The free movement of people across the EU “hasn’t worked” for millions of Britons, and employers who bring in staff from overseas should be obliged to negotiate with a trade union to ensure that the wages of local workers are not being undercut, according to shadow business secretary Clive Lewis.

Lewis, seen by some as a potential future Labour leader, told the Guardian the party should “show leadership” over immigration, rather than promising to pull up the drawbridge. His approach is not official party policy, but echoes a recent call by the Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, for companies recruiting foreign workers to be obliged to negotiate with a union over terms and conditions.

“We have to acknowledge that free movement of labour hasn’t worked for a lot of people. It hasn’t worked for many of the people in this country, where they’ve been undercut, who feel insecure, who feel they’re not getting any of the benefits that immigration has clearly had in our economy,” he said.

Corbyn frustrated some of his colleagues at the Labour conference in September by suggesting that he saw no need for controls on immigration. Lewis said he believed underpinning workers’ rights would help respond to voters’ concerns. He said: “What we’re going to say to business is, you want to have access to the single market? We’re prepared to champion that for you – but you have to accept that on the other side of the coin, the way business has been done, the way that the economy has been run, has led us to this place; has led people to feel insecure, to feel, ‘Stop the world, I want to get off’. There’s a quid pro quo: you have to give workers more job security; better terms and conditions; recognise trade unions.

“It will have an impact on the number of people coming to this country, if you make it more difficult for employers to bring people in, to undercut people.”

Jeremy Corbyn with Lewis at a rally in Norwich in 2015. Photograph: Albanpix Ltd/Rex Shutterstock

His proposal comes as senior Labour figures try to interpret the forces that helped to swing the EU referendum and swept Donald Trump to power in the US.

Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, said he believed a future Labour government should champion businesses’ access to the single market, but in return, he would seek a “new deal” under which companies would have to offer their workforce better terms and conditions. “You say to businesses: you have to accept that you’ve played a part in this insecurity,” he said.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, Lewis:

Denied punching a wall in anger at the Labour conference and said the story fuelled racist stereotypes of “volatile” black men



Called for the party to reinvent an outward-looking English nationalism for the 21st century



Claimed that Trump’s election was driven by some of the same forces that propelled Corbyn to the Labour leadership.



Lewis, who will set out the party’s industrial strategy in a speech this week, argued that because Labour’s approach to Brexit would be to prioritise single market membership, as opposed to the prime minister’s focus on immigration control, it could now claim to be the natural party of business.

“In the current circumstances, with the Brexit debate on, Labour finds itself in a unique position, which it would probably never have had 18 months ago. We’ve said we want the best possible access to the single market; the Tories have started from the other end,” he said.

How to respond to voters’ anxieties about immigration has become a key dividing line in Labour since the Brexit vote, with prominent backbenchers including Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds and Chuka Umunna suggesting that some limits on immigration are necessary.

Lewis said: “You don’t have to go down the path of talking about artificial barriers, which I think ultimately are going to harm the economy, and harm the very people who most need the economy to work for them.”

As Labour digests the implications of Trump’s elevation to the White House, Lewis echoed Corbyn’s suggestion that it represents a backlash against rapid economic change. “Trump and Brexit, I think, are linked to the same thing: a deep insecurity about globalisation, about some of its negative effects; but also the insecurity that is based on inequality, and people’s lives changing at such a rapid rate of knots, and [that] the traditional safety nets that have been there – the welfare state – have been hacked away,” he said.

He said Corbyn’s victory in the 2015 Labour leadership election and his re-election in September were a result of the same forces. “It was an early indicator that there was a deep malaise with business as usual, with those who were seen as being part of an establishment that had let people down,” Lewis said.

However, he said Labour will only be able to win over alienated voters if it can champion English nationalism, as well as promising economic reforms. “Does the Brexit vote lead us down a path of inward-looking, negative English nationalism, which will alienate the Scots, alienate the Irish, alienate the Welsh, or are we going to have an inclusive, civic, outward-looking, open, tolerant version of that? I think it’s there for the left to say, ‘We’ve got a stake in national pride and identity as well’,” Lewis said.

Lewis, whose father came from Grenada, made headlines in September when he was visibly angered by last-minute changes to the script for his speech made by Corbyn’s communications director, Seumas Milne.

Reports at the time suggested that Lewis had subsequently punched a wall in anger, but he insisted that was not the case. “I didn’t punch a wall. It begins to fit into a narrative, which I don’t want to give anyone any fuel for, of me as an uncontrollable, angry black man,” he said. “I am passionate, I am gregarious, I do wear my heart on my sleeve. But there’s the world of difference between those things, and being volatile, violent and aggressive, which are stereotypes associated with black people.”

Lewis addresses the Labour conference in Liverpool. He says he did not punch a wall during the event. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

He was irritated, he said, not least because he was proud of having persuaded the party leadership to “park” the issue of Trident until 2020, helping prevent a series of damaging rows. After the incident, Lewis was moved sideways from the shadow defence brief. At the time, friends said he felt he was being punished, but the MP said he is enjoying his current role.

Industrial strategy has taken on renewed importance since Theresa May became prime minister, with Greg Clark’s business department taking “industrial strategy” as part of its title in a shift from his predecessor, Sajid Javid, who said the two words did not belong together.

The government is expected to set out its approach to industrial strategy in a green paper shortly, but Lewis said Labour’s strategy would be “transformative and people-centred”, and seek to help British companies take advantage of the opportunities created by the fight against climate change.



“They talk about industrial strategy, but all we’ve seen to date is one word: Nissan,” he said, referring to the assurances Clark gave the Japanese carmaker to persuade it to continue investing in Sunderland, which he described as a “short-term, tactical” approach.