the back foot and ensuring that the opposition is now strong enough to fight against a hard Brexit (and possibly even bring on another election well before 2022). By that time, sufficiently more of the UK public may be having second thoughts about leaving the EU to change the country’s direction altogether, not only on Brexit but on many other issues as well.
There is much to be said for keeping your powder dry. Only a matter of time now, one imagines, before Labour declares itself to be actually in opposition to Brexit entirely, no doubt when the public has become better informed and their mood has soured against Brexit even more. I’m no voter but I must say it’ll be good to see Labour in opposition to at least something 🙂
I agree about the good news. A glass of chilled Belgian ‘Westvleteren 12’ for me, but each to his/her own. However (and there’s always an ‘however’ isn’t there?) if there’s to be a realistically effective opposition to the so-called ‘hard’ Brexiteers then the Labour Party must put its tribal differences aside and sign up unequivocally to a well-rehearsed common agenda. I realise that’s a very big ask. The Tory press will be watching every step, ready with an armoury of trip wires. Keir Starmer strikes me as being a plausible spokesperson on this issue. Aux armes, citoyens. Formez vos bataillons.
Marchons, marchons!
I agree re the need for a common agenda
Now the Labour right have what they want they have to lose on the common agenda
From the observer article: “full participation in the Single Market”
That initially sounds like Starmer wants the UK to have Commissioner, like now, and under QMV it means more say in rules that affect smaller foreign countries than they have themselves.
On secondary analysis it sounds like Starmer doesn’t want the UK to retain a Commissioner and QMV rights at all – so that would be “passive participation in the Single Market” and not full participation at all.
Someone is being a very inconsistent and naughty boy.
In response to Labour’s change of tactics the best comment I saw on the Guardian’s Cif pages was one that basically said at last some major credible opposition to the Tory Party’s “free-marketeering nonsense” which was code for saying that in a world of “barge economics” the WTO never not been on the side of the working class of any nation let alone Britain’s! Perhaps in historical hindsight this period in British history will be regarded as the “Free” Brexiteering Nonsensense!
In response to Labour’s change of tactics the best comment I saw on the Guardian’s Cif pages was one that basically said at last some major credible opposition to the Tory Party’s “free-marketeering nonsense” which was code for saying that in a world of “barge economics” the WTO has never been on the side of the working class of any nation let alone Britain’s! Perhaps in historical hindsight this period in British history will be regarded as the “Free” Brexiteering Nonsensense!
On the contrary.
Corbyn has always acknowledged the EU because of the workers rights it has tried to uphold – in keeping with the traditions of the Labour party basically. Look at Macron in France now talking of liberalising the labour market! Wonderful.
Corbyn also knows that BREXIT is going to hurt a lot of people if it goes through – even if he does not like the EU he cannot ignore the single market and the benefits it has brought us. And he hasn’t.
In addition, he also knows that the whole BREXIT farce is really the equivalent of a Tory bar room brawl that has got out of hand. But they also dominate and have set the context of the debate – they and their minions in then media are the gate keepers – so entering the debate has had to be done carefully and skillfully because the back lash even now could be really bad.
I look forward to seeing what Labour say in particular about the ECB and the Euro – the main areas of reform in my view. The ECB and it arcane rules about deficits being no more than 3% GDP has to be questioned especially after 2008. I want the ECB to be wound up as it is an apparatus for the degradation of nation states by private anti-statist interests. And the Euro should go too in my view.
But what we need in the UK firstly is a Government who wants to help the people at home first and is willing to challenge the orthodoxies we have been living with for nearly 10 years – austerity, neo-liberalism etc., and then fight to reform these attitudes in the wider EU membership from then on.
This is a well considered move that will make it difficult for the Tories, and isolate them. One cannot but think that as time passes and more horrors are revealed, that public opinion will also begin to be less polarised, and more nuanced.
This policy move makes it possible for a much wider set of outcomes in the future, as the unraveling does its damage.
Like you Richard I raise my glass. Labour has got this right.
Paul
It hasn’t bought anytime at all because that is not down to us. The clock is ticking and we are not past phase I yet and the EU (they have been clear on this) will not discuss anything until progress made on phase I which of course includes Ireland which I can’t see anyway of solving unless NI joins ROI. The NI/ROI border being the outer border of the EU has to be a ‘hard’ border as people forget the EU is also a tax union for VAT. They can’t let it be a ‘soft’ border or it is a VAT fraudsters nirvana.
It is all immaterial apart from domestic consumption purposes.
Might want to read this Richard http://brexitborder.com/revenue-commissioners-see-brexit-working/ Irish Customs and note the 500 to 700 % increase in workload that would be similar for UK.
But think of the saving with everyone else
You seem to have ignored that
I have to disagree
This makes negotiation possible
I think the EU wants that too – within sensible boundaries
This meets that criteria
You might want to think it but that isn’t what is coming out of Brussels. They are clear there is no moving on until phase I settled. Davis folded on the first day of sequencing.
This isn’t to say the EU are bullying as they are aren’t, they have just been clear about it when our shower (as shown by position papers) don’t even have a clue how the EU works.
