We’re getting the band back together

Despite concerted efforts to extinguish it, the flame of Euroscepticism still burns inside the Labour party

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

WE WERE A small but hardy bunch of souls. Denounced and shunned by many of our political colleagues for ‘lining up with the enemy’, we stuck out our chests and stood our ground. By campaigning to keep alive the flames of national sovereignty and democracy, we knew that, far from betraying our party’s cause, we were reflecting its best traditions.

I am speaking of the campaign group ‘Labour Leave’. During the EU referendum campaign and long years of the ‘Brexit wars’ that followed, the group sought to organise all those across the labour movement who believed that Britain would be ‘better off out’.

As a pro-Brexit senior trade unionist, I was invited to be one of the public faces of the group’s campaign. In our ranks were a handful of current and former Labour MPs and a passionate band of grassroots councillors, activists and supporters.

We recognised that we couldn’t match the clout or resources of the Remain campaign inside the Labour party, but we punched well above our weight. Moreover, we knew that we were standing on the shoulders of some of Labour’s past giants – figures such as Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle, all committed Eurosceptics who rightly saw the EU and its forerunner institutions as explicitly anti-socialist and anti-democratic - and therefore inimical to the historical mission of their party.

Theirs was a position shared in the 1975 Common Market referendum by most other Labour MPs and trade unions. Euroscepticism was, after all - back then, at least - an entirely mainstream position across the labour movement. But that is a history that many seem to want to erase. Since the late 1980s, much of the movement has become infatuated with the EU, choosing to ignore its neoliberal, technocratic ethos and looking upon it as some sort of beacon for social democracy and workers’ rights.

What rot. The bloc has always been a rapacious capitalist club. That was true in 1975, true in 2016 and true today. When it comes to such matters as public ownership, productive state investment, controls on capital, national economic planning and procurement, regulation of the labour supply and democratic accountability, the EU consistently stands in opposition to the historical demands of the labour movement.

So I didn’t hesitate, when the EU referendum was announced, to adopt the traditional position of the movement and line up with Labour Leave. The plebiscite turned out to be one of the biggest democratic exercises in British history. We were told that our decision would be respected and implemented. Yet, in the aftermath of the vote, the establishment did its utmost to prevent the outcome taking proper effect, causing huge political turmoil inside the country and incurring the wrath of the millions who voted Leave. Nobody should wish to reignite those tensions.

So when Andy Burnham announced last week that he wanted Britain to get back into bed with Brussels, I knew instinctively that this was a potentially disastrous move – for both the country and Labour.

Had Burnham forgotten that two-thirds of Labour constituencies voted Leave in 2016? That the mandate for Brexit was delivered largely by working-class voters, many of whom were traditional and lifelong Labour supporters? That the party’s catastrophic policy in favour of a second referendum alienated millions of these voters and led to its annihilation at the 2019 general election?

Burnham is playing with fire. He risks reoffending millions in Labour’s old heartlands who were slowly being persuaded to look again at the party.

Against the backdrop of Burnham’s move, I wasn’t in the least surprised when, last week, I and a few old Labour Leave comrades were contacted by one of the original organisers of the group, a fantastic and redoubtable campaigner. He wanted the group to reform. Instead of using our post-Brexit economic freedoms and sovereignty to do some of the radical things any Labour government should wish to do, the prime minister was trying to unpick the referendum vote. He couldn’t be permitted to get away with it. It was vital we launched a fresh campaign of resistance across the labour movement.

Every recipient responded positively to this invitation. We knew this was a battle that, for the sake of our party and country, we couldn’t run from. We didn’t come this far only for the clock to be turned back a decade.

So, folks, I can faithfully report that we are getting the band back together. Labour Leave will be up and running again in the very near future – though obviously with a new name. ‘Labour for Sovereignty’ has a nice ring to it, I think.

We will face down Andy Burnham and all others inside and outside Labour who want us to trade our national independence for the rule of unelected EU commissioners and technocrats. We will argue that the prime minister’s talk of devolving power and reversing five decades of neoliberalism will ring utterly hollow if he drives us back into the arms of the bloc. We will show that there is something quite perverse about Burnham bemoaning the remoteness of the out-of-touch Westminster elites only to then suck up to the even-more-out-of-touch Brussels elites.

As this new battle gets under way, I will take with me the words of the England football manager Sir Alf Ramsey, spoken to his dejected team after they had been forced into extra-time following a last-minute equaliser by their opponents, West Germany, in the 1966 World Cup final.

‘You’ve beaten them once,’ Ramsey famously told his players. ‘Now go out and beat them again.’

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A reminder that you can also follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

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An edited version of the above piece first appeared behind the paywall on the GB News website.