LABOUR attempts to settle the party’s position on Brexit has led to angry splits in Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench, with two of the opposition’s most senior members openly contradicting each other.
Delegates at the conference in Liverpool will today debate a motion on whether or not to back a “people’s vote”.
It’s expected to get the backing of the majority of party members in the hall, but there is confusion about what it is actually being debating, and what would be on the ballot paper of any new referendum.
More than 100 local Constituency Labour Parties submitted motions calling for a “people’s vote” on Brexit.
After a heated, occasionally bad-tempered and gruelling five hour meeting late on Sunday night, delegates from trade unions and local parties drafted a two-page motion, with the key sentence reading: “If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.”
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said the party’s preference was for another snap election, but he said if that didn’t happen then the public vote should not be a re-run of 2016’s referendum, but a choice between whatever deal Theresa May manages to get from Brussels or no deal at all.
The decision to Brexit, he insisted, must be respected.
However, Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary insisted that one of the options on any second referendum vote must be for the UK to remain in the EU.
The shadow chancellor told BBC Radio 5 Live: “We argued for Remain in the past but we lost that vote so we have to respect that. All the polling that we have seen is that the country is still pretty split down the middle.
“My big worry is that if we go for a referendum which is seen as just a simple re-run we could divide the country again, we could get almost the same result — or if it’s slightly different that people demand another referendum.”
He added that the referendum “opened up all sorts of xenophobic feelings and a rise of the right”, adding: “I don’t want to revive Ukip in any way or even the far-right”.
Asked about what options should be part of a second referendum question, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that it needed to be about the deal.
“My view at the moment is that parliament will decide what will be on that ballot paper. We’ll be arguing that it should be a vote on the deal itself, and then enable us to go back and do the negotiations.”
Pressed on whether this meant ruling out a “remain” option, McDonnell said: “We’re respecting the referendum.
"We want a general election, if we can’t get that we’ll have a people’s vote. The people’s vote will be on the deal itself and whether we can negotiate a better one,” he said.
Starmer, who was part of the committee who came up with the draft, said that was not an accurate interpretation.
“The meeting last night was very clear that the question of a public vote should be open,” he said. “We weren’t ruling out options and nobody was ruling out Remain.”
Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray, who is a “champion” of the pro-EU Best for Britain organisation said it was “absolutely right that the option of remaining in the EU must remain on the table”.
He added: “It would be absolutely ridiculous to ask people to choose between a bad deal and a worse deal, without the option of rejecting Brexit.
“It’s disappointing that John McDonnell seemed to suggest otherwise."
Murray called on the Shadow Cabinet to “get its act together and listen to the vast majority of Labour members who want a People’s Vote. “
“The country is watching,” he said.
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