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Labour Party policy is to deliver Brexit. That policy is not backed by its members. Simple really. Corbyn is not leading for Labour members or Labour voters … some say this is because he is supporting the wishes of the "wider public", but others think that it is because he and his core team want Brexit. It sure looks increasingly like the later to me.
This is labour policy. In balack and white.
Below is the full text of the composite motion on Brexit passed by Labour conference 2018. The key pledge is that Labour vows to “support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote” should it not be able to secure a general election.
Conference welcomes Jeremy Corbyn’s determined efforts to hold the Tories to account for their disastrous negotiations. Conference accepts that the public voted to leave the EU, but when people voted to ‘take back control’ they were not voting for fewer rights, economic chaos or to risk jobs. Conference notes the warning made by Jaguar Land Rover on 11.9.18, that without the right deal in place, tens of thousands of jobs there would be put at risk.
Conference notes that workers in industries across the economy in ports, food, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, energy, chemicals, in our public services and beyond are worried about the impact of a hard Brexit on livelihoods and communities.
Conference believes we need a relationship with the EU that guarantees full participation in the Single Market. The Brexit deal being pursued by Theresa May is a threat to jobs, freedom of movement, peace in Northern Ireland and the NHS. Tory Brexit means a future of dodgy trade deals and American-style deregulation, undermining our rights, freedoms and prosperity. This binds the hands of future Labour governments, making it much harder for us to deliver on our promises. Conference notes Labour has set six robust tests for the final Brexit deal. Conference believes Labour MPs must vote against any Tory deal failing to meet these tests in full.
Conference also believes a no-deal Brexit should be rejected as a viable option and calls upon Labour MPs to vigorously oppose any attempt by this Government to deliver a no-deal outcome. Conference notes that when trade unions have a mandate to negotiate a deal for their members, the final deal is accepted or rejected by the membership. Conference does not believe that such important negotiations should be left to government ministers who are more concerned with self-preservation and ideology than household bills and wages.
Stagnant wages, crumbling services and the housing crisis are being exacerbated by the government and employers making the rich richer at working people’s expense, and not immigration. Conference declares solidarity and common cause with all progressive and socialist forces confronting the rising tide of neo-fascism, xenophobia, nationalism and right wing populism in Europe.
Conference resolves to reaffirm the Labour Party’s commitment to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 including no hard border in Ireland.
Conference believes that there is no satisfactory technological solution that is compliant with the Good Friday Agreement and resolves to oppose any Brexit deal that would see the restoration of a border on the island of Ireland in any form for goods, services or people.
Should Parliament vote down a Tory Brexit deal or the talks end in no-deal, Conference believes this would constitute a loss of confidence in the Government. In these circumstances, the best outcome for the country is an immediate General Election that can sweep the Tories from power.
If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote. If the Government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.
This should be the first step in a Europe-wide struggle for levelling-up of living standards, rights and services and democratisation of European institutions Labour will form a radical government; taxing the rich to fund better public services, expanding common ownership, abolishing anti-union laws and engaging in massive public investment.
Labour Party policy is to deliver Brexit
No its not. That is a simple falsehood. Read the above.
Stop posting that fudge. You yourself say it is fudge. We can all see what the leadership are doing, and we can read their own words about what they are doing. If you agree with them, then go ahead and start showing your support by voting for them.
In the telegraph they describe what's going on as an anti Brexit alliance.
Yes we can see what the leadership are doing and its following that fudge. Why invent a position that is so patently untrue?> Use the truth to beat them with if you want. Why invent things?
that fudge is labour policy - like it or not that is the policy.
the idea that Corbyn and Milne are somehow going to faciliate a hard brexit is just sheer nonsense. And yes - I have read what they say in the leadership indeed posted a bunch of quotes further up
Why you feel it necessary to invent totally spurious things is beyond me.
Corbyn and Milne do not control policy. Starmer is leading the cross party talks. If Corbyn goes against policy then he will be out in five minutes.
Quotes from Corbyn during and since the referendum capaign
He added, "there is a strong socialist case for staying in the European Union, just as there is also a powerful socialist case for reform and progressive change in Europe."
Over the years I have continued to be critical of many decisions taken by the EU and I remain critical of its shortcomings, from its lack of democratic accountability to the institutional pressure to deregulate or privatise public services.
