Uncertainty about what stance Britain’s opposition Labour Party would adopt before a referendum on EU membership deepened yesterday when two senior figures in the new leadership team made conflicting comments.
Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron is seeking to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership of the 28-member bloc and plans to hold a referendum on whether to remain in or leave by the end of 2017.
Labour has just elected a hard-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, whose views on the issue are under scrutiny because the party’s stance will be an important factor in a vote that will affect trade, investment and Britain’s place in the world.
A survey by the pollster ICM yesterday that 43 per cent of voters favoured staying in, 40 per cent would opt to leave, and 17 per cent were undecided.
Corbyn’s newly-appointed economic policy chief, John McDonnell, indicated that it was not a foregone conclusion that Labour would accept whatever deal Cameron obtains and campaign to stay in.
“Jeremy said quite clearly he wants to remain in Europe but we want to see what Cameron’s package is,” McDonnell told BBC television.
“We’re not going to give Cameron a free hand on any negotiations at all. We want to see what he comes up with... At the moment, it’s [about] trying to get a good Europe that serves all our interests, and I think we can do that.”
The EU referendum could be very tricky for Labour to navigate. While many members and supporters strongly favour staying in the EU, the new membership terms negotiated by Cameron could be hard to swallow. With only a binary choice of staying in or leaving on offer, the party may face a painful trade-off of one priority against another.
Later in the day, Corbyn’s foreign policy chief, Hilary Benn, issued a statement that appeared to express much firmer support for EU membership, regardless of Cameron’s actions.
We’re not going to give Cameron a free hand on any negotiations at all. We want to see what he comes up with...
Benn listed the workers’ rights that he said had been protected and improved by the EU, before saying that Labour was strongly opposed to any attempt by Cameron to weaken those.
“The truth is, if we want to protect workers’ rights, the answer isn’t to leave the EU, but to get rid of this Tory [Conservative[ government,” said Benn, who served in the centrist Labour cabinets of the previous decade.
“That’s why the Labour Party has always been committed to not walking away, but staying in to work together for a better Europe.”
Corbyn said on Monday that Labour should not automatically support any deal that Cameron negotiates for Britain to remain in the EU, and has highlighted protecting workers’ rights as an area where he says more needs to be achieved.
But the concessions Cameron is seeking to obtain go in a very different direction, for instance by limiting state benefit payments to new EU immigrants in Britain.
London mayor Boris Johnson, a Conservative who is one of Cameron’s close political advisers, has called the EU’s Social Chapter on workers’ rights “completely nonsensical”.