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Keir Starmer is preparing to risk a breakdown in the party by supporting Labor’s weight in a Brexit deal if last-minute negotiations are successful in the next few days.
In what he hopes is a signal to Red Wall voters that the party has listened to them, several Labor sources said Starmer, and Cabinet Office shadow minister Rachel Reeves, who have been in contact with MPs on the issue, are willing to impose a line whip in support of a deal, subject to details.
They have rejected the idea of abstaining or giving MPs a free vote, fearing it would suggest that Labor has not assimilated the lessons of what it learned in last December’s general election.
Negotiations for the Brexit deal are in their final decisive days, and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier returned to London on Saturday to resume face-to-face talks despite his threat to withdraw earlier in the week.
If a deal can be reached, the prime minister is expected to take it to parliament before Christmas, most likely introducing the future relations bill that the Cabinet Office has been working on for several months.
That could allow Labor to signal their lack of enthusiasm by tableting amendments, although they would have little chance of passing.
Boris Johnson’s majority in 80 means the deal is highly likely to go through even if Labor abstained, but Starmer and his team believe the consequences of a no-deal exit from the transition period would be too dire for the party to stay on the sidelines. .
“If you want something to happen in parliament, the best way to do it is by voting for it,” said a shadow cabinet member with knowledge of Starmer’s thinking.
However, they are likely to avoid language such as “supporting” the deal. Starmer is also expected to deliver a speech laying out more details about how Labor sees Britain’s future place in the world.
Even many of the MPs who fought hard during the 2017-19 parliament for a popular vote are expected to join the leadership, fearing the dire consequences of a no-deal exit on January 1.
But some MPs fear that Starmer’s team, led by former Darlington MP Jenny Chapman, is too focused on “fighting the last war” by directing all their political messages to disgruntled Brexit voters on the red wall.
They are concerned that support for a Johnson deal will leave Labor unable to hold the government to account for the economic consequences of Brexit and will harm the party in Scotland by allowing Nicola Sturgeon to rally the ‘Westminster parties’ on the issue. . “The SNP will be crazy,” said a Labor insider.
However, Starmer’s allies reject the idea that they will be blamed if Brexit is economically disastrous, noting that while Labor supported entry to the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM) in 1990, it was the conservative government. , and not John Smith or Gordon Brown. whom voters held accountable when the UK collapsed two years later.
Members of the Love Socialism Hate Brexit parliamentary group expressed a different concern, who defended the revision of the 2016 referendum in the last parliament on the left, and Reeves recently addressed them in a zoom meeting.
Some members of this group are concerned that the agreement will set the pattern for future trade deals over the next decade and beyond, causing a race to the bottom on rights and regulations.
Norwich South MP Clive Lewis, who resigned instead of voting for Article 50, said: “It’s likely to be a framework agreement, which means there will be huge holes in it. That’s, in effect, a near-blank check and potentially ties Labor’s hands for 10-15 years.
“It’s not just about our relationship with Europe, it’s about regulatory realignment and if we end up with a neoliberal economy in the style of the United States, about workers’ rights, about the environment, about food standards. For people like me, it’s a matter of principle. “
Several members of the group, recently relaunched under the name Love Socialism, in recognition that the possibility of stopping Brexit has passed, have minor roles on the Starmer front, including Alex Sobel, Marsha De Cordova and Rachel Maskell.
Meanwhile, the irony of Starmer, who systematically dismantled Theresa May’s Brexit deal with her ‘six tests’, now whipping MPs into backing a deal that will leave the UK out of the single market and customs union, not lost for some of his Labor. colleagues.
A former Red Wall MP who lost his seat in 2019 said: “I am completely angry that the same group of people who passed smart technical bills a year ago are now the same people who say: ‘It’s very important that we support a deal . ‘ When we advocated much softer treatment, we were basically hung up as supporters of the conservatives. “
Barnier, prior to his return to London on Saturday / today, informed the EU ambassadors that “it was clear to him that things are completely stagnant,” an EU source said.
Barnier’s travel plans appeared to be “driven more by the desire at the highest levels of the European Commission to negotiate to the bitter end than by actual progress on the ground,” the source added.
In turn, David Frost, who leads the UK negotiating team, offered his own pessimistic assessment in a statement on social media, as both parties sought to obtain a final concession to make deals.
“Some people ask me why we keep talking,” Frost tweeted. “My answer is that it is my job to do everything possible to see if the conditions for a deal exist. It is late, but it is still possible to reach an agreement and I will continue talking until it is clear that it is not. “
