‘Lammy has shattered Labour’s Brexit omerta and reopened discussion on relations with the EU’ – LabourList

In pointing out that there would be advantages to Britain’s economy in being back in a Custom Union with Europe, the Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy, is rather like the earlier advocates of the referendum on leaving Europe who surfaced here and there 25 years before the 2016 plebiscite was held.

Lammy  has broken through the omerta that has silenced Labour since the 2016 vote. Then just 37 per cent of the population voted for Brexit while the other nearly two-thirds of us did not.

In truth, it is surprising the  vote for Brexit was so low. Every other nation in Europe this century, notably France and the Netherlands in 2005 which had a full constitutional referendum on the EU prior to the British one, said “no” to Brussels except Spain.

That no staffer working for David Cameron or Nick Clegg – the PM and Deputy PM – at the time pointed out to their two bosses the chances of winning an EU vote turning on uncontrolled immigration, sovereignty, and ‘Bossy Brussels’ were less than zero remains one of the mysteries of the Brexit saga.

 READ MORE: ‘Rushing a UK–EU customs union now would undermine real progress’

Ryan Bourne is one of a long list of right-wing anti-European economists who wrote in 2021:  “It will take decades to know if Brexit failed. Maybe I’ll write a mea culpa in 30 years.” 

In fact it has taken him just four years to come out in public in The Times to confess that he was wrong. “We cannot pretend things have gone well so far” he writes with typical English understatement.

He now works at the right-wing Cato Institute in Washington. Team Trump dislikes the EU, for sure, but liberated from the pro-Brexit orthodoxy of London elites, US based economists are permitted to look at evidence.

The US National Bureau of Economic Research has now published a paper arguing that UK GDP per person is six to eight per cent lower today than if Britain had kept trading normally with Europe. Business investment is down 15 per cent; employment and productivity by three to four per cent each.

Subscribe here to our daily newsletter roundup of Labour news, analysis and comment– and follow us on Bluesky, WhatsApp, X and Facebook.

David Lammy is Britain’s most US-influenced senior politician. Descended from enslaved Guyanese, he was brought up with three brothers by his single mother in Tottenham. A beautiful singing voice got him a scholarship to Peterborough Choir School and allowed him to leave behind poverty to become a barrister and spend a year at Harvard Law School through which he met and befriended Barack Obama. His artist wife, Nicola Green, did portraits of Obama campaigning to be America’s first black president and one of them hangs in Obama’s kitchen. He became an MP at 27 – 25 years younger than when Sir Keir Starmer’s entered into parliament.

Lammy knows the Labour Party, its MPs, and what they will accept and need better than many if not most in the cabinet.

In 2022, addressing the Labour Movement for Europe, Starmer said his policy on Europe was “To Make Brexit Work.” Theresa May used exactly the same words. Today we can see the result.

Brexit can no more be made to work than appeasement could have been made to work for Britain in the late 1930s. Trump’s America has dumped on British cars, British steel, closed down the British ethanol industry, and stiffed British foreign policy with his tolerance for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Britain has signed a deal on medicine exports to the US but in exchange agreed that 25 per cent of Britain’s medicine sales should be reserved for US big pharma.

Starmer has criticised Brexit as shaped by Boris Johnson most recently in the Commons. But when asked if he would consider looking at a modest first step of examining whether a return to an EU Custom Union is possible he immediately reverted to the mantra that Britain wanted nothing to do with a customs’ union or the EU Single Market.

One step forward, one step back in the ultra cautious style of leadership that is Starmer’s hall mark.

David Lammy has broken through that omerta by suggesting Britain should look at strong trade links to Europe. As Joël Reland, in a paper on the EU Customs Union for the UK In A Changing Europe think tank, points out the EU imposes no tariffs on goods imported from Britain so making a big song and dance about a Customs Union may make little difference.

Share your thoughts. Contribute on this story or tell your own by writing to our Editor. The best letters every week will be published on the site. Find out how to get your letter published.

Trying to explain to Liberal Democrats how the EU works has always been an uphill struggle. However, the Labour Movement for Europe has more MPs as members than there are Tory and Reform MPs combined. British businesses and most Labour, LibDem, SNP or Green MPs do not want to refight the Brexit divisions beginning with Boris Johnson’s phantasmagorical Daily Telegraph columns in the 1990s through to Farage’s attacks on Poles and others who worked in Britain up to 2016.

But pretending we can enable growth in Britain to reach levels that Spain and Poland today enjoy as full participating members in the European economy while shutting down all discussion on what might be done is dumb politics.

David Lammy has done everyone in politics a favour by breaking the omerta over Brexit. 

Now let debate begin.

• • SHARE: If you have anything to share that we should be looking into or publishing about this story – or any other topic involving Labour– contact us (strictly anonymously if you wish) at [email protected].
  • SUBSCRIBE: Sign up to LabourList’s morning email here for the best briefing on everything Labour, every weekday morning.
  • DONATE: If you value our work, please chip in a few pounds a week and become one of our supporters, helping sustain and expand our coverage.
  • PARTNER: If you or your organisation might be interested in partnering with us on sponsored events or projects, email [email protected].
  • ADVERTISE: If your organisation would like to advertise or run sponsored pieces on LabourList‘s daily newsletter or website, contact our exclusive ad partners Total Politics at [email protected].

Value our free and unique service?

LabourList has more readers than ever before – but we need your support. Our dedicated coverage of Labour’s policies and personalities, internal debates, selections and elections relies on donations from our readers.

Support LabourList