European Union (Withdrawal) Act — House of Commons, 2019-01-09
Topic: International Affairs
Owen Smith (Labour, Centre-left): Jobs have increased; I do not deny that for a moment. I think there are good questions about the nature of those jobs, but the most valuable jobs that have been created under the Conservative Government, such as the manufacturing jobs in the automotive industry, many thousands of which I absolutely concede have been created in recent years, are the precious jobs that are most at risk if we exit with no deal and even if we exit with the bungled deal that is currently before us. Isolated economies do not prosper. That is an economic fact of life in this integrated modern world. We are proposing, whatever the rhetoric, to isolate our economy from its most important trading partners. It does not make economic sense and it does not make moral sense. Never forget that this Government came to power promising to free future generations from debt. It will not be forgiven or forgotten if they saddle future generations with debt. Nor will it be forgotten or forgiven if my party does anything less than tell the whole truth about Brexit and maintain our opposition to it in principle and in practice. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) wrote earlier this week: "If we thought Brexit was wrong in June 2016, then it is still wrong today - just with more proof." He is right. There is no jobs-first Brexit, no Labour Brexit and no better Brexit. I gather the latest iteration is a sensible Brexit. Well, there is no sensible Brexit either. Brexit will eat the jobs and eat the capital, political and financial, that an incoming Labour Government will need to implement the radical programme that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench are rightly advocating Any Brexit is irreconcilable with Labour’s traditional social democratic mission and its twin foundations of providing equality and freedom. Throughout history, different wings of my party have always understood that those tandem aims were at the heart of what we stand for. Bevan said that there is no freedom without an end to poverty. Crosland said that our job is to pursue equality and freedom. There cannot be one without the other, just as there cannot be a cake-and-eat-it Brexit. If we are to be true to that mission, we surely cannot accept any outcome that will limit the ability of our people to live and work in this country or elsewhere. What have we come to that we have a Prime Minister who tells the country to celebrate curtailing the rights of our citizens to work and live abroad? It is plainly out of kilter with reality, and it is plainly wrong for our people Nor should we in Labour give any succour to a policy that is fuelling the hard-right politics of hatred and repression, the enemies of the social democracy that we all believe in, not even if—I wish to emphasise this point—there is electoral advantage for us in so doing. If there is seen to be electoral advantage for our party letting the Tories carry the can for a Brexit deal that diminishes the living standards of our people and that extends austerity such that we might contest an election and win it on that basis, it would be shaming for my party to pursue that strategy. We would be sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of the people we came into politics to represent In conclusion, we have to be clear: Brexit is a terrible mistake for our country, and the only way in which we can reverse that mistake is by asking the people to do so. We have had two years of exposure to the failures, flaws and risks that Brexit entails. Now is the moment for my party to show leadership, to lead the people away from the brink of Brexit, to offer up the proposal that we revoke article 50 and then, crucially, to campaign and win a people’s vote and to stay in the European Union.