Labour civil war over single market U-turn as MPs warn of Ukip revival
LABOUR was at war over the party’s Brexit U-turn last night as pro-EU MPs boasted it could be used to keep Britain tied to Brussels forever.
Eurosceptics warned the plan could cause an exodus of the party’s voters and the revival of Ukip.
Labour’s Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer announced on Sunday that the party wanted to remain in the customs union and single market for a ‘transition period’ – as long as four years – after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.
Yesterday Eurosceptic Labour MP Kate Hoey dismissed the plan, telling Radio 5 Live: ‘It is very worrying to those of us that want to support the view of the British public, which was overwhelmingly to vote to leave. This is moving towards a kind of mushy blancmange, which is really not in the interests of this country.’
She warned that, while Ukip’s support had dwindled, Labour could not become complacent.
Miss Hoey said: ‘The most important thing about this is we did very well in the last general election by winning back some of those people who left Labour disillusioned and gone to Ukip. And I do think now many of those people will be feeling, “Hang on, we voted for Labour because we thought they were serious about Brexit, that they wanted to make a success of it.” Now we look like we’re not going to do that and we could lose those voters back to perhaps, you never know, Nigel Farage could come back and there could be a revived Ukip.’
Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, said the party’s new Brexit stance was ‘chaos’. He told Radio 4’s PM programme there was a risk to democracy if MPs tried to ‘sabotage’ the referendum result and Britain did not exit the EU, adding: ‘What Keir said seems completely at odds with what the leader of the party, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, have said.’
But ex-health spokesman Heidi Alexander said the arrangement – which would mean hefty payments to Brussels and open borders – could become permanent.
She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘I think that if there isn’t a better offer on the table then staying in the single market and customs union permanently would be the right thing for the country.’
Lord Wood, adviser to ex-Labour leaders Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown, said it was ‘definitely a possibility’ that the transition would lead to a chance to cancel Brexit.