Labour ‘moving towards People’s Vote’

SHADOW Chancellor John McDonnell has signalled that Labour will back a second referendum as part of a desperate bid to stop more MPs defecting.

He said the party had kept the option on the table and ‘we’re moving towards that’. The seven Labour MPs who quit on Monday all blamed the party’s approach to Brexit and lack of support for a People’s Vote.

Another Labour MP, Ian Austin, resigned yesterday – although he supports Brexit and has so far declined to join the Independent Group. Labour’s position, thrashed out at conference last year, keeps open the option of a second referendum if Theresa May can’t get a deal through Parliament and there’s no general election.

Jeremy Corbyn, a Eurosceptic, is believed to be opposed to a second referendum. But yesterday Mr McDonnell told the London Evening Standard: ‘On the People’s Vote, we’ve kept it on the table and we’re moving towards that.’

He said Labour was ‘moving into implementation stages around our conference decision, around the People’s Vote’.

Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson have devised a plan to support the PM’s Brexit deal on the condition it is put to a confirmatory public vote. The Commons could be asked to vote on the Kyle-Wilson amendment next week.

Mr McDonnell said that any referendum would have remaining in the European Union as the alternative to the deal.

‘If we were going on a People’s Vote based on a deal that has gone through Parliament in some form, if that got voted down then you’d have status quo, and that would be Remain,’ he said.

The Shadow Chancellor said that if it was an option ‘I’d campaign for Remain and I’d vote for Remain’. A spokesman for the People’s Vote campaign said: ‘It looks like Labour will test whether its Brexit plan has the support of Parliament next week.

‘If they back compromise proposals to put any final Brexit deal to the people, it will help unite their party, as well as avoid the catastrophe for their constituents of a No Deal departure from the EU.’

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn was setting out his Brexit plans in Madrid at the Party of European Socialists meeting. He said: ‘The damaging deadlock on Brexit must be broken and following my discussions with EU leaders and officials, I am in no doubt that Labour’s alternative plan is credible.’