LABOUR are to avoid a tricky Brexit moment at their annual conference in Brighton this week, after left-wingers convinced party members to ignore the EU.
In the ballot on contemporary motions, eight topics out of a possible 13 were chosen for debate.
While delegates will discuss the NHS, social care and Grenfell Tower, there will be no vote on the EU.
Nicola Sturgeon called it “an abdication of responsibility”.
Labour MP Heidi Alexander took to Twitter: “I am gobsmacked. How can @uklabour not have a full & proper debate on #Brexit policy at #Lab17? We will be a laughing stock.”
Talking about Europe would have been difficult for Labour, who’s position on the single market has been criticised as confusing.
Corbyn, who has long been a Eurosceptic, benefited at the general election this year from pro-EU voters.
In analysis of that result, Professor John Curtice, said a new survey of those who voted, showed the party’s performance was thanks to “those who were keenest on staying in the EU and those who were least concerned about immigration.”
Yesterday, Momentum, the grassroots leftwing movement, lobbied members, telling them to vote against a contemporary motion on Brexit.
Though there is a general debate on EU today, there will be no vote.
A contemporary motion would have forced the party to make a choice and take an agreed position on single market membership.
It comes after 30 senior figures in the party wrote an open letter calling on Labour to do whatever it takes to keep Britain in the single market and the customs union.
Signatories to a letter published in the Observer, including former shadow cabinet members Chuka Umunna and Clive Lewis.
The letter, which was also signed by the TSSA union’s general secretary, Manuel Cortes, former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hain and Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson, warned that leaving the single market would “hit the most vulnerable in our society hardest”.
“At our conference this week, Labour should commit to staying in the single market and customs union - ruling out no options for how to achieve this - and to working with sister parties and others across Europe to improve workers’ rights, boost trade union membership and put an end to the exploitation of workers, not freedom of movement,” they said.
Speaking on the BBC’s Marr programme yesterday, Corbyn was hesitant.
He said he wanted to ensure “tariff-free access to the European market”.
But he added: “I would also say that we need to look very carefully at the terms of our trade relationship, because at the moment we are a part of the single market and that has within it restrictions on state aid and state spending and pressures on it, through the European Union, to privatise rail and other services.
“I think we need to be careful about the powers we need as a national government.”
He suggested that EU rules could have prevented him as prime minister from intervening to prop up Britain’s steel industry during its recent crisis, and would block a future Labour government from investing in industries.
Asked if free movement should continue, Corbyn said abuses of the system by rogue employers had to stop but “in the future we are going to need people to work in Europe and people from Europe are going to need to work here,” he said.
SNP MP Stewart McDonald tweeted.”I genuinely think Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t understand how the EU works. Either that or he’s being wilfully deceptive.”
Meanwhile Scottish Labour’s interim leader Alex Rowley only discovered Kezia Dugdale had resigned 15 minutes before it was announced.
Rowley, who was deputy leader at the time, said “very few people” knew that the announcement was coming, and he wasn’t one of them.
Dugdale revealed at the end of August that she was stepping down from the job with immediate effect. Appearing on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland, Rowley was asked if he had tried to talk Dugdale out of resigning.
He replied: “No, I didn’t know that Kezia Dugdale was going to resign up until perhaps 10, 15 minutes before she announced it. So no, I didn’t.”
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