I know that
But that’s because they’re being asked for the ridiculous by the impossible
Richard I am a freight fowarder for a living and have been doing it +30 years, there is no saving elsewhere, it all adds to paperwork. Take for example in that Irish paper where it mentions simplified under UCC. Great but that only stops a bottleneck at ports, it actually adds to fowarders work as doubling up paperwork (more accurately data entry). It would be less work doing 1 entry at import, than simplified and full entry later. We do not have the staff for this (we have an Irish office).
Calais doesn’t have the staff, I don’t think people realise it isn’t just on import that customs entries are completed, they are done for export from the EU and that would mean Calais would have to ‘arrive’ every transaction from EU to UK. We are going to be third country and that’s it.
Labour don’t seem to know that. The choice is unless you want a complete mess at ports is in or out and that’s, there is no transition.
There will be if Scotland saves many of the costs of Brexit in due course
That is what I meant
@Andy Blatchford. I agree that Ireland is a massive problem, but why do you say that Labour does not understand this? Remaining in the single market and customs union pushes the can down the road. When you are in opposition that’s all you can do.
Some sanity at last. Its still brexit, with strings but with an obvious intention to really challenge the government. Having a position will enable Labour to argue for the considerable benefits of the SM and CU, while making a progressive case for close links and sensible long term arrangements. Its a welcome shift and puts Labour properly in the game and able to argue its corner.
Good and not before time.
“But that’s because they’re being asked for the ridiculous by the impossible”
That’s exactly the same as Labours proposal here. I can only guess that in their arguments over the past week they came to that conclusion we can’t and this is for domestic consumption only. It just can’t be done as the EU can’t agree to this, it is having our cake and eat it.
We will have to disagree
Fair enough.
This would be in practical terms the same as an extension of the A50 withdrawal period so would be easier getting that (especially if there is a change of Government) as the EU doesn’t want a disorderly withdrawal either.
Exactly
I welcome this: I do not celebrate it, as it is still pro-Brexit: but it is, at least, the sound of a pragmatic ostrich pulling its head out of the sand.
An observation for Andy Blatchford: there’s no building work in evidence at Felixstowe and Dover – nothing like the forest of cranes across half the land adjacent to the harbours that there ought to be – for the customs facilities we will require in 2019.
Make of that what you will: has anybody seen (or not seen) the same in Calais?
There is nothing at Calais either. There can’t be as no one knows.
I just get shrugs at work when I ask my road freight colleagues what the plans are.
Nicola Sturgeon put forward this plan immediately after the vote.
The fatal flaw for Labour is that it took them this long to steal her ideas, and from what I read they were waiting to see which way the wind was blowing in the country.
Labour voted for the Vote and went with the Tory position on a hard Brexit until the saw there was growing fear about the effects.
Sturgeon led. Labour only followed, which is not a good sign for the voters. We’ve see Labour in action before, they were in charge of the financial chaos of 2008 and we are still paying the vast bills for the PFI wheeze of trying to make public spending look lower.
PFI was New Labour, and what we have now is Old Labour resurrected. You can’t compare the two (unless you try comparing New Labour to Tories).
Corbyn has been in Westminster for a very long time.
Corbyn was the leader of the Labour Party during and after the vote.
Patience is a virtue, Labour know what they are doing. A transition deal like this should be acceptable to all but the most rabid brexiter and gives the government the freedom to actually start to deliver these new deals they promised. Clearly they won’t be able to and in the meantime we still have safe harbour. From then it becomes about how we re-establish membership. Brexit took 40 years to create and enough voters went with it to make it a problem that won’t disappear overnight.
The EU are making a stand themselves on principle because anything that looks like a concession to the UK will only open the door to other states to ask for the same. Once that starts, things will get messy. And an institution that has helped to keep the peace in Europe is thus undermined.
What may seem like intransigence to us post Thatcherite Brits is actually called something else: solidarity. It’s something I wish my nation would re-acquaint itself with.
I don’t buy the argument that the EU has kept the peace. What have been the potential triggers for war since 1945?
Id suggest a quick refresher of the history of the first half of the last century in Europe, with the forces of nationalism and competition between the countries of Europe which led to two world wars. The EU has made a massive contribution to diluting those forces, and that was a primary goal of its founders. Its unfortunate that both the further left and further right choose to ignore that contribution. Unfortunate and dangerous.
Recent conversations with people during slow travel through the Baltic countries, who have suffered more than most from the ravages of totalitarian regimes of both the left and the right, brought that home very forcefully. The EU has been key in helping to re-establish democracy and effective state institutions.
Of course its a long way from perfect but we should recognise the EU’s huge contributions in many fields, as is slowly starting to happen as people realise the consequences of leaving.
Thank you Robin.
Yes, very smart stuff from Labour. A lovely pass forward, hoping to create a possibility. That innocuous pawn move forward you see sometimes and wonder about, even as you start to recognise the possibility of a way out. Who knows? This game isn’t over yet.
Guess who?
“We are clear about what we want from Europe. We say: yes to the Single Market. Yes to turbocharging free trade. Yes to working together where we are stronger together than alone. Yes to a family of nation states, all part of a European Union — but whose interests, crucially, are guaranteed whether inside the Euro or out. No to ‘ever closer union.’ No to a constant flow of power to Brussels. No to unnecessary interference.”
I know
Tory Manifesto
2015