So Europe needs to change.
But that change can only come from working with our allies in the EU. It's perfectly possible to be critical and still be convinced we need to remain a member.
Corbyn urged British voters to accept the EU "warts and all.
"
In June 2016, in the run-up to the EU referendum, Corbyn said that there was an "overwhelming case" for staying in the EU. In a speech in London, Corbyn said "We, the Labour Party, are overwhelmingly for staying in, because we believe the European Union has brought investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment".
And yet here we are, three years on and still talking about red unicorns...
If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.
What if they CAN get a GE? What will the Labour manifesto say then?
Well done TJ- some people on here sound like Mark Francois with there paranoid delusions of the Labour Party- Pinkos, commies, dictatorship etc.
Proof will be in the pudding, I cannot see anything being agreed that will get through parliament unless it has a vote attached but even then it will struggle.
In June 2016
And then the party voted for Art. 50. And those Labour MPs who didn't were refered to as rebels.
Judge by acts and deeds not hollow good words. The first rule of choosing who to vote for.
slowoldman- that is the question that is hard for Labour to answer right now. I hope they just say **** it remain and Tories say **** it hard Brexit then we can vote which way we want. Saying that maybe the Lib Demswill give us the full spectrum of choice.
Tories: Hard Brexit
Labour: Soft
Libs: Remain
(Labour would not do well)
Freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union. Britain’s immigration system will change, but Labour will not scapegoat migrants nor blame them for economic failures.
From labours brexit policy page, on their website linked above. Without Freedom of movement we cannot be in the single market, the EU have always been clear about that. Pretending anything else is just a fantasy.
The sad thing is, while acknowledging that immigrants have been scapegoated, they still promise to enact a policy built on that very lie.
slowoldman- that is the question that is hard for Labour to answer right now. I hope they just say **** it remain
With Corbyn as party leader?
If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.
What if they CAN get a GE? What will the Labour manifesto say then?
The time for that is past more than likely but a manifesto would be produced by democratic means - special conference or similar IIRC. Certainly this weird mysterious cabal of hard outies will not be able to write it.
Matthew Pennycook MP
@mtpennycook
I would have thought that this was entirely self-evident. As I said from the despatch box on 9 April, given where we now are there is a clear requirement to seek “public approval for any agreement that might emerge at this late hour by means of a confirmatory referendum”.
Labour’s stance is caused by duplicity and trying to walk both sides of the street at the same time. What the Tories are doing quite well is bringing that into focus to try to draw them one way or the other before Brexit actually happens and turns into a total fiasco that sinks the Conservative party once and for all.
Labour are just as duplicitous and split as the Tories and they can’t come right out and emphasize that this shitshow is a mostly Tory problem, because a lot of their more, ahem, ‘nationalistic’ supporters will have a shit-fit.
Both main parties are in thrall to xenophobes and bigots that they cannot afford to ‘lose’. However the Tories will lose their bigots to Farage and the like, would Labour bigots vote Tory given the history in many of those constituencies? I had hoped that Labour would make the calculation that they wouldn’t, but it seems not.
"if we can't get a general election" well they haven't. So where is the support for all the options? 'All the options including a people's vote' should be a core of this negotiation they are in right now.
Newspapers are suggesting there are about 80 labour MPs who won't back the Tory/lab deal without a confirmatory referendum
Didn't Corbyn tried to get a GE with a vote of no confidence.
He failed so why not a second referendum?
Indeed. Which is why any deal ( not that there will be a cross party deal) will have to have a second referendum. As corbyn, Starmer, Watson have all said.
Even for those credulous enough to believe there was a real prospect of Labour “bailing” out the government, as the shadow trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, has described it, the apparent landing zone takes the political debate no further on from where it started.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/06/emerging-labour-tory-compromise-brexit-mirage
There is not going to be a cross party deal. There never was a chance given that May cannot move far eonough to labours position and carry any of her party and Labour cannot move towards the tory position and carry enough of its MPs.
The whole exercise is a pr one and one of the blame game. Note all the " deals nearly there" has come from Tories - and tories not involved in the negitations
There is not going to be a cross party deal.
Perhaps she can go back in time to 2017 to just after her catastrophic election and work something out with Labour back then?
