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Three Labor MPs have resigned as junior leaders after defying Keir Starmer and refusing to vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
Just hours after the deal closed on Christmas Eve, Starmer announced that he would whip his party for support, despite criticizing the deal’s essence as “thin.”
But some Labor MPs were uncomfortable backing a deal they believed would hurt the economy and feared it would be difficult to criticize the deal if the party backed it.
Tonia Antoniazzi, MP for Gower, Helen Hayes, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, and Florence Eshalomi, MP for Vauxhall, resigned from their front-row positions to abstain while MPs voted on legislation implementing the agreement.
In a statement on her website, Hayes, who was a shadow minister in the Cabinet Office, said: “This is bad business that will make our country poorer. It will cost jobs, it will undermine our security, it will weaken our position in the world, it will compromise worker rights and environmental protections, and it will limit opportunities for our children and grandchildren. “
In all, 36 Labor MPs abstained from voting, including staunch anti-Brexit activists Stella Creasy and Neil Coyle, and leftists like Rebecca Long-Bailey and Diane Abbott.
Only one Labor MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a Streatham MP, went further and voted against the deal.
During Wednesday’s debate, Starmer strongly pointed out that voting against the deal would be to approve a no-deal exit from the Brexit transition period.
He said: “The choice before the house today is perfectly simple. Do we implement the treaty that has been agreed with the EU or not? If we choose not to, the result is clear: we leave the transition period without an agreement. Without an agreement on security, trade, fishing. No protection for our manufacturing sector, for agriculture, for countless businesses. And without a foothold to build a future relationship with the EU ”.
Several high-level Labor MPs, including Brexit committee chair Hilary Benn, spoke in support of Starmer’s position, despite their reservations about Johnson’s deal. But others, including Clive Lewis, Diane Abbott and Kevin Brennan, said they could not follow Starmer’s lead and vote for the legislation, which was rushed through both houses of parliament in a single day.
Brennan rejected Starmer’s characterization of the vote as agreement versus no agreement. “While I understand the desire to move forward, I simply do not understand why it is necessary for those who believe this is bad business to vote for it and dip their fingertips into this abject failure of national ambition,” he said.
Lewis lashed out at the lack of parliamentary scrutiny of the deal, saying: “Doesn’t the restoration of sovereignty extend to democratic oversight of the elected members of this chamber?”
He called it “false framing, used to ransom this house” to suggest that opposing it would mean not accepting any deals. “Let us be clear about what is being asked of this House today: that a blank check be issued to this government to implement an agreement that lacks democratic oversight,” he said.
Creasy said in a statement on his website: “Whatever Labor does, the Conservatives will cry badly, suggesting that any attempt to examine the deal after it is passed reveals a genuine intention to fight Brexit. The road ahead will be rocky for all concerned. To abstain is not to refuse to be part of that fight, but to refuse to do so on the terms of the prime minister. “
Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labor leader, also declined to support the deal. “I cannot vote for this agreement, which this government will use to reduce rights and protections, and increase the sale of our vital public services. Instead we need to break away from failed race-to-bottom policies and build a UK that puts people before private profit, ”he tweeted.
Corbyn is now sitting as an independent after the whip was removed for comments questioning the scale of the anti-Semitism problem in the Labor Party under his leadership.
Caroline Lucas, a Green Party MP, said Starmer’s insistence that voting against the deal meant backing a no-deal Brexit was ridiculous. “Whatever the opposition parties do, this government has a majority of 80 and this agreement will be approved,” he said. “Now more than ever, people deserve principled leadership based on conviction, not party political calculus.”
She said she was unwilling to agree to a deal that “cuts British jobs, marginalizes our service sector, undermines hard-won protections for the environment, worker and consumer rights, and turns Kent into a Diesel-stained monument to arrogance and politics. Myopia. “
