The people deserve a better Brexit than this

Voters in my seat rejected Labour because they were eager to take back control of their destiny

Back in January 2017, in her Lancaster House speech, the Prime Minister had it all together. She would, she said, seek to negotiate “a bold and ambitious free trade deal” with Europe that would also give us the ability to fraternise around the world. She did not pretend this would have the same benefits as full membership – we were leaving – but that we could have a different, positive relationship.

She was aiming to take back control of our money, borders and laws. These, she said quite rightly, were at the heart of the reasons why people voted to leave. She said that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, and that if the EU would not give us something that worked for the United Kingdom, then we could walk away and succeed on our own merits. It is hard, looking back, to understand how it can have gone so wrong since then, and that from those bright and optimistic beginnings, the Government now presents us with this choice: vote for mediocrity or risk chaos.

My Labour predecessor in Mansfield held the seat for 30 years – longer than I have been alive – but in recent times Mansf ield has shown its appetite for change. Local people voted Conservative for the first time ever in 2017, sick of decades of representatives moaning about the past but having no plan for the future. They also voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU in 2016, fed up with being forgotten by the establishment and eager to “take back control” of their destiny.

This vote for change is what the Government has misunderstood. You cannot deliver on it by seeking to replicate as much of the status quo as possible. You cannot deliver an outcome that meets the “spirit” of the referendum result if we remain tied, perhaps indefinitely, to the institution that we promised to leave. You cannot tick the boxes demanded by Leave voters if you seek to compromise on all the things that mattered in their decision. So many people in areas like mine feel that the political establishment does not understand them, and they are being proved right.

The Prime Minister is correct when she says that many people just want us to get on with delivering on the referendum result. They are sick of this. The problem is that her deal does not deliver.

But, there is a clear alternative. There is a form of free trade arrangement that does not tie us in to all of the regulatory and financial obligations in the Prime Minister’s plan. We can build on the kind of arrangement that the EU has with Canada, which is tried and tested, and has been offered to us by Michel Barnier several times already. It works on the basis of equivalence, of recognition of each other’s standards, rather than by forcing us to follow their rules. The only barrier is that the EU must be willing to discuss solutions to the Irish border; both HMRC and the World Trade Organisation are clear that solutions are available. In fact they are already in place elsewhere in the world.

That border is a political problem, not a practical one. Solving it requires political will to move forward, and if the EU are not willing then we should

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not fear a clean Brexit. So much of our trade already happens on world trade terms, plus we can agree deals with other countries. Accepting this likelihood now rather than pressing on with the PM’S broken proposal would allow us to tie up all the other agreements we need on things like security and travel; perhaps even to agree a transitional arrangement that would give businesses certainty and time to prepare. This might be the only way to achieve that certainty, because in reality the PM’S deal requires 18 more months of further confusion about the future partnership.

We should seek a looser trading relationship, or we should have the confidence as a nation to say no to mediocrity and strike out on our own. Such a decision would restore the brittle faith in democracy in communities like mine around the UK. It would prove that they have a voice and that when they vote for change, the establishment will not block or ignore them. Brexit presents a huge opportunity to give people who have felt forgotten for so long the chance to believe in Britain, and that Government can work for them.