Neil G

Your unpatriotic attitude sickens me.

The hard Brexiters don’t need to get anything through Parliament in order for us to leave the EU. We are set to leave on March 29th next year, and if the British government, whoever it’s led by, can’t or won’t agree a deal with the EU27 and get it approved by Parliament by that date then we leave with no deal, and there’s nothing Parliament can do to stop it. I don’t see how the government falls before Brexit. The DUP would have to vote against it in a no confidence vote, even abstaining wouldn’t be enough as the Tories would still have a very slim majority.

I addressed that in my post. If/when May goes her successor will be chosen by the Tory membership, and since they are overwhelmingly hostile to the EU they’ll elect someone who’s more pro-Brexit than she is. If a candidate doesn’t make a clear and unambiguous commitment to see through Brexit and not call a second referendum, they ain’t getting elected.

Yes it is. It’s possible to be 100 per cent committed to leaving the EU and honouring the referendum result, and at the same time be completely committed to securing the least damaging arrangement outside the EU. There isn’t going to be a second referendum. May isn’t going to commit political suicide by calling one, the EU-phobic Tory membership aren’t going to elect another leader who might call one, Tory MPs aren’t going to give up their political careers by voting for one if Labour proposes it, and the DUP won’t let the government lose a confidence vote because they know a Tory overall majority or any kind of Labour win in an election will see them lose all their influence in Westminster. Give it up and get on the Rejoin bus.

No chance of winning the vote due to the makeup of Parliament, but if Labour really was committed to remaining it could have abstained and demanded a second referendum, on the grounds that the government had no mandate for the specific kind of Brexit it was seeking - May had already committed to leaving the single market and customs union. Once Labour announced it would enable Brexit regardless of the circumstances it made calling for a second referendum virtually impossible. Labour’s commitment to leaving has been unwavering since then, so I really don’t see how you can say their position is still to remain. They might have a long-term agenda to rejoin in the future, but if they do it’s secret and almost certainly not shared by the whole shadow cabinet, so is not discernible from the outside.

You described the position of the anti-Brexit campaign as “let’s stop it and ignore the result.” Even if you were aware that most of the campaigners are calling for a second referendum rather than simply cancelling Brexit, your choice of words echoed that of hard Brexiters who try to paint the call for a second referendum as anti-democratic. See my reply to Moctezuma re Labour not taking a firmer position on Brexit - I don’t think it’s smart or sustainable in the longer term. Angry beat me to it re the political makeup of the EU - left-wing anti-austerity politics is also on the rise across the continent, and Corbyn could boost it by staying as close to the EU as possible. The best way to protect employment rights in the UK is to stay in the single market. A Labour government will protect rights whether we’re in or out, but staying in will provide a safeguard against a future Tory government trying to dismantle them.

Not really sure that committing to staying in the single market qualifies as “hammering Brexit”, but assuming you think it would harm Labour at the ballot box then I don’t agree. Calling for a second referendum might well do that as it would be seen as disrespecting voters’ democratically expressed wishes, but committing to the single market needn’t. On the basis that Labour Leave voters’ main objection to the SM is freedom of movement, Labour could address this by stating that its policies of investing in skills and education and improving wages and working conditions would naturally bring immigration down, as it would tackle gaps in the labour market that are currently filled by foreign workers. (There is dispute about the level of impact that immigration has had on wages and conditions, but for the purposes of this pitch to voters it doesn’t matter - what matters is the message that to whatever extent the issue exists, if at all, the proposed measures will tackle it. It’s important that Labour adds the “if at all” caveat though.) This would be a side effect of policies that Labour would be implementing anyway, rather than a policy designed specifically to target immigration, and so would be more acceptable to Labour’s liberal pro-immigration vote. Corbyn has hinted at it a few times but hasn’t made it a consistent message, presumably because he doesn’t want to be seen to be validating anti-immigration sentiments. I think this is a mistake. Besides, Labour Leave voters don’t just care about immigration. They care just as much if not more about jobs, housing, education and the NHS. Corbyn can spell out how remaining in the single market will protect trade and tax revenues to pay for these, because voters didn’t get to hear that message clearly during the referendum campaign. Corbyn didn’t get a hearing then as the media were obsessed with the Tory split, but he would have a much more prominent platform this time. If the next election is going to be a straightforward choice between a Tory government committed to further austerity and a Labour government committed to creating jobs and improving public services for the majority, Labour should have faith in the power of its economic programme to trump voter concerns about immigration and free movement. There is polling evidence that suggests the fear of a soft Brexit stance damaging Labour is overstated: https://mobile.twitter.com/kevcunningham/status/967907521372540928 Labour should lead public opinion on Brexit, not follow it. Corbyn rightly denounced his predecessors’ timid triangulation over austerity and public spending, and had faith in his ability to change voters’ minds on the subject, when the accepted wisdom was that it would be electoral suicide to even try. He and Labour should take the same approach to the single market, while emphasising that staying in it is still respecting the result of the referendum. You talk in your second paragraph about Labour being non-committal over Brexit - that’s been an effective strategy up to now but it won’t be for much longer. Labour will have to make a decision on the single market come the next election, and it will have a better chance of winning voters round if it starts making the argument now.

