Brexit is necessarily a project of deregulation—how contemptuous that Labour still supports it

The ironies keep coming thick and fast for Labour’s leadership and national executive committee, both determined to sidestep the pro-Remain sentiments of the vast majority of its membership, MEPs and MPs. Chief among them, perhaps, was the insistence this week by shadow minister Rebecca Long-Bailey that Labour was engaged in “fantastic discussions” with the government on the issue of workers’ rights. Barely had that sentence been uttered, when reports emerged that the Conservatives may be planning again to reconsider domestic commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights once the process of Brexit is concluded.

For many, Brexit has been explicitly a deregulation project from the outset. Astute observers might have noticed that the political declaration which was agreed with the EU in December, alongside the Withdrawal Agreement, noted that the UK would only agree “to respect the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights,” rather than the previous wording by which the UK was “committed” to it. Perhaps nothing should be read into this, except that the European Convention on Human Rights has long been a political football for the right of the Conservative party, loathed by the prime minister when she was home secretary, so much so that in April 2016, she explicitly called for Britain to leave its jurisdiction. The government fiercely resisted the incorporation of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms during the passage of the EU (Withdrawal Act) 2018. That means that overnight, some substantive rights will be stripped away. In addition, many workers’ rights, for example properly paid holidays or protection for agency workers, will be vulnerable in any future parliament. Dominic Raab, too, was vocal in his pre-referendum demands to deregulate, describing EU employment regulations as a “straitjacket.”

One might generously describe the lay of a post-Brexit rights landscape as one favouring regression, or at least the status quo, rather than progression. More realistically, the reality of Brexit is a bonfire of individual rights which begins on exit day. Any re-drafted political declaration, filled with aspirational text, might simply be torn up in the future. Individual rights now protected by the supranational safety net of the EU, through legislation and through the Court of Justice, will be lost to the absolutism of parliamentary sovereignty which can bind no future parliament. The government’s most recent alleged “concessions” to Labour on workers’ rights are meaningless since they can have no binding effect on a sovereign parliament post-Brexit. Fundamental rights, social rights, environmental rights will sit precariously in our sparce constitutional framework. That doesn’t begin to deal with the loss of rights we currently have to work and live in 27 other countries, something with which Labour’s leadership does not seem concerned. Against this reality, it is difficult to see how the Labour frontbench is engaging meaningfully in discussions about workers’ rights, and any other rights including environmental and consumer rights, post-Brexit.

Brexit is a deregulating and de-righting project. The reality of Brexit is to cut Britain loose legally from the many social rights we now take for granted as part and parcel of the architecture of our modern democracy. That is the Brexit project to which Corbyn’s leadership team now lends its support, whatever wool it tries to pull over the nation’s eyes with clever wordplay. The reluctant conclusion is that either Labour’s leadership does not understand the way the EU operates today, through its social regulation and legal framework, or it does not want to understand.

It is ironic, then, that on the same day as the NEC backed a meaningless policy on Brexit, delivering hollow rhetoric about its own unicorn deal and refusing to properly endorse a second referendum, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, Philip Alston, delivered an excoriating warning about poverty in Britain. Alston stated that the country will be diminished whichever way the Brexit decision now goes. He criticised “a missed opportunity for the Labour Party not to be pursuing these issues, because clearly behind a lot of the Brexit debate is a concern about economic security and the way the country is going.”While the Social Mobility Commission report, also released yesterday, does not expressly mention Brexit, its damning conclusions on the state of modern Britain also require an explanation by every politician who claims Brexit will benefit the country. The government has refused to level with the nation. The country deserve an opposition that will.

Labour has silently dropped its six tests for Brexit in favour of avoiding a “damaging Tory Brexit,” but the leadership fails to explain what a “good Labour Brexit” looks like. How does that good Labour Brexit, if it can even be negotiated with an EU sick to the back teeth of an irresponsible Britain, explain, to take just a couple of easy examples, how workers’ rights are better protected without membership of the EU? What happens when a future parliament overturns the substance of the Working Time Directive in domestic law? How will Britain shape new legislation and protections from outside the EU’s inner circle? And what happens when jobs leave our shores? Corbyn’s “jobs-first Brexit”was always as clichéd as May’s “Brexit means Brexit,” but even that seems to have been quietly shelved. Devoid of all and any explanation for what it is seeking, Labour now asks its brilliant and committed MEPs to spout half-truths about a policy that is, at best, a disingenuous play with words when the country desperately needs truth-tellers.

Those truths are being spoken now by some frustrated union leaders, committed to protecting their workers’ rights in real time. On the eve of International Workers’ Day, Manuel Cortes, the TSSA General Secretary, had scathing words for the NEC-crafted position:

“Sadly, it doesn't appear that there is anything straight talking about Labour's latest Brexit fudge. Our union is obviously disappointed that our amendment to give the British people the final say over any Brexit deal did not find favour. However, the good thing is that a deal with the Tories won't happen. And our unicorn demands for a deal with the European Union will in effect make us a rule taker colony of Brussels. That's the naked truth and we have missed an opportunity to tell it to voters like it is. We face a stark choice—a no-deal economic crash, vassalage or the best option, no Brexit at all.”

Tim Roache, the GMB Secretary General, tweeted “As the @GMB_union mover of the motion unanimously carried at Lab Party conf I am calling on the NEC to abide by party policy. Any final Brexit deal must be put to the people for them to decide whether or not it’s acceptable. A tradition that has always applied in our movement.”

As 2020 approaches in our globalised and troubled world, there is no point to a socialist party that looks backwards and inwards. International Workers’ Day is a reminder that a rights framework never stands still. As society develops, new challenges present themselves, demanding different fights and, in time, the development of new rights. The complexities of the future are already upon us, in the form of transnational issues such as climate change, AI and technology and, yes, workers’ rights too, in a global work environment, in which British workers move beyond our borders, and foreign workers contribute within ours. It is impossible to know how Labour’s “good Brexit” deal will protect and enhance those rights in a world in which Britain stands alone, its reputation and standing much diminished as it pleads for trade deals on bended knees.

Labour’s leadership has ducked and dived too long. Yesterday’s refusal by the NEC will be seen by millions of voters as one failure too many. It is a refusal to come clean on the issues behind Brexit and beyond Brexit. A vote for Labour will now be counted as a vote for Brexit. And whoever does the negotiating, Britain loses. Labour’s leadership is still too blinkered to see it.