Labour’s idealistic Brexit policy is ignoring something crucial – the party’s lack of a relationship with the EU

Shami Chakrabarti’s call for the end of free movement dismisses the fact that the EU negotiates only with the UK government – not with the opposition

Shami Chakrabarti, Labour’s Brexit spokesperson in the Lords, tried hard on the airwaves this morning to explain her party’s Brexit policy – a task not made easier by the performance of her leader last night in the Commons.

Jeremy Corbyn was supposed to be attacking the prime minister’s deal and a potential no-deal outcome but, as so often, he could not help himself from descending into an assault on the European Union. Keir Starmer’s face when Corbyn attacked the European Court of Justice and the EU’s state-aid policy, was a picture.

Corbyn’s deep euroscepticism matters because the lynchpin of Labour’s Brexit policy, as Chakrabarti confirmed, is to go back to Brussels, be nice, and get a better deal than that accomplished by Theresa May and Olly Robbins.

Since becoming leader, Corbyn has limited his excursions to the mainland to meetings with Europe’s galère of socialist leaders, very few of whom are in government and who, therefore, have no influence on EU policy.

Corbyn’s team, however, led by Starmer, has been on various day trips to Brussels to talk with Michel Barnier’s Task Force 50 and European Council officials. The Labour posse, like other British visitors, are told on each visit that the EU negotiates only with the UK government, and not with the opposition or a collection of backbench MPs. That position will not change next week if May’s deal goes down.

Labour’s second delusion is that the EU is always susceptible to fudge. That the Irish usually have to have two referendums to ratify a treaty, or that the Treaty of Lisbon emerged in 2007 after the French “non” of 2005, are cited as proof – ignoring the fact that, contrary to Brexit, both developments favoured deeper integration, in the direction of an ever closer union.

The prime minister is right to say the negotiation of the withdrawal agreement and political declaration has been very difficult for the EU, especially on trade, and that Brussels is in no mood whatsoever to make further concessions to Britain. The Brexit experience has, if anything, strengthened EU solidarity in defence of its cardinal four freedoms of movement and its constitutional order.

So Labour is wrong about the process and wrong about the nature of the EU as a negotiating partner. It is also wrong about substance. Chakrabarti wants “access to the single market”; that’s the easy bit, of course, because even China has access to the single market – as would the UK under May’s deal.

But Chakrabarti couples that with a desire to be in the EU customs union permanently, without the EU’s commercial policy or common external tariff applying. And she wants all this with Brexit and no free movement of people – a bizarre position indeed for Labour, which claims to put great value on workers’ rights. What greater right could a worker have than to move freely around Europe in search of a job?

Corbyn’s policy will never be acceptable to the EU. May’s policy is accepted by the EU. It’s up to the Commons to choose between the two.

Andrew Duff is president of the Spinelli Group, visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, and was a Liberal Democrat MEP from 1999-2014. His latest book is ‘On Governing Europe: A Federal Experiment’