Labour and Europe: don’t mention the ‘B-word’

Liverpool: The Unite Union leader Sharon Graham told Nick Robinson this morning that 63% of red wall voters wanted to see the energy industry nationalised. A more startling poll finding from a Deltapoll just published is that 69% of red wall voters (as well as other voters in seats Tories won from Labour in 2019) now think that Brexit has damaged their living standards.

Ms Graham, a senior figure in the British political elite, joins other union leaders, Labour party chiefs, the CBI and the BBC in refusing to mention the growing disillusion with Brexit and the UK’s European policy. Their motto is: don’t mention the “B-word”.

This is little different from the justified complaint about Britain’s political class during the years of Britain being in the EU: that politicians, once in power and irrespective of party, stopped listening to voters’ concerns over Europe.

Tony Blair promised a referendum on the EU constitution in 2004. France and The Netherlands held one and voted it down. Britain didn’t. It might have been better to have fought and lost that referendum in 2005, as the French and the Dutch did.

It would have been a wake up call to the academics, diplomats, MPs, CBI bosses, union leaders, journalists and others who foolishly imagined the 2016 Brexit plebiscite would be a walk in the park.

Today, once again, there is a widening gap between the citizens and the politicians on Europe. Every opinion poll this year has shown an increasing number who now think Brexit was bad for Britain. Among first-time voters, the sense that their parents and grandparents made a huge mistake seven years ago has led to 90 per cent saying that the decision hurts their generation.

Deltapoll’s red wall Brexit poll was unveiled by Stella Creasy at one of the Labour Party conference’s biggest fringe events – on Brexit — yesterday. Ms Creasy is chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, now the fastest growing inner-party organisation, with 46 of its supporters chosen as Labour Party candidates in winnable seats for the next election.  In addition to the 69 per cent of voters in seats Tories won from Labour in 2019 who say Brexit has pushed down living standards,  53 per cent blame Brexit for the state of the economy.

In a surprising finding, 52% support free movement for British and EU citizens provided those moving between the Continent and Britain have a job.

In other recent polls, more than 50 per cent say that if a new referendum were held they would vote  to go back into the EU. To be sure, polls are not votes and the 2016 decision was validated in general elections in 2017 and 2019.  Businesses point out the damage being done, not so much by the 2016 vote, but the harsh and excessive interpretation put on it once Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson plucked from the Scotch whisky industry a former Foreign Office official, David Frost, whose highest FCO posting had been to Denmark. Johnson gave him a peerage and sent him off to do battle with the world’s most experienced trade negotiators in Brussels.

Poor Frost came back with the worst ever trade Treaty in British history. In 1373 Edward III negotiated the first such Treaty with the King of Portugal. This began the process of London creating a centuries-old network of Treaty law to create the legal framework for trade with other nations.

Yet our political class — Conservative, Labour and LibDem — refuse even to discuss the problems caused by Lord Frost’s failure to negotiate an intelligent Brexit. They are not entirely to be blamed. Even the faintest hint that the Frost Treaty is flawed brings a hurricane of hysteria from ageing Brexit warriors like Nigel Farage and their media epigones, claiming that this means Rejoin.

This claim is nonsense and has been repeatedly disavowed by Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey, as well as by all pro-European Tories. No one in any EU capital wants a country back that is still so divided on Europe, with a populist media and demagogic tribunes denouncing partnership across the Channel.

But public opinion, economic Britain and civil society — above all tomorrow’s Brits — want some acknowledgment by the political elites that Brexit isn’t working and can’t be made to work on its present foundations.

Before 2016 an ever widening gap opened on Europe between politicians and people. It is just as wide today. Our political leaders in public or at their party conferences, as well as key media influencers like the BBC, refuse to discuss Brexit in a grown-up way.

Denis MacShane was the Minister for Europe. His 2015 book Brexit. How Britain Will Leave Europe, predicted the referendum outcome.

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