Because of their trade union education and long parliamentary and internationalist experiences, you’d have no qualms about sending Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in to negotiate with the most unscrupulous, unelected, neoliberal power bloc in the world, the EU.

We’d be foolish to think that Keir Starmer would be a reliable pair of hands to do so. After his Labour Party speech I thought that if he went up against Barnier he would get eaten alive and very quickly run back saying that a second referendum, with Remain as the objective, would be the only viable alternative.

While the party leadership and major unions like my union Unite are clear that we are leaving the EU and should not jeopardise this or rerun the referendum, Starmer doesn’t seem to understand the message. We are not for turning. We are leaving the EU on March 29 2019. To argue to stay in or prevaricate about it will lose us the election.

Let’s think it through a bit.

The anti-democratic Fixed Term Parliaments Act introduced by the coalition government will keep this government in power for another four years unless a two thirds vote of no confidence is passed in the House of Commons against them, or they agree to go to the people.

The first won’t happen. Will the Tories then go to the people if their parliamentary opposition does what oppositions tend to do, and votes against their Brexit deal? The Labour Party and others believe that they might be able to call a general election if they vote it down. There again they might not and Labour will go down as the pro-EU party and bolster the Tories in government.

There are a number of factors involved in this. Will the Tories make a third catastrophic mistake after calling a referendum they thought they would win for remain and then nearly losing the last election? The fear by the business elite and the Tories of a Labour victory is very significant indeed. The most radical Labour programme since 1945 threatens every policy pursued against socialism, our unions and our country since 1979.

The Establishment recognises that this is a generation-changing election. The powers of capital, particularly finance capital which has dominated for forty years, are under threat as never before and they will not want to give up easily. Relying on a parliamentary tactic of voting down the deal is at best highly risky. Its greatest risk, depending on the issues involved, is to alienate even more potential Labour supporters.

But what of the so-called Starmer tests for assessing the deal? They are disingenuous. They are wrongly applied as they seek to judge a deal with criteria that can only be tested against a government in power.

More significant than the deal is what government is in power to make Britain tick post Brexit. I am clear that only Labour’s programme of rebuilding will achieve this. But Labour won’t win if Starmer’s approach prevails.

Starmer also appears to believe that a newly elected Labour government could achieve its bold mission inside the EU, yet he is unprepared to apply his tests to EU membership itself. If he did it would spectacularly fail on all counts.

Starmer said he believed nations achieved more together. But the EU was built to create an unelected centralised structure impervious to the co-operation of independent nations. The EU created a forum dominated by the multinational corporations who work together in Brussels against national governments.

Starmer wants collaboration with other EU countries in science and culture. Most areas of scientific exploration and sharing are in fact global and we have never relied on the EU as an institution to develop our culture. 

From the reformation and renaissance, through to the enlightenment and first ideas of socialism, European countries have shared remarkably well without the EU and developed some of mankind’s greatest art and culture.

He says he is an internationalist. Well he should apply his six tests to what has happened in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. He should speak to workers in the most recent accession states who saw a decline of some 75 per cent in collective bargaining coverage as a condition for EU membership. Or the workers in France and Italy and most other EU countries fighting to protect their essential trade union and employment protection legislation which the EU has wanted to tear up.

In fact it is the craven and uncritical penchant for the EU in many union circles for so long that has almost completely ejected any sense of solidarity with European trade unionists at their moments of need. We even turned away from the crisis torn in our nearest English speaking neighbour, Ireland, as the EU bubble burst on its shores.

As John McDonnell and Len McCLuskey have made plain, a remain option is no longer an option in either an election or a referendum.

Starmer needs to step aside and let some serious politicians and negotiators take over. The job title by the way is shadow minister for exiting the European Union.
 
Jenny Pearson is a life-long NHS Biomedical Scientist and activist in Unite and its predecessor unions.