Daily Mail

Labour facing civil war over second referendum

Burnham’s broadside at ‘arrogant’ call for new poll

- By John Stevens Deputy Political Editor

ANTI-BREXIT campaigner­s trying to force a second EU referendum are part of an ‘arrogant political class’ that is failing to listen to voters, Andy Burnham warned last night.

The Labour mayor of Greater Manchester called on his party to resist calls for another vote, which he said would risk fuelling anger and division in the country.

Mr Burnham, a former Cabinet minister, gave his warning as a plot to push the party into backing a second referendum was revealed.

Together they stoked fears of a civil war within Labour over the issue. The plot was revealed in a leaked memo that showed that the People’s Vote campaign is attempting to secure a motion on a second referendum at Labour’s annual conference next month. Mr Burnham, who lost to Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 Labour leadership contest, yesterday urged Labour members not to back the move by the People’s Vote campaign. ‘My frustratio­n with those leaping to a second referendum is it further inflames this idea of an arrogant political class which isn’t listening, and isn’t dealing with the issues that gave rise to the referendum in the first place,’ he said. ‘I’m not in that campaign of having a People’s Vote.’ He added that a holding another Brexit vote would worsen divisions. ‘It would potentiall­y fracture, deepen that rift,’ Mr Burnham said in an interview with the Politico website. At present it is not Labour Party policy to support a second referendum, but Mr Corbyn and his shadow Cabinet ministers have repeatedly refused to rule out holding one. Graham Stringer – one of four Labour MPs to vote with Theresa May in a key vote on the customs union last month – yesterday dismissed the ‘fraudulent claim for a second referendum before the first is even implemente­d’. In an article for the Manchester evening News, the MP for Blackley and Broughton wrote: ‘I can think of nothing that would do more damage to our democracy than a failure to deliver on the EU referendum, which after all was the largest, single vote in our democratic history. The establishm­ent with its overgrown sense of entitlemen­t cannot believe that the electorate rejected its self-interested advice. Democracy, progress and the economy are not threatened by those of us who stand by their electoral promises but by those who want to sabotage the referendum.’

The People’s Vote group, which was formed out of the former remain campaign, is stepping up its efforts to get Labour to support a second poll on the final Brexit deal.

Yesterday it emerged that it wants Labour MPs and activists to submit a motion for the party’s conference calling for a referendum on the final deal the Government reaches with the EU before Britain leaves in March. The draft resolution for next month’s conference states that Labour can give the public a ‘clear opportunit­y to participat­e in critical decisions’.

It notes: ‘Conference believes that if the Government’s proposed deal is unsatisfac­tory then the people should be allowed to express their view in a public vote on Brexit. The Labour movement can then unite behind Jeremy Corbyn’s determinat­ion to fight the Tories on a hard Brexit.’

The leaked memo was written by Tom Baldwin, the campaign group’s director of communicat­ion, who was ed Miliband’s chief spin doctor when he was Labour leader. It praises ‘real signs of movement’ from the Labour front bench on a second referendum, which it says should be ‘supported and encouraged’.

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