Brussels bound
Like St Paul, Andy Burnham is ‘all things to all men’. The Apostle was slowly making his way to Rome. Burnham, on the other hand, is on the road to Brussels and he’s clearly not sparing the horses. Those around him echo the talk of “resets” and “realignments” while Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, calls on Labour to take urgent action to rejoin the European customs union and pledge to return to the European Union without a second referendum if it wins the next election.
While most of the union bureaucrats are Remainers, Labour’s ranks in parliament are more cautious. Hostility to the Common Market amongst their traditional community – that lost them the northern ‘Red Belt’ at the last election – still has to be overcome. Reform UK has been rocked by funding scandals. Farage is down – but he’s still not out. And the terms for Britain’s return to the EU that would resolve the problem of the asylum-seeking ‘boat people’ have still to be settled.
Within the ruling class the Brexiteers are in retreat. The dream of a trans-Atlantic free trade area has come to nothing. The US Democrats didn’t want to replace the Treaty of Rome with a ‘Treaty of Washington’ and it’s never going to happen under Trump or whoever takes his place when he goes. Closing ranks with Franco-German imperialism to counter Trump’s tariffs seems a better bet these days – and France and Germany’s current weakness can only serve the British interest should the UK sign up to the Treaty of Rome. If Canada joins, even better. That just leaves the parliamentary opposition from the Tory Brexiteers, Reform UK and Restore Britain to be overcome along with the rag-bag of street gangs that use immigration to promote their racist and fascist agendas.
Labour’s overwhelming majority in the House of Commons and the guaranteed support of the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland mean that Parliament could agree to rejoin the EU any time it wanted. But it would be political suicide given that public opinion is still evenly divided on the issue.
Changing the public mood is now top of the list on the Remainers’ agenda.
They’ll go for Nigel Farage first, using the investigation into his dubious benefactors to try to drive him out of Parliament altogether. Dealing with the ‘Black Shorts’ and all the other rubbish will be no problem for the police. Rejoiner arguments will be reduced to claims that it will once again allow ex-pats to return to care-free lives on the Spanish coast and give tourists delay-free travel into and across Europe.
They’ll move once Labour has a clear lead over Reform in the opinion polls. Once again we’ll be told that a new golden age beckons. Sadly Lexit, the left argument against the EU, never got off the ground. The alternative is the EU with its austerity regime, the highest food prices in the world, ham-strung unions and mass unemployment. Another Europe is indeed possible – but it’s certainly not the EU.