Brexit Arguments Resurface as Labour Faces By-election Test

It is a gruesome shock and yet was entirely predictable: we stand on the brink of a byelection that is three things at once. First, a straight popularity contest for Andy Burnham, which itself is a worry, because there must be a limit to how many times you can be called “King of the North” without it boiling your brain, and if that limit exists at all, it must surely have been reached. Second, it’s a limbering-up round for the coming Labour leadership challenge. Third, and most importantly, Makerfield is a test of what Labour would have to look like to beat Reform when it matters. So what could be more helpful than for everyone involved – every cabinet minister, every backbencher, every commentator – to reach back into their memory and find the stupidest thing that was ever said about Brexit, and say it again in a more excitable voice. Get ready for Brexit-argument bingo; if you think you’ve heard them all before, that’s why it’s so fun.

Keir Starmer jumped first, even before the byelection was on the cards. After announcing a plan to nationalise steel – an industry that is already under government control – he made some huge admissions about Brexit, followed by some even larger promises. He said it had made us poorer, it had sent migration through the roof and it had made us less secure. It wasn’t what you’d call hold-the-front-page, since it’s common knowledge that Brexit has made us poorer; but it’s extremely surprising, of course, to hear the prime minister make a straightforward statement on the EU which relates to reality, rather than a convoluted set of red lines, related to an alternative universe in which Europe is begging to take us back, but we’re holding firm.

More surprising still was the news that: “This Labour government will be defined by rebuilding our relationship with Europe and putting Britain at the heart of Europe.” How that would work is perplexing, without breaching those red lines that we’re all supposed to understand even though they make no sense. Baffling as it all is, it has the comfort of nostalgia, being powerfully reminiscent of Starmer as Brexit secretary in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. He felt so remain-adjacent, being the kind of person who listened to reason, who hadn’t had enough of experts. And yet it was all just vibes. There really should be a word for anti-nostalgia, a moment that reminds you powerfully of the past and fills you with regret for its consequences and dread of going back there. Oh yeah, that word is “politics”.

In comes the plucky “red wall” defender, backbencher Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe. In raw, man-of-the-people language, he said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that if he told this to people in a pub, “they’d say, ‘You are off your rocker if you think the priority for the British people right now is to restart this debate.’” And, he went on, “We are just over a week after we took a real beating in our working-class heartlands.” And there it is again: the mantra of many politicians in and around 2017: the British working class all thinks the same thing, and I alone can interpret it.

Wes Streeting said at the weekend that Brexit had been a “catastrophic mistake” and the best thing for the British economy would be to rejoin the EU; it’s a solid view, easily defendable, shared by more than half the British public. But more importantly, it’s the settled opinion of 80% of Labour voters, and the party members, the remainiest of them all, are who Streeting needs to win over. Will this Europhilia, so taboo in politics for so long, result in concrete action down the line, or is it just more crowd-pleasing vibes?

Impossible to say, and David Lammy, for one, just wishes that everyone would stop saying anything. Comment and debate about Brexit is for sixth-formers, he argued, also on Today. The only way for Labour to survive is to stop talking and pull together, he concluded. Sure, that always works.

Brexit broke the connection between things that are said and things that are done, promises that are made and realities that ensue. The facts have changed since 2016 – public opinion, balance of trade, geopolitics – but the language remains the same, delivering what would once have sounded like a physical impossibility, that the nation stood still and yet rapidly worsened. I didn’t see that on the side of a bus.