Is it true that Labour won’t be discussing Brexit at its conference?

Yes and no. Britain’s vote to leave the EU is widely seen as the biggest historical event in a generation and as such, of course, it will be discussed at Labour’s conference. But it is not on the formal agenda as a conference topic.

Why is it not on the agenda?

The party picks eight subjects for discussion. Four are chosen by trade unions and the remaining four are selected in a ballot of constituency Labour parties.

What are they discussing?

The four subjects picked by the unions were employment rights, industrial strategy, public services and energy. The top four subjects selected by the constituency parties were grammar schools (18.32%), housing (16.44%), child refugees (15.53%) and the NHS (15%). Brexit was one of many subjects on the ballot, but as it did not feature in the top four it does not make the formal agenda.

Why was Brexit not picked?

The simple answer is that trade unions and constituency parties care more about the subjects that they picked, such as employment rights and housing. But, more importantly, Brexit is a politically awkward subject for the party. Jeremy Corbyn backed remaining in the EU but with reservations. And his lacklustre campaigning on the issue was one of the key reasons for a challenge to his leadership. The vast majority of Labour MPs backed remaining in the EU, but many of Labour’s heartland areas, such as the north-west, north-east and Wales, voted to leave. The party does not want to alienate these areas by suggesting they got it wrong. But at the same time Labour does not have a clear stance on what it wants to see from the Brexit negotiations.

Is Corbyn likely to set out a Brexit strategy?



No. “He doesn’t see Brexit as a central issue and he doesn’t have a very fixed position of what the policy should look like,” said Simon Usherwood, a reader in European studies at the University of Surrey. “If someone was bold enough to set out a vision then I think they could go a long way. But Jeremy Corbyn is not going to be that man,” Usherwood told Agence France-Presse.

So is the subject of Brexit off limits at the conference?

No. It is one of the key talking points at the sidelines of the conference, in fringe meetings, and it will feature heavily in the speeches of key Labour figures. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, will focus on the subject during her speech on Monday, when she will say that the party wants to spend billions of pounds on regeneration, among other projects, to make up for the loss of EU funding. “The communities who stand to lose out most from Brexit must be looked after first,” she will say.



Will Labour become the party of the 48% who voted for remain?

No. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, it would be very difficult for Labour to campaign for a second referendum, because so many of the party’s traditional supporters voted to leave. The former leader Ed Miliband dismissed talk of Labour becoming the party of the 48% as “nonsense”. He said: “I don’t just think it’s nonsense electorally, but it is incidentally because more than 400 seats in the country voted for leave, but it’s nonsense in principle because it buys into the same problem people were objecting to in their vote, which is the old: ‘We’re right, you’re wrong.’ I was for remain, don’t get me wrong, but we’ve got to hear people’s message that they’re telling us.” The former shadow welfare secretary Rachel Reeves summed up the party’s dilemma on Brexit, saying: “The big challenge now is between respecting the result of the referendum and maintaining some of those things about the European Union that most of us campaigned for.”

Is Labour being seen as out of touch by not putting Brexit on its conference agenda?

Yes. The result of the ballot on conference topics surprised commentators as it appeared to ignore the biggest political issue facing the country. The ConservativeHome founder, Tim Montgomerie, said the absence of Brexit from the agenda showed the perils of giving members more say than MPs on key decisions. “They have not even chosen Brexit to be debated this week – it [the membership] is not representative of the country as whole,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour. ITV’s political editor, Robert Peston, also expressed incredulity at the decision.