Let’s kill the childish lie that Labour supports the Tories on #Brexit
Supporters of the Liberal Democrats (amongst others) seem keen to promote a fiction that the Labour Party is supporting the Conservatives, and will vote for a ‘hard’ Brexit – including departure from the Single Market and Customs Union.
This is a load of hogwash. Anybody pushing this lie knows it is a lie – they just want you to accept it.
You can understand the reasoning. Millions voted for Brexit in the first place because they believed a lie that we pay £350 million per week into EU funds and the money could be used to support the NHS.
In fact, we pay about half as much, and benefit from EU investment schemes as a result, but the Vote Leave rascals weren’t bothered about letting the facts interfere with a good story!
Would you like the facts about Labour’s policy on Brexit? Here they are:
Sir Keir Starmer, Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, has devised six tests that any proposed exit deal must pass before Labour will support it. Those tests are as follows:
1. Does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU?
2. Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?
3. Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?
4. Does it defend rights and protections and prevent a race to the bottom?
5. Does it protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime?
6. Does it deliver for all regions and nations of the UK?
Look at test number 2.
No, it doesn’t demand that the UK remain within the Single Market and/or the Customs Union – but it does demand that the UK enjoy the “exact same benefits”, whether remaining in those two institutions or leaving them.
So it is clear that Labour will NOT vote with the Tories for a ‘hard’ Brexit that removes us from the EU, the CU and the SM and denies us the benefits that we had previously enjoyed.
Is that clear?
Spread the word.
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If the motion had inserted “as if” before ‘remain in the single market’ would all have been well? Seems to me JC is too eager to wield a big stick to represent the feelings of what must be by now, a majority of the e!ectorate who do not want a ‘hard’ #Brexit. This also chimes with his rejection of the pre-election offer of collaboration from the Green’s ‘Progressive Alliance’: he is too intent on Labour domination and ignoring the small but significant alternative anti-Tory feelings in HoC.
No – he was always going to reject pre-election offers of alliances. He wanted a Labour government, as does (by now) most of the UK.
Your opinion about Mr Corbyn is noted but it is not supported by the facts.
Look again at no. 2. The only way you’ll get the “exact same benefits” is by remaining in the single market and customs union and the only way you’ll get that is by remaining in the EU. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier has made that abundantly clear as have most of leaders of the major EU countries. Yet, JC keeps talking in terms of leaving the EU. Now which is it to be? Either we leave the EU and lose all say in its future development and spend 10+ years negotiating some sort of access or we rescind the A50 notice and remain in the EU and retain those benefits because the choice is as stark as that.
Is it really? Maybe it is, to you.
Brilliant. Exactly as Kier Starmer has said all along ,shame some of our Labour M.Ps
simply do not understand the finer detail and implication of Labour’s stance and recently voted against their own Party!
Trumped by the EU. Another lie crumbles, as the EU negotiates a free trade agreement with…Japan….the leave campaigners lose their last vestige of credibility, claims the UK could only pursue the freedoms of world commerce unimpeded after Brexit have disappeared into the pacific. So, where does that leave us!
So, when the final deal is brought to the house and it fails the tests, particularly No.2 – what then? What’s the Labour Plan for the future beyond that point? Merely Not supporting a deal is not enough. We, the electorate, need to know what plan Labour have to protect the UK.
Any idea that the UK can retain “exactly the same benefits” of the CU and SM without remaining within them is ludicrous and Barnier has said as much. So number 2 is already dead in the water and is a sham. This article is a deceit designed to paper over the cracks in the vain hope nobody will notice there isnt a coherent plan at all. Its going to take the EU offering the UK some quite stark choices before the Labour leadership actually comes clean on what it’s real intentions are. I am.not that gullible to swallow what is being said here and nor are many others as is clear from the comments. Try again.
The six tests are very clear; I can’t help the way you interpret them.
How do you, Mike Sivier, interpret ‘the exact same benefits’? Isn’t that, as you say, ‘very clear’? Isn’t it also clear that we cannot have these benefits without paying for membership of the club? And as we’re committed to leaving (if I understand correctly, Labour supports the will of the people), surely we should know now what the policy is when Labour votes against the deal?
Don’t you?
i think point of condition 2 is that if it can’t be negotiated to mean exactly that then labour won’t support leaving E.U. you can have an opinion either way on that but mine is labour are playing a strategic blinder and are dumping the brexit mess solely at the feet of the tories with the get out being condition two. i’m at least hopeful of this.