Labour shadow cabinet splits about Europe have deepened over how closely the party should associate itself with David Cameron and business to back continued UK membership of the European Union.

There is anger among some who think that Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, may be over-reacting to fears that former Labour voters who defected to Ukip in the general election will not return if the party is seen as teaming up with the Conservatives and business leaders in the EU referendum campaign.



Leadership contender Andy Burnham and the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, are stressing that Labour will run its own pro-European campaign, and appear to be ambiguous about being part of a cross-party effort with Conservatives.

None of the leadership candidates support Labour appearing alongside Cameron on the same platform but John Woodcock, a prominent supporter of Liz Kendall, said it would be a profound mistake for Labour to walk away altogether from the cross-party campaign.

He said: “This campaign will have more resources and greater reach than a Labour-only campaign. It would be a profound mistake to boycott the wider yes campaign for the principal reason that we are then leaving the way open for Cameron to screw up.”

Woodcock added that the prime minister had shown an ability to mangle relations with Europe, and the party could not afford to leave the pro-European campaign to him.



He acknowledged that Labour had been slow to show a distinctive identity in the Scottish referendum campaign, and this may have helped the Scottish Nationalists in the general election, but he said in the case of Europe “it would be wrong to cede control of an enormously important campaign with significant reach”.

Woodcock added: “It would be a truly frightening risk to take with the country’s economic security.”

Harman, as acting leader, is trying to reflect a range of opinion on Europe inside the party, that in turn is being influenced by the leadership election.

The shadow cabinet discussed the issue at the beginning of the week and some pro-Europeans were concerned that Benn, a supporter of Burnham in the leadership campaign, did not fully reflect the balance of discussion in the shadow cabinet, emphasising only that Labour would have its own campaign. Shadow cabinet sources said there was little support expressed at Monday’s meeting for boycotting a cross-party pro-European campaign.

Pro-European Labour MPs are concerned that behind the dispute is an attempt to start sounding more ambivalent about Europe, including making demands on Cameron to negotiate changes in fisheries policy and parliamentary sovereignty. The pro-Europeans argue this needs to be nipped in the bud by setting up a new pro-Europe Labour campaign as quickly as possible

The balance of forces in the shadow cabinet has been changed by the departure of the pro-European shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander, but the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, is not said to be willing to tolerate any slippage in the party’s position on EU membership in a bid to woo Ukip voters.

It is argued that Ukip’s success was not driven by antipathy to Europe, but by deeper economic malaise.

Greater Manchester MP Graham Stringer, a long-term opponent of the EU, claimed on BBC Radio 4’s World at One on Friday that if Labour had offered a referendum at the last election, it would have been enough to win at least another eight to 10 seats, so depriving the Tories of an overall majority.

He said “red” Ukip supporters did not come back to Labour on 7 May, unlike their “blue” Ukip counterparts who returned to the Tories, because the party failed to offer a referendum. He called for a period of reflection before the party backed Europe again.

Some of the internal shadow cabinet dispute is an issue of tactics, with some seeing opportunities to ally with Tory rebels to cause Cameron difficulties over specific issues in the referendum bill, such as the extent to which government must go into purdah during the referendum campaign.