Jeremy Corbyn's Labour must use its power to stop Brexit – now

Labour has the chance to prove itself a party that believes in the European social model – by whipping its MPs (in true British style) to vote for the reversal of this farce

The Shadow Secretary for Brexit, Keir Starmer (PA)

Reform is always progressive, right? Not so. Some reforms can set us back generations.

Without blushing, Theresa May stood before the world’s press yesterday and declared that the UK was close to a “phase 1” Brexit deal with Brussels. The two parties had been “negotiating hard” but Britain was fighting its corner. A deal, we are promised, will be struck before the close of the week.

The truth is so much more humiliating.

May’s Government appears to have accepted that a hard border between Northern Ireland and its neighbouring Republic is impossible. That places her coalition with the DUP in some doubt but, more importantly, opens up the Pandora’s Box that entails every devolved government in our country – including London’s – clambering for “regulatory alignment” with the EU.

More than that, the United Kingdom must pay the infamous £44bn divorce bill for the right to secede from the Union and guarantee rights to those already living in the country by an as-yet unknown cut-off date.

In short, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, is likely to have obtained every single objective he set himself at the start of this process in March.

What’s more, the saga has only just started. The next round of negotiations will entail the central question: are we or are we not to enter into a new trading agreement with the EU?

It is time for the UK to face the music: Brexit is an objectively bad idea. The UK has a mountain to climb even if one assumes that the EU 27 are prepared to offer us a trade deal: the enforcement of foreign judgments in English courts, passport rights of financial institutions, the competitiveness of UK manufacturing and the stability of the Good Friday Agreement. All of this hangs in the balance, while, in the background, the UK Parliament is passing a futile Act that retains all existing EU law on the statute books.

Despite the objective reality – that Brexit will lead to a waste of talent, time and effort so great that in a decade’s time one would need to prove a significant and material benefit to our country in order to justify it – Westminster refuses to accept that Brexit must have had its day.

The Conservative Party has, since its inception, painted itself as a party that “conserves” the status quo and offers Britain stability and sense in doing so. May’s mantra in the 2017 general election – “strong and stable government in the national interest” – was a continuation of years of Conservative myth-making. Real conservatives (with a small “c”) would be less than willing to lurch away from our beneficial partnership with Europe.

It is very common on the opposition benches to hear phrases like “soft Brexit” and “second referendum” bandied around as if they were radical enough a solution to the UK’s monumental own goal. They are not.

Retaining the single market and customs union without full EU membership is a politically unsellable and constitutionally unacceptable halfway house. It does not even pretend to have given effect to Brexit, and at the same time abandons our seat at the table of political change on the continent.

Remember that famous “democratic deficit”? It would be exacerbated. Remember those complaints about immigration? They would not be resolved.

Time to propose an alternative: one that is demonstrably right and can be sold to the electorate.

Brexit should be abandoned – and it should be the Labour Party that slays this particularly loathsome dragon.

Through our membership of the EU, the Labour Party has achieved many of its social, economic and foreign policy aims: aims that it has espoused for generations. It should advocate the withdrawal of the UK’s Article 50 notification – crucially, without recourse to anymore referenda.

“Wouldn’t that be undemocratic?” comes the inevitable retort. The answer depends upon which conception of democracy you espouse: an American populist conception that rests upon rule by plebiscite, or one that is British to its core: one with Parliament at its centre.

The goal that I believe is just on the horizon would require Parliamentary approval, of course. But that is exactly where the Labour Party comes in.

Jeremy Corbyn’s party has the chance to prove itself a party that believes in the European social model – by whipping its MPs (in true British style) to vote for the reversal of this farce. That may require a general election, but, as we saw in 2017, there is a significant groundswell of support for both Brexit’s termination and another general election.

Today, Labour can seize the opportunity and remind the British public of one of the greatest deceptions in our recent history: Brexit was and always will be a fiction in a world as integrated as ours. If the divorce was never intended to be comprehensive, why pay for it?

The task of the official Opposition is to pledge to tear this novel but unaffordable reform called Brexit limb from limb. So, for the first time in its history, Labour must be a party of conservatives with a small “c” in order to be the party of progress that Britain needs right now.

Paul Fisher is a barrister