CABLE ON CORBYN’S BREXIT LIFELINE
HMS Brexit is sinking and Theresa May’s struggling to stay afloat. No one expected Corbyn to man the lifeboat
Theresa May is drowning in controversy over her mishandling of Brexit.
Her crackdown on foreign students now looks as illconceived as it was mean-spirited when it turns out that 97 per cent leave when they finish their course, contrary to May’s fears that vast numbers overstay.
Meanwhile, her red lines are now so blurred no one knows what they are any more.
But as her head starts to bob below the waterline, she is comforted by a lifeboat motoring alongside her. And its skipper, improbably, is Jeremy Corbyn.
Over Brexit he has collaborated with the Conservatives more than any Labour leader since Ramsay MacDonald. This is not something Corbyn boasts about to hard-left admirers.
Indeed, it was hidden at the general election from a generation of young people alarmed by the threat to their freedom to travel, work and study across Europe.
But Corbyn has consistently ordered MPs into the voting lobbies to prop up May’s extreme Brexit agenda, notably on Article 50. Make no mistake – Corbyn could seriously torpedo the May Government over Brexit, but chooses not to.
Moderate Labour MP Chuka Umunna tabled an amendment calling for Britain to stay in the single market, but Corbynistas voted against it. Indeed, Labour front bencher Barry Gardiner explicitly backs the extreme Liam Fox Brexit line.
So, for every job leaving the UK due to the Conservative insistence we quit the single market and customs union; every nurse who leaves the NHS because they no longer feel welcome; every family that can’t afford a foreign holiday due to the falling pound – ask the so-called leader of the opposition why, on this vital question, he is propping up the Government.
Especially when few voted for the extreme Brexit the Conservatives are pursuing, cutting Britain adrift from the world’s largest market.
Corbyn’s collaboration puts him in the same place as Boris Johnson and Fox. That place is to the hard right of British politics.
Will Labour put up with it? Labour MPs I speak to are crying out to oppose the first government since the war to no longer regard economic competence as central to their programme. The Conservative manifesto was comically innumerate, with business regarded as an embarrassing relative best kept out of sight. Conservatives have been consumed by English nationalism and the politics of identity: the economic consequences of policy are secondary to “taking back control”, a slogan increasingly proving as undeliverable as it is unenlightening.
This should be an open goal for Labour. Yet the hard left has long viewed the EU as a sinister capitalist project, overlooking that on worker rights, environmental protection and regional investment, it has often been a greater force for progressive good in this country than Labour.
I am puzzled by Labour’s leadership. Is it simply pandering to leave-dominated constituencies? But Corbyn has taken unpopular positions in other areas. And his support for Brexit puts him at serious odds with voters in Scotland and London, and the trade union movement.
If there is principle (however misdirected) in Labour’s position, it is because they believe single market freedoms prevent state intervention. But they don’t. As business secretary, I sought state aid approval for several projects, including the publicly owned green investment bank. There was delay, but all were agreed.
It is the European Commission, not the UK Government, taking on the internet giants. Similarly, it is pointless waiting for Conservatives to protect hi-tech companies from predatory takeovers. But if we work with neighbouring countries, we might deliver such protection through the EU.
Be it on consumer protection or labour standards, “taking back control” is about passing power to international capital. We would have less control, not more. That a party of the so-called left should conspire with the right is the untold scandal of British politics.
True, Europe’s treatment of Greece and Italy is as bad economically as it is politically. But being outside the Eurozone, this does not harm Britain – we are having our cake and eating it.
The left have always been tribalistic, as MacDonald discovered. But many Labour MPs are furious at being ordered into the division lobbies with Johnson and Co against their beliefs.
Fighting hard Brexit is the cause of our age. Sensible politicians have a duty for the next generation to put aside party difference and work for the greater good. There are also worried Conservative MPs who know Britain is stronger in the single market and customs union, and we need to encourage them to find their voice.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for pro-European progressives to fight the forces of nationalism and reaction – in all its forms, including on the reactionary left.
Corbyn could torpedo May over Brexit but he chooses not to