Left Unity condemns Labour collapse on Brexit and free movement

With John McDonnell’s comments welcoming Brexit as ‘an enormous opportunity’ and Clive Lewis’s on resisting freedom of movement, Labour has finally collapsed completely before the UKIP/Tory bulldozer on Brexit. McDonnell indicated that Labour would not seek to delay Brexit, presumably irrespective of the terms being proposed by the government. Lewis, remarkably, appeared to suggest that Labour would ‘champion’ access to the single market, but not the free movement of labour which has been a huge advance for the European working class. Being prepared to abandon not only the 48% who voted against Brexit, many of them Labour voters, but also the 3 million EU citizens here is an abject surrender.

Left Unity Principal Speaker Joseph Healy said:
“Freedom of movement is one of the EU’s most progressive policies, allowing workers to move freely throughout the Union, as well as students and others, opening up a wide range of life-changing possibilities and opportunities. To retreat now into a Little England position is shameful and indicates both a failure of nerve about alienating Brexit voters and a failure of vision. There is no international working class solidarity in these Labour policies.

“The racist, anti-immigrant agenda which drove the Brexit campaign has to be vigorously challenged and opposed and its false ‘facts’ and arguments exposed. The political case for a genuinely democratic and open alternative has to be made and fought for. There is no point in falling back on ‘moral pressure’ as McDonnell suggests, when the government they seek to pressure has no humanity or morality. Left Unity will continue to argue for freedom of movement for all within Europe and opposition to Brexit.”