Put the people’s needs first now

THE alarm bells warning about the economic and social damage from Brexit ring increasingly loudly.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan – a Labour politician – legitimately added to it yesterday. His impact assessment predicts the UK will lose half a million jobs and £50billion in investment by 2030.

You’d expect a chorus of anti-Brexit disapproval from his party. Instead, Labour continue to adopt a do-nothing, say-nothing position that is impossible to fathom.

In Scotland, Brexit spokesman Neil Findlay insisted yesterday that leader Jeremy Corbyn is correct in refusing to clarify Labour’s position on Brexit.

Findlay says the ground keeps shifting and concrete plans will take a while to put in place. But people need answers now. They need to know what Labour would do differently from this Tory Government.

Trotting out meaningless platitudes like “jobs will be put first” doesn’t cut it when the predictions are that there will be hundreds of thousands fewer jobs in a post-Brexit Britain.

Labour’s reason for existing is to give voice to Britain’s working class. If, as looks likely, the UK comes out without a meaningful trade deal, it will be the working class who will pay the biggest price in lost livelihoods.

And that will condemn Labour’s refusal to commit to staying in the single market as a betrayal of the people they represent.

The self-styled People’s Party need to get their act together. They need to prove they are the credible alternative government they say there are.

At the moment, they are playing a waiting game… and time is running out.