How do you come to that conclusion? Labour whipped its MPs to vote to trigger Article 50 and then ran a general election campaign on a pledge to go through with Brexit, and that commitment hasn’t changed since then.

Aside from a few ultras like AC Grayling, people who want to prevent Brexit don’t want to just “stop it and ignore the result.” They want a second referendum once a final deal is agreed, or if the talks end without a deal, as that way people will know what they’re actually voting for, rather than just what they’re voting against as in the 2016 referendum. If the will of the people is still that we leave the EU, they’ll accept that. I’m not on the second referendum bus, not because I don’t think there should be one but because the parliamentary arithmetic and the timetable effectively make one impossible. I don’t think it’s fair or helpful to mischaracterise people’s views on stopping Brexit like that though, it’s the kind of language used by Rees-Mogg and the Daily Mail. Corbyn isn’t playing his hand as best he can. If he’s serious about protecting jobs and public services he could pledge to keep the UK in the single market and customs union permanently, which is the next best thing to staying in the EU. Instead of making a clear and unambiguous commitment to staying in both, he’s merely kept single market membership as an option and attached a condition to customs union membership that the EU will find very hard to accept. If he wanted to win the voters over to staying in the single market he’d have a better chance of doing that if he started making the case for it now.

Scotland will kick off, but May will ignore them safe in the knowledge they can’t do anything about it. She doesn’t have that option with the DUP. The furore won’t last long, May will disown the idea after a few days and we’ll be back to her urging people to think more creatively and Johnson and Fox berating the EU for its inflexibility.

For those who think left wing, Corbyn supporter and Momentum are all interchangeable. https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/jeremy-corbyn/news/93199/jennie-formby-confirms-she-running

Think the DUP’s reaction will be more pertinent.

Labour’s policy on the single market is to stay in for a transitional period of four years after Brexit, with the final position to be decided during that period and with ongoing permanent membership as an option. The policy will most likely have to be reviewed at some point, as unless there’s an early general election the Tories will almost certainly take us out of the single market by 2021 at the latest. In that event I’d have serious doubts as to whether the EU27 would be prepared to discuss with an incoming Labour government the possibility of the UK rejoining the single market only to potentially leave again a few years later. I doubt business and the unions would be too thrilled either. A couple of points on terminology: Firstly, although I’ve talked about membership of the single market outside the EU, I recognise that’s technically inaccurate and impossible, as Corbyn and you have said and Macron confirmed in his BBC interview - this is because the European Economic Area isn’t a membership organisation, as I only learned a few months back. In legal terms states are parties to the EEA agreement rather than members of the EEA. However I’ve used the term membership because it has a widely understood and accepted meaning, namely being outside the EU but party to the EEA agreement, and accepting the EU’s regulatory regime on goods and services without having any say on amendments to that regime, a la Norway and Iceland. Secondly, the term “access to the single market” is essentially meaningless in this context, as Stronts and I have pointed out previously. All it means is permission to sell to and buy from the EU, which is a privilege enjoyed by every country on Earth that’s not subject to EU trade sanctions.

I know that, not sure what it’s supposed to prove?

I can’t be bothered to check back, but if I have mistakenly conflated your posts with those of Stronts, who does seem genuinely obsessed with Momentum, then I apologise. Your reply to Sec did imply that you thought they were running the show though, and they’re not.

Meanwhile, more evidence emerges of Ben Bradley being a pathological liar. https://www.chad.co.uk/news/indian-call-centre-claim-was-made-up-councillor-admits-1-7779633/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Yeah, nice try Jairz. Notice how you cropped the mutilated corpse of Jim Murphy out of the photo.

Just because a Labour member supports the same leader and policies that Momentum support, doesn’t automatically mean that they’re a supporter of Momentum. Many Labour members support Corbyn primarily because they want a leader and party committed to fighting austerity and neoliberalism, and are less exercised by the grassroots community action and party democracy which are equally important parts of Momentum’s mission. Most will consider these things desirable but of secondary importance.

That’s no moon... that’s a non sequitur.

You brought up Momentum in response to Section’s post about the fight for control of the party, when he didn’t even mention them. Every time there’s a story about the left getting more influence in the party you and Stronts automatically reach for the M word, as if they’re an an all powerful force monopolising opinion and influence on the left.

