Labour’s Brexit agreement is a nonsense: Jeremy Corbyn still isn’t listening to his party – or the country

My party, and the country as a whole, deserves better. Young people especially need to know that their futures aren’t being weighed against political expediency

As a Remain-supporting Labour member, watching my party’s leadership being dragged towards the position that the majority of its voters and members already hold has been nothing short of agonising. As we squander election after election, Labour’s pro-Remain membership has drained away.

Yesterday’s shift towards backing a Final Say on Brexit in two hypothetical scenarios, and promising to campaign for Remain in one of them, is just another step in what seems like an endless journey. It’s certainly progress – but we’re not there yet.

In Jeremy Corbyn’s email to Labour members, which followed a discussion on Monday with party affiliated trade unions, he wrote that “whoever becomes the new prime minister should have the confidence to put their deal, or no deal, back to the people in a public vote. In those circumstances, I want to make it clear that Labour would campaign for Remain.”

Some members will herald this as the tectonic shift we have so long hoped for. But Corbyn does not mention the second scenario agreed with union leaders such as Len McCluskey, a Eurosceptic with considerable influence on party policy.

The plan for this second scenario, where a general election is called, does not mention campaigning to remain in the EU. Far from it.

This is a nonsense. Why would Labour want to give itself the option of campaigning against their own deal? And, more fundamentally, why is there no clear condemnation of the very concept of Brexit?

My party, and the country as a whole, deserves better. Young people especially need to know that their futures aren’t being weighed against political expediency.

We don’t need more platitudes and fudges. We don’t need assurances that the leadership has our best interests at heart – and we certainly don’t need a list of very specific circumstances listed out in which they would consider saving us from a project which the majority of the country now knows is doomed to end in disaster.

The positive case for Brexit has all but collapsed. Arguments which claimed we would be happier, healthier, and richer in the mythical sunlit uplands after breaking ties with our closest allies and trading partners are now only memories. Instead, we hear about periods of “economic turmoil”, necessary sacrifices, and desperate promises of sufficient food, water and medicine. Believe in Britain indeed.

Not a single person has put forward a clear and viable solution to the Northern Irish border in the event of Brexit becoming a reality, and that is because there isn’t one. Regardless of the “technological solutions” (which sound more and more like magic than modern tech advances) proffered by politicians who are unable to provide any detail of what those solutions might be, the fact remains that the Good Friday Agreement would be violated in every single type of Brexit, be it no deal, Norway-plus, Canada-plus, a customs union, or whichever pie-in-the-sky fantasy happens to be the flavour of the week in Westminster.

As a country we have woken up. So why is Labour determined to avoid condemning this plutocratic project in all but the most specific of circumstances?

Jeremy Corbyn says that Labour is for the many, not the few. Until his claims are backed up by an unambiguous support for remaining in the EU, they are simply empty words.

Cathleen Clarke is an activist with Our Future, Our Choice