Shadow foreign secretary says party should not remain neutral in any second vote

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Labour should consider voting for a Boris Johnson Brexit deal in exchange for the promise of a referendum, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, has told the Guardian.

As anti-Brexit activists prepare to make their voices heard at Labour’s conference in Brighton this weekend, Thornberry suggested her party could allow a deal to pass through parliament – if they could thereby secure a “people’s vote”.

“I think it’s something we would have to consider. We would have to consider it seriously. We would,” Thornberry said.

And the Islington South MP struck a markedly different tone to Jeremy Corbyn when she warned the Labour leader that it “wouldn’t be right” for the party to remain neutral in a second Brexit referendum.

Speaking after an article by Corbyn in the Guardian appeared to suggest that the Labour leader would not campaign on either side in a new vote, the shadow foreign secretary said: “It’s a really, really big decision that the country has to make.

“I think it wouldn’t be right for Labour to have no opinion on such a big decision. I just don’t think it is.”

Writing in the Guardian earlier this week, Corbyn said a Labour government would seek a “sensible” Brexit deal, and then “put that to a public vote alongside remain”, adding: “I will pledge to carry out whatever the people decide, as a Labour prime minister.”

But Thornberry, who will speak at a People’s Vote rally in Brighton on Saturday, said that Labour should make clear at the outset, and before any general election, that it would recommend that voters supported remaining in the EU.

“I think we should have three parts to our policy: we have a referendum, remain’s on the ballot paper and Labour should campaign for remain,” she said.

Late on Friday John McDonnell poured cold water on the suggestion that Labour could back a Johnson deal in return for a referendum, saying he did not believe the prime minister would come back with anything the party could seriously consider getting behind.

“Everyone is saying let’s see what comes back. All the Tory media seem to be interested in is the Irish backstop, but there’s a whole range of other stuff we wouldn’t touch with a bargepole,” the shadow chancellor told the Daily Mirror.

Thornberry’s intervention came as senior Corbyn loyalists try to head off a confrontation over Brexit in Brighton.

Labour heading for Brexit strategy showdown in Brighton Read more

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, who was among those encouraging the Labour leader to embrace the idea of a referendum earlier this year, said his current position was now one all party members should be able to support.

“I do think there is an element, in Westminster, of people pursuing a remain argument because they want to undermine Jeremy,” she said. “And the thing is, whatever Jeremy does is not enough.

“At one point they were all saying, ‘Jeremy’s got to come out for a people’s vote.’ Well Jeremy’s come out for a people’s vote. He’s saying – and he’s very clear on this – it’s got to go back to the people. But all these people who were calling for a people’s vote, they’re not saying, ‘Oh that’s good.’ They’ve got some other impossibilist demand.”

She urged activists to focus instead on other issues in Brighton, including tackling the climate crisis and liberalising immigration policy, which she believes is more of a motivating factor for many younger voters than Brexit.

Labour’s Brexit policy has shifted significantly in a series of stages since last year’s party conference passed a motion saying a referendum must be among the options “on the table”.

More than 90 constituency Labour parties have submitted Brexit motions this year, with the majority demanding a remain position.

Their views will be hammered out into one or more “composite motions”, to be debated on Monday, and the party’s national executive committee (NEC) could also table its own Brexit policy statement.

Some anti-Brexit Labour activists are wary of sparking a direct conflict with the party leadership. But Thornberry warned that unless it took a clear stance, Labour risked losing voters on both sides of the Brexit divide.

“The vast majority of Labour voters are remain voters. And in so-called leave seats, 40% of people will have voted remain. And they will be Labour voters. That’s what the polling shows. And if we lose those, we lose those seats.”

She added: “I think that a lot of the leave voters are already extremely ambivalent about the Labour party. What we don’t want to do is lose people on both sides.

“It is like, if you walk in the middle of the road and a car’s coming towards you, you have to decide which side you’re going to jump.”

Thornberry is backed by remain-supporting shadow cabinet members, including Tom Watson, in entertaining the idea of supporting a Johnson deal on condition it is put to the public.

A similar plan was proposed by the Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson as Theresa May tried to win MPs’ backing for her Brexit deal – and its proponents believe they could potentially win a majority, with the support of the 21 former Conservatives expelled by Johnson.

Watson said: “Emily is right to try to find an understanding with others that allows the people to decide on whether a government deal is credible. We should all be looking for solutions to end years of parliamentary deadlock.”

However, other shadow cabinet members remain deeply sceptical. Abbott said: “I don’t think we should be supporting a bad deal, just because it’s got a referendum attached. That’s why I was against Kyle-Wilson.

“Either it’s a good deal, which says something about the customs union, and alignment with the single market – or it’s not. The referendum is not an end in itself.”

“Kyle-Wilson has resurfaced, and it was a bad idea the first time around, and I don’t support it,” she added.

Unlike Thornberry, Abbott also believes it would be legitimate for Corbyn to take a back seat during a future referendum.

“If Jeremy is going to be a prime minister for the whole country, it is difficult for him to take a position which is contrary to 17 million voters,” she said.

Thornberry was scathing about Johnson, whom she shadowed during his time as foreign secretary – the one cabinet role he held before becoming prime minister in July.

“He doesn’t have any grasp of detail so the way to beat him was to be a girly swot,” she said, pointedly using the same phrase Johnson applied to his predecessor David Cameron, in a leaked memo.

She said such language, together with Johnson’s taunting of Corbyn as a “big girl’s blouse”, was indicative of the prime minister’s attitude to women.

Talks ‘going backwards’ as UK asks EU to keep its proposals secret Read more

“I think it’s deeply ingrained, the way that he talks about women. I think he has a contempt for women,” she said.

She believes Johnson’s tough-guy rhetoric, including comparing himself to the Incredible Hulk, will not endear him to female voters.

“I think they see him as a buffoon and somebody who doesn’t understand people, but also doesn’t care about the things that lots of women care about,” she said.

“I just don’t think women want to be governed by the Hulk. They don’t.”

And she argued that Johnson – with the aid of his key adviser, Dominic Cummings – was deliberately styling himself as a political “strongman” in the mould of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

“We have all these strong men in politics – whether it’s Brazil, or the Philippines, or Trump, or Putin. They’re all big men: it’s let’s look up to them, don’t be afraid, they’re looking after things. It’s so fundamentally anti-democratic. And Boris seems to be modelling himself on that.”

In his Mirror interview, McDonnell also said that should Labour succeed in defeating Johnson in an election but fail to win a parliamentary majority it would not enter a coalition.

“We’ll not do it with any of them,” he said. “We’ll go in, we’ll get a majority government, if we don’t get a majority government we’ll go in as a minority party government. We’ll implement the manifesto. If any of those minor parties refuse to support us we’ll go back to the people.”