IN A surprising move yesterday, Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer seemed to suggest a Jeremy Corbyn-led government would seek to keep the UK in the EU’s single market and customs union.
Starmer said a Labour administration would first back a much longer transition period after Britain formally quits the bloc in 2019, and then also look at creating a new Norway-style deal to keep Britain in the single market without being a member of the EU.
The proposals mark a significant change for the party, which had until recently been supportive of much of the Tory Brexit plans.
Writing in a Sunday newspaper, Starmer said the condition for Britain signing up to permanent single market and customs union membership would be the EU effectively allowing the UK to opt out of freedom of movement.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has previously suggested this was not possible: "The single market and its four freedoms are indivisible – cherry-picking is not an option,” he said last December.
The SNP called on Labour to stop pussyfooting about and just agree to keep Scotland in the single market permanently.
Starmer did not provide a time-frame for transition, saying only that it would be “as short as possible, but as long as is necessary” and would be time-limited in order to prevent it becoming “a kind of never-ending purgatory”.
He wrote: “Labour would seek a transitional deal that maintains the same basic terms that we currently enjoy with the EU.
“That means we would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market during this period. It means we would abide by the common rules of both.”
Effectively, that means the UK would accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, allow complete freedom of movement, and pay into the EU budget.
Earlier this month, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Chancellor Philip Hammond said in a joint column that they accepted there would need to be a transition period after Brexit actually happens, but insisted the UK would be outside the customs union during this time so it could strike trade deals with non-EU countries.
The SNP’s Stephen Gethins said it was good news that Labour, who backed the triggering of Article 50 earlier this year, were “slowly coming round” to the damage “an extreme Tory Brexit” would do to the country.
“Labour MPs should have the courage of their convictions and back continued membership of the European single market, period. Not on a transitional basis but as a long-term means to ensure our economy doesn’t suffer the harmful, chaotic effects of being isolated from the world’s largest trading bloc.”
Corbyn, whose week-long tour of Scotland ends today, could face a backlash from some of the party’s traditional voters, about 35 per cent of whom backed a Leave vote.
Speaking during an event at the Edinburgh Fringe yesterday afternoon, the Labour leader said: “There has to be an arrangement in the long term with Europe which is one of tariff-free trade access to Europe that gives protection of the rights, regulations and gains we’ve made from Europe on workers’ rights as well as protection of consumer rights and continued membership of the European institutions, particularly the European Court of Human Rights, but there are many others as well.”
Pro-Brexit group Labour Leave did not welcome the announcement. “Single Market membership is EU membership in all but name,” it tweeted.
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