The shadow Brexit secretary has formally confirmed that Labor wants the UK to effectively remain permanently in the EU’s customs union.
Sir Keir Starmer told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One on Sunday the shadow cabinet had unanimous support for the new policy, which Jeremy Corbin will flesh out in a speech in Coventry on Monday.
Starmer said the party wanted the UK to have “a” customs union with the EU after Brexit , rather than to remain in “the” customs union, but he also said this distinction was merely technical and that in practice the effect would be the same.
“The customs arrangements at the moment are hardwired into the membership treaty, so I think everybody now recognises there is going to have to be a new treaty [between the UK and the EU]. It will do the work of the customs union. So it is a customs union,” Starmer said.
“But will it do the work of the current customs union? Yes, that’s the intention.”
Starmer said staying in a customs union was “the only way realistically” for the UK to get tariff-free access to the EU. This was really important for manufacturing, he said.
The government is strongly opposed to staying in a customs union with the EU on the grounds that this would prevent the UK negotiating its own trade deals with non-EU countries after Brexit.
But Starmer said he was not aware of any credible analysis showing the UK would do better on its own than it would negotiating deals with the EU.
He said that after Brexit Labour would want the UK to have a say in how the EU negotiates future deals. That would have to be negotiated, he said.
He went on: “But the real point is – because we all want trade agreements, more trade – we will be more likely to get them if we do it jointly with the EU [than] on our own.”
Labour has been firming up its support for remaining in a customs union for some time, but the formal confirmation that this is party policy opens the door to the opposition supporting amendments to legislation forcing the government to adopt it. A key one is an amendment to the trade bill, new clause 5 (NC5), Which has already been signed by eight Tory MPs.
In a referendum on 23 June 2016, 51.9% of the participating UK electorate (the turnout was 72.2% of the electorate) voted to leave the EU. On 29 March 2017, the UK invoked Article 50 . The UK is thus due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.However;The British people seem to turn backs on Brexit and insist on staying in the EU.
