Let me try and explain by quoting from his speech to the Scottish Party Conference last week. It shouldn’t be necessary to quote him so heavily but so many progressives are refusing to listen to what he has actually said and preferring to believe that he is actually anti Brexit or wanting a very mild Brexit. His actual position is based on naïve hopes that no progressive would allow Theresa May to get away with. Consider the following:
“we will not accept an off the peg model for our future relationship with the EU .. we must find our own model that works for everybody in the UK.”
That is identical to May’s position and on the face of it might seem fair enough. So might his next statement:
“we would seek to negotiate a new customs union with the EU after Brexit to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland”
Once again at first sight there is nothing much to disagree with. An admirable ambition. Then he went on to outline his expectations of how this would all work:
“the option of a new UK customs union with the EU would need to ensure that the UK has a say in future trade deals. Labour would not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others.”
Here we begin to encounter really serious problems. That is exactly what the EU has said can never be on offer from the very first day. If they offer that then they abolish the EU, because a country outside the EU would get all of the benefits of membership without having to follow the rules. The fantasy that this can be achieved is identical to the illusion that May is currently peddling hard in a desperate attempt to unite her party. If anyone out there can find a single speech by any of the EU negotiators saying that such a deal can ever remotely be on the cards then this policy might make sense. In the absence of that it leads us gradually into leaving the Single Market and a jobs lost Brexit.
Corbyn’s speech doesn’t end there. He goes on to say that “we would want to negotiate protections or exemptions where necessary from current rules and directives that push privatisation and public service competition or restrict our ability to intervene to support domestic and local industry and business or undermine attempts to protect rights at work”
Rarely have I read a more confused jumble of correct and incorrect assertions. There are no rules in the EU that push privatisation. Indeed, several of the UK’s supposedly privatised industries like rail are actually run by nationalised companies run by the French or German state. The situation is the exact opposite. Outside the EU we would need new trade deals. Those trade deals all come with international courts of arbitration. That means corporate lawyers telling the UK government what it is allowed to do. So the risk of a future government signing up to a trade deal that allows US health companies to bid for the easy bits of NHS work are much greater outside the EU. Unless you believe that Labour will be in power for ever and the Conservatives wouldn’t rush to sign a TTIP style deal the day they next get back in.
Much the same applies to the statement that Corbyn would need to avoid the EU undermining UK rights at work. Once again the reality is the exact opposite. The EU single market is big enough for the members of it to be able to insist that no one falls below certain levels of rights and that everyone keeps above certain minimum standards. There is not a single word in EU law requiring a member government to lower those rights. Any member can exceed them at their will. Leaving the EU doesn’t open up a glorious opportunity to abolish zero hours contracts. The British government has always had the power to do that but lacked the will under both Labour, Coalition and Conservative governments. Leave the EU and the Rees Moggs of this world are free to lower standards to their hearts content. Provided they haven’t signed up to the Single Market and all its requirements. A Corbyn government might protect & improve those standards but sooner or later a Conservative government would be free to race us to the bottom.
The one correct part of Corbyn’s statement is that the EU does restrict measures to intervene on behalf of UK industries. Sensibly there are rules that prevent one member nation subsidising its products in order to sell more cheaply to the EU than any of its competitors. That rule has existed since right back to the days when the EU was beginning life as an iron, steel and coal customs deal. The EU cannot possibly agree to change it. What is possible inside the EU is to offer sensible support to universities to research new products and several forms of more sophisticated help for firms to do things like cutting their costs by reducing their consumption of energy. We can do that and more already from inside the EU. So a progressive industrial strategy is perfectly possible as an EU member. In what world is the EU ever going to allow the UK to subsidise its industries more directly and then export those subsidised products tariff free to the EU?
This means that Corbyn either has to dump a major plank of his policy – subsidies to tradition trade union dominated heavy industry. Or else he has to take us out of the single market and we get all the customs paperwork and charges and the Northern Ireland border disputes that most progressives hate.
The final thing he had to say last week in Scotland was the very sensible statement that “the UK could not accept a situation where we are subject to all EU rules and EU law, yet had no say in making those laws. That would leave us as mere rule-takers and isn’t a tenable position for democracy”. Unfortunately, that is exactly where his policies lead us. Either we accept EU rules but have no say or we are outside the single market and into a jobs wrecked Brexit.
At this point I need to restate that I like a lot of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies and I would prefer Labour to win the next election than the Conservatives. I don’t, however, see why that preference requires me to be silent about those of his policies that are leading us to disaster. Many in the Labour party have been telling progressives from every other party to stand aside, vote Labour and stop voicing honest criticism because beating the Tories is so important. Even if you disagree with every word of criticism I’ve made of Corbyn’s Brexit strategy it should be clear that there is a progressive case to be made that it is wrongheaded and a very large number of honest people think it is better to go for a simple strategy of campaigning for a second referendum and Remaining. A policy that has been adopted by the Greens, the Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid, SDLP and Sinn Fein.
Every other progressive party in the country is campaigning to stay the EU in as the only realistic option. It would be good if Labour could listen and learn but if they persist with believing in fantasies that lead inevitably to a hard Brexit then the very least they need to understand is that none of the other progressive parties can possibly meekly stand aside and back something they think is so fundamentally damaging. The days when there was one party which was the one monolithic correct interpreter of the needs of the working classes ought to be long gone. Time for Labour to accept PR and to offer a genuine progressive alliance instead of insisting we all must line up behind flawed policies.