MPs at launch of Labour Leave campaign point to leader’s and shadow chancellor’s long history of voting against European integration

Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of abandoning his “natural and historic” position over Europe by committing the Labour party to campaigning to stay in the EU in the forthcoming referendum on the UK’s membership, Eurosceptic MPs have said.

Speaking at the launch of the Labour Leave campaign on Wednesday morning, MPs Kate Hoey and Graham Stringer said the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, had consistently voted with them and fellow Eurosceptic MPs on matters relating to the EU in the past.

In the weeks after Corbyn’s victory in the Labour leadership election, he was forced to end uncertainty over the party’s position on Europe, declaring it would campaign for the UK to stay in the EU regardless of the outcome of the prime minister’s attempts to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s membership.

“We were joined on many occasions over the last 20-odd years in the lobby when we were doing our bit to oppose the various treaties and issues which were furthering EU domination of our country. Jeremy was always with us and John McDonnell was always with us,” said Hoey.

Stringer said Corbyn’s stance was “not his natural position or his historic position” and revealed that he would be meeting Corbyn on Wednesday afternoon to make the leftwing Eurosceptic case to the Labour leader.

“It is surprising, when we voted against the advice of the chief whip on a number of European issues over the last decades, that Jeremy and John, who have always been in that lobby with us, that they would want to lead a campaign that isn’t even asking for a renegotiated position,” he said.

The launch was attended by the co-chairs of the campaign – Hoey, MP for Vauxhall, Kelvin Hopkins, MP for Luton North, and Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton – all of whom argued that there was a good leftwing case for leaving the EU. It was also attended by businessman and Labour donor John Mills, who is the campaign’s secretary, and the MP for Birmingham Hall Green, Roger Godsiff.

Mills, who has donated £1.6m to Labour since 2010, said: “We are puzzled about why the Labour party has positioned itself where it is. If you ask most people in the Labour party whether they’d like to see changes, they almost all would.”

Hoey argued that the EU was “anti-democratic and anti-socialist” and that historical Labour figures like Tony Benn, Hugh Gaitskell, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle would have backed their campaign.

She quoted Benn at the time of the 1975 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Economic Community: “Ask yourself about the European Union or any other institution: what power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable and how can we get rid of you?”

Membership of the EU would make it harder for a future Labour government to protect workers’ rights, renationalise the railways or maintain a universal Royal Mail service, argued Stringer.

“In the late 1980s the Labour movement generally was seduced by the idea that the Labour movement would be better protected in Brussels than it was in parliament. That was a mistake then, at the height of Thatcherism,” he said.

The MPs argued that many Labour party members who have joined since Corbyn’s victory are Eurosceptic, citing issues surrounding economic austerity, Greece’s financial crisis and the treatment of refugees.

Writing in the Sun on Wednesday, Mills called on Corbyn to follow David Cameron’s lead and allow members of the shadow frontbench to campaign to vote to leave the EU, putting them at odds with the party’s official line.

A total of 213 of Labour’s 231 MPs have signed up to the Labour’s official pro-Europe campaign, Labour In For Britain, which is being run by former home secretary Alan Johnson.

A Labour spokesperson said: “The Labour party’s position is clear – it’s in Britain’s national interest and in the interests of working people to remain in Europe and we will be campaigning accordingly. This position is supported by Labour party conference, the shadow cabinet and over 90% of Labour MPs.”