I don’t doubt there are still lots of people within national governments and the EU institutions who support federalism, but the drive and the case for it is no longer strong enough to win the unanimous approval of 28 governments and their parliaments as well. Remember that PR is more common on the continent, meaning that at any one time many, perhaps most of the governments negotiating EU treaties and agreements won’t have majorities in their national parliaments, so trying to force through measures that clearly don’t have the backing of their populations will be nigh on impossible. There is now much more scepticism across the EU towards centralising power on both the right and the left, including among people who strongly support remaining in the EU, since the euro (the last big centralising project) failed to deliver the promised benefits for millions and took power out of the hands of national governments. The treatment of Greece was a clear case of bullying, but it was a different situation from the kind of discussions we’re talking about, because those ultimately making the decisions (the troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF, plus the German government as Greece’s biggest state creditor) weren’t accountable to those who were opposed to the decisions (the government and people of Greece) and so they could act without fear of being punished. By contrast, in intergovernmental votes in the Council of Ministers on transferring powers to the EU, most of the governments involved will have a large bloc of eurosceptic voters that they’ll have to answer to if they give away too much sovereignty. If we stay / rejoin, then in the unlikely event that we ended up having to continually veto moves towards more federalism that all the other member states’ governments were happy with, that would be ok and wouldn’t delegitimise our membership. We wouldn’t be being obstructionist and simply representing ourselves against the rest of the EU, we’d also be representing the millions of people across the continent of all political persuasions who don’t want further centralisation. This would force the EU to act pragmatically and look at more flexible solutions where different states can choose different levels of integration that they’re happy with and their people will accept, like Macron is suggesting. And at the end of the day, if that didn’t work and we found ourselves completely isolated and being criticised for holding up things for everyone else, and if it was politically unsustainable, we would always have the option of leaving again, only this time to stay closely tied economically via the SM and CU, and not mess around with the bullshit and bad faith over unachievable special deals that we’re seeing from this government. I don’t believe it would ever come to that though. The UK is genuinely valued and respected as a partner in the EU, and not just because we make a big contribution to the budget. When we act constructively and in good faith we have influence and can shape the debate in a way that protects our interests while not damaging those of other members. We did it over the single market, we did it over our opt-outs from the euro and Schengen, and even the concessions Cameron won before calling the referendum were pretty good, or at least would have been if we’d stayed - the reason they were belittled by so many voters was that he built up unrealistic expectations of what he could achieve. The image of Britain as a lone holdout, constantly being ganged up on by the rest and digging its heels in to prevent progress, is a myth perpetuated by the right wing press who want to convince people that the EU isn’t a natural or worthwhile place for us to be.

Guess again. Momentum currently has approximately 35,000 members. Corbyn won the votes of 161,000 Labour Party members in the 2016 leadership election, and since then another 150,000 people have joined the party, a big majority of whom will be Corbyn supporters. At most one in seven Corbyn supporters will be a member of Momentum. Those Labour Party members who are supportive of Momentum’s objectives but aren’t members of the organisation are not likely to be into the kind of hard-left political machinations you attribute to it.

I’ve got a question for you that I’d like you to answer. Do you think that everyone in Labour who supports the Corbyn project is a member or supporter of Momentum?

Mate, majority voting has been used right from the start of the EEC, before we even joined. Each increase in its use has had to be agreed by unanimity among all member states, and that will remain the case for any future increases. It’s worked well, the EC / EU has always favoured constructive discussion and consensus when it comes to votes in the Council of Ministers, so that common positions can be agreed in advance without the need for a minority to be overruled. It’s commendable that you haven’t swallowed the Brexiter bullshit about the ECJ and the single market and Britain being dictated to by unelected Brussels bureaucrats, but you’ve bought into an equally damaging fiction, that of blocs of states led by the biggest ganging up on smaller or individual states and forcing through rules the latter don’t want. That’s not how the EU works, it would have fallen apart long ago if that was the approach taken by members. As for disagreeing with the central aspirations of the EU, then assuming you mean greater federalism and centralisation, that ship has sailed. The penny has dropped that a one size fits all approach doesn’t work with 28 plus member states with widely varying political, economic and social traditions and circumstances. The UK isn’t the only country opposed to federalism, the Eastern European states for example spent decades under Soviet domination and aren’t going to sign over their sovereignty to an EU superstate. Even governments who might be inclined to further integration will refrain from pushing it as they’re wary of populist parties and movements, from the right and the left, that will punish them at the ballot box if they do. Macron has revived the idea of a multi-speed EU where different groups of states sign up to different levels of integration, and he’s suggested that this could make it easier for the UK to stay, or failing that rejoin. The goal of ever closer union for all EU member states is dead, and fear of it is a flimsy reason for wanting to leave if you’re ok with all the economic stuff.

It’s what people in Hull drink when they’re driving.