Brexit is a Tory project – as a member of Momentum, this is why I back a Final Say

Thatcher and her successors destroyed the social fabric of our communities. Now they will use Brexit as shock therapy, further deregulating the economy and bolstering nationalist sentiment. It is down to Labour to salvage this shipwreck

The truth is that there is no ‘real life’ Brexit that doesn’t leave us a poorer and meaner country (Getty)

“How is it August already?” is probably the thought a few of us woke up with this morning. It seems inconceivable that it has been more than 2 years from the referendum vote, more than a year since the snap general election of 2017, and a mere eight months until the moment when the UK is scheduled to leave the European Union. Time flies when the country’s political fabric is unravelling before our eyes.

As a left-wing Labour member and a Momentum activist, I will be the first to tell you none of the votes of the last two years went the way I initially expected them to. And it is that uncertainty that makes a lot of people on the left uncomfortable with the idea of a Final Say on Brexit. "What if we lose," they say. Of course I see where they are coming from – it is years of austerity, the hollowing out of democracy, and the denying people a meaningful say on how their local communities are run, that brought us to the Brexit vote. We can’t deny it happened, and we can’t deny that Labour failed to engage people who should have been standing alongside us, campaigning for public investment, council houses, better schools and higher wages, rather than pandering to anti-migrant sentiment. It’s easy to imagine how the failures of the original campaign, and the dissatisfaction fostered by neoliberalism over decades, may come back to haunt us again.

But there are deeper processes at work here, and we can’t close our eyes to those either. We can’t deny that the Brexit campaign whipped up xenophobia and hate of the other – be it refugees, Muslims, Polish migrants, academics, scientists, journalists or politicians. It is this wave of far-right rhetoric that also played a significant part in the outcome of the vote, and crucially, in political life across our continent and beyond.

It is our responsibility on the left to not just firmly oppose this rise of dangerous far-right thinking, but also to accept that there is no Brexit scenario that puts an end to this process. There is no Brexit scenario in which Tommy Robinson's supporters, and those that fund them from across the Atlantic, give up on their hate and allow us to build socialism. There is no Brexit scenario that will deliver for all the people who used it to vent their frustrations at their own political marginalisation. Perhaps, in a purely academic sense, thinking through the various possibilities for Britain’s role in a post-EU world might be exciting. But the truth is that there is no “real life” Brexit that doesn’t leave us a poorer and meaner country, a country with less money for Labour to deliver its radical programme, and less good will to go round too.

Brexit is a Tory project – in its roots and its aims. Thatcher and her successors destroyed the social fabric of our communities while blaming immigrants and the poor. Now they will use Brexit as shock therapy, further deregulating the economy, attacking workers and social protections, and bolstering nationalist sentiment.

We don't have long to stop this project. Because the other truth we need to face here is that, as much as the calendar is a man-made concept, it is still the reality we live with – time is against us on this one. We need opposition parties to vote down the Tory deal in October, and we need to make sure that we are open with people. No more lies and half-truths: we need to tell people that the Brexit they voted for does not exist. Realistically, we could not run an honest general election campaign that doesn’t acknowledge the fact that we don’t have time to renegotiate the most favourable impoverishment of the country, the most humane razor wire and border controls, the most open isolationism.

We have good reason to be hopeful about winning a fresh referendum. This time, Brexiteers will have to defend their bad deal, and the anti-establishment option ought to be the anti-government one. But ultimately yes, if we call for a Final Say, we might not win it. Then again, with Brexit going according to the plan of hard-line Tories, cheered on by the far-right around the world, there is no guarantee we will win a general election either. Or that it will come in time for Labour to salvage anything out of this shipwreck.

The Independent is the first major newspaper to launch its own campaign to give people the Final Say on Brexit. But across the left, there are campaigns fighting for a similar outcome. Another Europe is Possible and Labour for a People’s Vote are trying to open up the debate within the party and also offer an alternative role for Britain in the EU as a launchpad for socialist governments across the continent. I’m politically active because I believe in people and workers across Europe and the world have common goals and common aspirations about the world we want to live in. And I think in this historic moment, the left in Britain should be leading the way in building a different kind of political engagement, putting forward different arguments and trusting people to have the final say on the divisive, conservative project that is Brexit.

Alena Ivanova is a Tower Hamlets Momentum and Labour activist