Politics was once a simple affair. On one side were the lefties, unhappy with the status quo and agitating for something different. On the other side were the conservatives, suspicious of change. When it comes to Brexit, though, the natural order of things has been reversed. The right has come up with all sorts of visions – most of them dystopian – of Britain’s future outside the European Union. The left, for the most part, has spent its time praying for the vote in June 2016 to be reversed.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. There are those on the left who understand that there was a reason people who had never voted before came out in their millions to vote for leave, and who say that something must be done for communities hollowed out by the failed policies of the past four decades. They even have a soundbite: tough on Brexit, tough on the causes of Brexit.

Similarly, there are left-of-centre remainers who recognise that something has gone seriously wrong with the European Union. They too have a slogan: a different Europe is possible.

In reality, though, almost all the energy on the remain side has been spent on keeping the UK inside the EU come what may. There has been nothing from remainers that would suggest that they have a serious plan for tackling the symptoms of Brexit. The same applies to reform of the EU.

A small number of people in the Labour party and in the trade union movement take a different view. For them, Brexit is to be welcomed because the EU’s bias in favour of multinational capital, its hardwired monetarism and its obsession with balanced budgets means it is more Thatcherite than social democratic. For those remainers who say this is a caricature and that the EU is really about protecting labour rights and defending the interests of workers in a harsh, globalised world, left leavers have a one-word riposte: Greece.

Since the referendum, this group has found it hard to get a hearing as the much larger group of left remainers has dominated the conversation with warnings about how the sky will fall in after Brexit. There is nothing new in this: many of the cheerleaders for remain were making exactly the same noises years ago when the UK was deciding whether or not to join the euro.

Yet, in recent weeks there have been two publications that have challenged the mainstream view. The Left Case Against the EU by Costas Lapavitsas, a Soas economics professor, takes issue with the idea that the EU is all about cooperation and togetherness, a borderless paradise of interrailing and Erasmus schemes.

The EU, Lapavitsas argues, is not a nation state that the left could battle to capture and then shape the way it is run. Rather, it is a transnational juggernaut geared to neoliberalism.

The European left’s “attachment to the EU as an inherently progressive development prevents it from being radical, and indeed integrates it into the neoliberal structures of European capitalism”, Lapavitsas says. “The left has become increasingly cut off from its historic constituency, the workers and the poor of Europe, who have naturally sought a voice elsewhere.”

This seems a pretty accurate assessment. The European left sees the EU as promoting democracy, egalitarianism and social liberalism, but the reality is somewhat different. The four pillars of the single market – free movement of goods, services, people and money – are actually the axioms of market fundamentalism, which is why Mrs Thatcher supported its creation. Meanwhile, the European court of justice has gradually turned itself into a body that enforces a free-market view of the world, placing more and more restrictions on the freedom of member states to make their own economic decisions.

This point is taken up by Philip Whyman of the University of Central Lancashire in his book, The Left Case for Brexit, which says the real choice for Britain is whether we would prefer as few changes as possible, because we are happy with the status quo, or whether we would like to do things differently and therefore need the “greater policy independence that is necessary to make these changes”.

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Whyman concedes that up until now the UK has failed to take advantage of the leeway that is currently permitted under EU law but says that economic renewal requires freedom from competition, state aid and procurement rules. The pamphlet argues for a free trade agreement with the EU to ensure maximum flexibility.

“Brexit can be a positive event for the left. Withdrawal from the EU offers the potential for an active government to transform our economy for our mutual benefit. Long standing weaknesses in the UK economy need to be dealt with. These include issues relating to low levels of capital formation, poor productivity growth, a large and unsustainable trade deficit, problems with the efficient operation of the labour market and the need to rebuild manufacturing industry to rebalance the UK economy.”

Some of the themes explored in these two books were bubbling beneath the surface of last week’s Labour conference. The reluctance of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to put the option to remain in the EU on the ballot paper in a second referendum was obvious. They fear those who voted to leave in heartland Labour seats will feel betrayed if told to have another go because they came up with the wrong answer last time. What’s more, it is not so long ago that the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor were publicly expressing similar views to those of Lapavitsas. There is no obvious reason why they should have changed their minds because the events of the past few years have made one thing abundantly clear: this Europe is not for turning.