Brexit will fail. Labour must not

Conservative government lurches to the right

Brexit will fail. Amid the hushed Royal Coronation-style BBC coverage of the “handover” from Cameron to Theresa May last night, complete with soft-focus montages and music, what the broadcasters seemed to miss was: this is a change of government.

With Johnson, Fox and Davies in senior foreign-facing positions in cabinet, this is the most right wing Conservative government since Thatcher’s in 1990. True, it was ushered in using the words “working class” and “social justice” but anybody who thinks these terms are the preserve only of the left has not studied 20th century history.

Brexit will fail not just because it was done without a plan; not just because the incoming cabinet will be divided over even the most basic question — in or out of the single market. It will fail because the EU27 will make it fail. The most powerful countries in Europe, and its political elite, need to make it fail; the least powerful, for different reasons, need to make it painful.

All the pro-Leave campaign’s bravado about major European exporters being “forced to do a deal” will evaporate. The UK will enter recession. It will be faced with the need to take counter-cyclical action — tax cuts for business to boost inward investment — that will be seen as unfair competition by the 27.

It will be foreced to save its steel industry with state aid technically illegal in Europe. And when it finally makes some kind of half-hearted bid for access to the single market, the May administration will be laughed out of court — and more importantly out of the European Parliament — unless it agrees in principle to the free movement of labour.

The Commission, the Council and the Parliament will each point out: the May government has no mandate from the people. It cannot prevent the overturn of any deal by a government of the left and centre-left. David Davies’ promise today that Britain “will leave the EU in December 2018” will ring as hollow then as Osborne’s punishment budget does now.

Faced with this, what should the progressive half of British politics do?

First, stop dreaming about sabotaging the referendum result via legal means or parliamentary manouvres. The Tory Brexit, if it fails, must be allowed to fail under the leadership of those who called for it.

However, Labour challenger Owen Smith’s call for a second referendum or election, with the results of negotiation as the issue, is worth considering. I would add to it the need for an early election to approve the negotiating stance.

This is not a question of “reopening the Brexit vote” but allowing democracy to work through two stages of the Brexit process.

First, May’s government must be allowed to design its negotiating offer. This must be dragged out into the limelight by the opposition: there can be no more secret diplomacy of the kind Cameron woefully indulged in February/March.

Next we have to see the EU27’s response. And more: right now Norway is said to oppose British membership of the EEA so even that route may not be open as a starting point.

Once we have an offer and a response there should be an election. In that election all parties favouring an immediate application to join the EEA should form an electoral alliance.

Whoever wins should carry out the negotiation and at the end, if the outcome is close to what the governing party (or coalition) stood on, it should be ratified; if not it should be put to a new referendum: take the deal on offer; remain in the EU; or walk away and trust to the WTO.

I have always favoured this process, and argued for it in February, once it was clear that neither Labour nor the government was prepared to spell out a Brexit contingency plan.

The UK should immediately signal its intent to join the EEA, despite the fact that the referendum result reveals there is not enough popular consent for freedom of movement.

If a Labour-led coalition was leading the negotiations, it should accept freedom of movement in principle, but :

(a) Ask for a Europe-wide labour market strategy to even out minimum wage rates; welfare benefit rates and reverse anti-union laws that encourage “posting” of workers to undercut wages

(b) Implement national labour market strategy designed to deter migrant-only workforces and cheap labour exploitation; to redirect EU migration towards resilient multicultural cities, not small towns with scarce resources; and massively empower the unions to fight slave labour practices, if possible via the reintroduction of the “closed shop” — ie making union membership compulsory. All these are legitimate labour market reforms and could be compatible with free movement.

(c) Ask for an “emergency brake” to be applied — as is possible under EEA rules — until numbers stabilise. A temporary EU migrant quota could be set by an independent body which the government could set up to measure and predict labour demand. Any emergency brake request could only be temporary howeer and its purpose should be to restore popular consent for freedom of movement.

(d) A progressive government should of course guarantee — unlike May’s administration — the right to remain of every existing EU-born person currently in the UK.

There is no guarantee Europe will agree even to this, but it constitutes a plan, and it provides a focus for opposition. It may well annoy some people in Labour heartlands so badly that they leave and join UKIP — but the alternative, to ditch any attempt to remain in the EEA, is economic suicide for Britain and a disaster for organised labour. As a “big Singapore”, a neo-Thatcherite Britain completely adrift from the Single Market could only survive by serious attacks on rights and living standards.

Because May’s government is full of people who played to the racist gallery in the Brexit vote, nodding and winking to the xenophobes of UKIP, it cannot do any kind of deal that includes even the possibility of free movement without splitting.

This is a massive political opportunity for the opposition parties.

The PLP rebels, whose position looks less and less tenable after they failed to circumvent Labour Party democracy, need to find a way to climb down. Their revolt was designed to paralyse HM Opposition and that’s what it is doing — at a time of national crisis.

There is a sickening level of abuse flying around on all sides, which will tear Labour apart unless the coup ends. On top of which, the suspension of internal Labour Party branch meetings will paralyse the party at exactly the point it needs to be an institution promoting stability inside very nervous and fractious communities.

Already Momentum, Corbyn’s grassroots organisation, is having to function in lieu of local party bodies; many of its local meetings are currently 2x or 3x bigger than the last official Labour ones. If this arrangement solidifies, and the two sides begin to meet separately at ward and constituency level, then a historic and major institution for the working class is half-gone.

I’ve said, as early as February, that the Tory crisis demands the Labour party function as a coalition; the centre left accepting the left’s right to lead; the Corbyn camp ceding control of some policy areas to bring talented former ministers back onto the front bench.

Once parliament rises, next week, the physical separation of the two camps will be more or less complete — they’ll have no need to meet each other except at hustings.

Labour under Corbyn can and must become a social movement to fight what’s being prepared in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street — an onslaught on liberties and living standards to make the working class pay the price of Brexit.

Owen Smith’s entry into the leadership race shows the left and centre left of Labour have a lot in common, and could easily collaborate with each other. I’m backing Corbyn, but its clear Smith could easily serve in a Corbyn-led shadow cabinet and vice-versa. We should work overtime to make sure that, if they can’t back down, a route is found to allow Smith and his supporters to co-exist inside a Corbyn-led PLP.

The real problem is the Blairite right: it has all along planned and pushed for the coup and used the Murdoch press to make it happen. They unleashed bullying, coercion, threats, trolling and personal insults against powerless individual members — and then ran to the media when, predictably and regrettably, the same stuff came back at them.

Now the toxic atmosphere has attracted all kinds of seriously pernicious people: the egg-people of Twitter, making anonymous threats of violence, rape and death against people on all sides. If anybody from the Corbyn camp is identified as perpetrating this stuff they should not just be out of the party but prosecuted. Ditto for the other side.

However, the outrage of the membership is justified, as long as it is civilly expressed. We’re facing the sabotage of effective opposition, designed to force an elected leader to resign, ultimately by people representing the interests of the 1%.

If the civil war inside the Labour Party can’t be stopped it must be won — but calmly, using democratic means, rational persuasion and a disciplined political campaign.