Kinnock in coalition call to stop Brexit ‘car-crash’
Labour MP Stephen Kinnock says a cross-party ‘coalition of common sense’ could help ensure Brexit does not lead to economic disaster. Political editor David Williamson looked at his proposal
STEPHEN Kinnock has urged Labour to reach out to Conservative MPs to construct a “coalition of common sense” to ensure that a “car-crash” Brexit does not lead to economic disaster.
The Aberavon MP argues it is a “dangerous and misleading pipe dream” to say Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU can be agreed by the 2019 deadline for the end of the Article 50 talks.
He says it is the time to “get real” and for people from different parties to join forces to ensure that the UK can keep trading with the EU on as close to present terms as possible.
Mr Kinnock favours the UK joining the European Economic Area – a group of countries including Norway which are not formal members of the EU but enjoy unfettered trading access – while a long-term deal is agreed.
With Prime Minister Theresa May stripped of her majority in the Commons, Mr Kinnock says Labour has a “unique opportunity” to build a cross-party alliance in favour of this option.
Writing in The New European, Mr Kinnock stressed the need for the country to buy itself some “breathing space” because it will not be able to agree the full details of the postBrexit relationship with the EU in the talks process which are only now getting underway.
He argued the final arrangements would “take a number of years to complete, not least because it will require ratification by 38 parliamentary chambers – from Brussels to Berlin, and from Warsaw to Wallonia.”
Warning of the implications of “crashing out of the EU in 2019 without a bridging deal”, he said this would lead to the “destruction of UK manufacturing, services and agriculture by a lethal cocktail of tariffs and red tape”.
Priorities for Mr Kinnock include keeping “tariff-free trade with the Single Market and membership of the Customs Union.”
He said: “It’s therefore clear that the British Government should propose that the UK should move out of the EU and into the European Economic Area (EEA), on April 1, 2019. The EEA is a ‘ready-made’ package that allows both unfettered access to the Single Market, while also providing the scope for curbs on Freedom of Movement.
“Transitional membership of the EEA would obviate the need for yet another set of negotiations, avoid the car-crash of a WTO Brexit, and would serve to give us the breathing room and manoeuvrability required to negotiate a comprehensive final state trade deal and managed migration deal that works for Britain.”
For this to happen, he argues that “work must now urgently begin to secure a parliamentary majority and a popular consensus in support of an EEA-based transition deal”.
Pushing for Labour MPs to take the lead, he said: “We should be reaching out now to the substantial number of Tory MPs (possibly up to half of their parliamentary party) who are horrified by the mess their Prime Minister has caused, and who are sick and tired of their leaders placing party before country.”
He says rank and file party members – especially young people – are ideally placed to “build a coalition of common sense across the country”.
Speaking on the BBC’s Westminster Hour, he again warned that trying to finish all negotiations by 2019 would be like doing the talks “with a gun held to our heads”.
He said: “Given the incredibly compressed time frame that we’re working towards, the idea of getting a bespoke, tailored transition deal done in addition to all of the very other challenging items on the agenda, and given the completely discredited Prime Minister that we’re dealing with who’s being held to ransom by the DUP and a totally spilt Parliamentary party on this with a lot of the Brextremists breathing down her neck, given that context, we are not going to be able to get a tailored bespoke transition deal and the obvious solution then is the EEA.
“It’s a ready-made package, everybody already understands it, it would give a certainty to business that we’re not reinventing the wheel.”
He claimed that within the EEA it could be possible to have an “emergency brake” on freedom of movement, adding: “The point with the transition deal is it buys you the time to negotiate really big ticket items which are the future trading relationship and issues such as free movement, and if we try and do that by March 2019 we’ll be doing it with a gun held to our heads.”
Conservative MP George Freeman told the BBC: “I think Stephen is right in that it’s very unlikely that we’re going to get the full comprehensive deal that this country and Europe mutually deserve, and I think a period in the EEA while we get to that deal may well work, but we’ve got to get an ambitious deal. It’s in Europe’s interest as well as ours.”