That would have been the time to do it. Or immediately after the referendum. Set up a cross party commission to come up with the nearest they can to a workable deal. Now? Too much water under the bridge, too many entrenched positions, parliamentary discipline has gone.
Of course if any deal is offered subject to a second referendum it matters not a jot what the deal is because a second ref will be for remain.
Both May and Corbyn are equally as opposed to a second referendum as each other, as they both want Brexit ‘over the line’ They’re both Brexiteers after all. One reluctant (though quite a convert), the other a life-long enthusiast
I doubt they’ve the numbers to do that. But it won’t stop them both trying this week. Corbyn will try and three line whip Mays Deal through with not a chance of a confirmatory referendum. It just remains to be seen how many of his own MPs tell him to **** right off.
Our (non- PFJ) labour MP, who’s obviously got wind of what’s afoot (I suspect he’s better informed than us), has just tweeted that he absolutely will not support any deal not involving a second public vote.
He’s clearly expecting a stitch up too. He’s hardly alone in that.
Looks like this is shaping up to the week Magic Grandad finally tears the Labour Party in half. All to support the ultimate right wing project.
He clearly doesn’t do irony
Yes. Basically that ^^^
Binners - really? Its a load of piffle. corbyn is not even leading the negotiation!
There will not be a deal. corbyns position and Mays are too far apart.
Tell you what Binners - I'll do a forfeit if there is even a deal presented. Pic of me with a troll on my head?>
You really think they are going to risk the EU elections? The Tories are going to lose big time to the Kippers and Labour will lose big time to LibDems or Greens. If one thing has been clear from the last (god help us) nearly three years of nonsense is that the two main parties will always act in self interest when their backs are to the wall.
I tell you three times. There will not be a cross party deal. Its been obvious for a while. Its now all about whether each side can palm the blame off on the other.
There is nothing available that will get anything close to a majority in parliament. Any mention of any sort of a customs union will mean almost no tories vote for it. a permanent customs union is the minimum for labour. anything without a second ref will have less than 1/3 of the labour party vote for it. If May moves all the way to the labour position then there might be a good few labour vote for it - and not a single tory.
the parliamentary arithmetic does not add up to any chance of a deal being passed in the commons.
Just because it won’t pass, doesn’t mean they won’t try it. It’s obvious that’s what they’re going to do this week. Purely for joint self-preservation in ducking EU elections where they’ll both be butchered. Self-serving trumps the national interest for both of them
Remember: the vast majority of Corbyn’s own MPs passed a vote of no confidence in him.
What difference did it make? He just carried on like it never happened
He’s probably got Dianne Abbott doing the maths on this one too
Come off it Binners. there is one and only one scenario I can see where a deal could be put to parliament - if May agrees a permanent customs union and a second ref.
Corbyn is far too smart to put a bad deal to parliament and one he knows will not pass.
But you know the most ridiculous thing about your strange idea? Starmer is leading the negotiation. Not Corbyn.
A vast majority of his MPs? really?
Pic of me with a troll on my head?>
Me, me, me, me, can I fart when I'm sitting on your head? 😉
Remember: the vast majority of Corbyn’s own MPs passed a vote of no confidence in him.
What difference did it make? He just carried on like it never happened
No he acknowledged it. It was non-binding.
Leaders are voted for by the membership.
There was a leadership challenge and he won.
Good christ, you should know this by now.
It was non-binding.
🙂 🙂 🙂
Corbyn is too smart...
No he acknowledged it. It was non-binding.
Gah, beaten to it!
So he knows which advisory opinion polls to ignore, then?!
So come on then. I bet that there is no deal made. BInners thinks a stitch up. Only one of us can be right. I have offered a forfeit if I am wrong. what you got binners?
As in line with betting on previous football threads (which you won’t have read) I’ll bet you a tenner Greggs gift card that Corbyn tries to whip whatever deal him and May have cooked up through Parliament before the weeks out
Tj and binners ,what do you think the eventual outcome will be?
Haven’t a clue. You’d have to be mental to bet on actual outcomes, but Magic Grandad will definitely try and whip his MPs to get a deal through this week, so he can avoid EU elections.
Are we on then Uncle Jezza? Think of the steak bakes you can buy me? 😃
This is more like it, people putting their money where their mouth is and their mouth gets fed too, a bit like having cake and eating it.
🙂