The Torch can exclusively reveal that Jeremy Corbyn and Labour lied to the public about their position on the single market, expressing public, official support for it before the election to capture the votes of those against hard Brexit, before switching to their current position of leaving the single market almost immediately afterwards.

A page on the Labour Party website, dated by the main video on it to 1st June 2017 – a week before the general election took place – expresses that Labour would “fight to secure single market membership”, clearly aimed at securing the votes of those concerned by hard Brexit, and portraying Labour as a soft Brexit alternative.

UPDATE: Labour have now updated their website after this exposé was published – good thing we’ve got the screenshots!

A screenshot from the Labour website

The party has long been accused of playing the public on the issue, with careful avoidance of a particular position so as to appear in favour of Brexit to Brexiteers, and in favour of the single market to Remainers, but until now, there had been no evidence brought to light of an official u-turn by Labour. This page on their official website, detailing a firm policy to remain in the EU, makes crystal clear that Labour and Jeremy Corbyn lied to the public about their real position.

No sooner than three days after the election, on the 11th June, had the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said that Labour supported leaving the Single Market in an interview with Robert Peston.

This was followed by a number of other assertions, culminating in last week’s admission by Jeremy Corbyn, in explicit terms, that Labour would leave.

To go from supporting staying in the single market, explicitly and openly on the party’s website, just a week before the election, to refusing to vote for it in Parliament, and then announcing an anti-single market policy is a huge change for Labour.

It has drawn comparison from many quarters with the tuition fee fiasco of 2010 – Labour themselves have now been caught pledging one thing during the election, and then doing the exact opposite post-election. One critic called it “absolute deceit” and continued that “Labour have brazenly lied to the public”.