As Brendan O’Neill explains, the Labour Party knows exactly what it wants as far as Brexit is concerned:
I wish people would stop saying Labour’s Brexit policy is confusing. It is actually incredibly straightforward. Labour will kill Brexit. It will block the enactment of the largest democratic vote in UK history and ensure that we do not leave the EU in any meaningful way. It could not be clearer: Labour will betray millions of its working-class voters, its own history of Euroscepticism, and the values of Jeremy Corbyn’s own hero Tony Benn, by subverting British democracy and keeping us in the EU against the people’s will.
Anyone who doubts this – or anyone who is still, inexplicably, confused about Labour Brexit’s policy – only needed to listen to Crobyn’s comments at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on Monday. Corbyn first assured the assembled capitalists that he is not anti-business. Then he assured them that if he were prime minister, no harm would come to their beloved neoliberal institution, the European Union. Corbyn essentially promised the gathered bosses that he would override the stupid plebs’ democratic wishes and keep Britain entangled in the EU.
He said Labour’s policy is to get a good Brexit deal with the EU and then put it to the people in a confirmatory vote – otherwise known as a second referendum. This referendum would, in his words, be a choice between the “sensible deal” struck by Labour and fully remaining in the EU. That “sensible deal”, by the way, would include “a customs union, close Single Market relationship, and guarantees of rights, standards and protections”. So we’d have a choice between remaining and … remaining. A customs union, Single Market links, and EU-guaranteed rights and standards – that is, immovable EU regulations – do not not add up to Leave. By any stretch of the imagination. With complete contempt for the democratic will, and the basic principle of democratic choice, a Labour government would say to us: “You can stay in the EU or you can stay in the EU. It’s your choice.”
This is not confusing. Labour would pursue a backroom coup against Brexit. It would not only renege on the democratic vote to leave – it would then remove the option of leaving entirely from the ballot paper in a second referendum. It would deprive the British people of the thing that the largest number of us in the democratic history of this country called for: a break from the EU. Labour MPs, activists and bureaucrats would engage in a bloodless coup against the people’s will.
