Tuesday, 27 February 2018 ()
Is Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to stay in a customs union with the EU realistic?*Alison McGovern, Labour MP for Wirral South and former shadow city minister, says YES.*
For anyone who follows the daily grind that is Brexit, it has been clear for a while now that the Irish border and the Good Friday Agreement pose an intractable problem for the Prime Minister’s hard Brexit. It is widely agreed that the obvious solution is to stay in the customs union. Jeremy Corbyn’s plan is the logical choice to solve the biggest immediate problem.
The Labour party wants a Brexit that protects jobs and ends austerity. The question is how best to do it. The government’s own Brexit papers show that if we rip the country too far away from our current the terms of trade with the EU, our economic future is in jeopardy.
If we want to invest in our schools and hospitals, as voters kept asking about at the election, we need to stay in the Single Market as well. For our economic future, to safeguard jobs, and protect workers’ rights, Labour must commit to the Single Market.
*Read more*: Jeremy Corbyn says Labour would seek a customs union with the EU
*Diane James, independent MEP, says NO.*
Jeremy Corbyn is caught between a rock and a hard place – his protectionist instincts lead him to support full Brexit to support British workers, but huge factions of his party wish to stay members of the EU.
So Corbyn has opted for a fudge: leave the EU, yet stay in the customs union. While this may temporarily dampen down dissent, it is a clearly unsustainable position. Staying in the customs union keeps the UK subject to rules that it cannot influence, yet will be legally bound to enforce.
Moreover, the UK will be unable to support developing nations that will continue to be frozen out of the Single Market (unless they sign up to an Economic Partnership Agreement where local markets are flooded by EU goods, crushing competition), thus angering the Labour membership.
Corbyn has taken the cynical option. He knows that being outside the EU is incompatible with being in the customs union. He also knows that, in the long run, this will rip the Labour party irrevocably apart – the same problem that the Conservative party is facing.
Are we witnessing a beginning of the end of two-party politics? Hope so.
*Read more*: Corbyn’s Brexit policy is a messy compromise
