Interview: Stella Creasy – Labour must take “full responsibility” for Brexit

The answer to that is a firm “no”, which may disappoint New European readers. But more of that later.

Labour Movement for Europe is an affiliated movement within the party which, for non-Kremlinologists, means it has official status. Founded in 1981, two years before the party went into a general election with a manifesto commitment to leaving the then European Economic Community, it seeks, its website states “to articulate the benefits and potential of partnership and of participation in democratic decision making” – which sounds a bit like being in the EU.

There are now more MPs who are members of the Labour Movement for Europe than there are Tory MPs in total, including coming stars such as Phil Brickell, Sean Woodcock and Perran Moon. And they are devoted to, to use a word Creasy uses a lot, salvaging Britain’s relationship with the EU if emphatically not campaigning to rejoin. That’s all the more important for Labour since, according to the 47-year-old, the party bears much responsibility for the 2016 referendum result in the first place.

“I am somebody who absolutely thinks we need to take full responsibility for that vote,” she says. “The public are never wrong. The public vote in a way that they feel is in the best interests of themselves and the country. 

“I think it was a wake-up call that what we saw as self-evident about the value of being in the room was something you should never take for granted. I’d always just thought it was a given that of course we would want to work with our colleagues internationally.

“For me the Labour Movement for Europe was therefore a natural home for trying to rebuild that and trying to respect the fact that we’d lost that argument and we needed to have it again from a left-wing perspective.”

Creasy describes the meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party in the run-up to the referendum as “mind-blowingly awful and toxic”, painting a picture of the leadership under Jeremy Corbyn as being almost agnostic about the result.

“I was in those PLP meetings where we were begging Jeremy Corbyn and people around him to take seriously the risk that we would lose the referendum,” she says. “There was definitely a sense of ‘well, it’s not really gonna happen, so it doesn’t matter if we don’t put our best foot forward’, and I don’t think we did. But also I think there was absolutely a hesitation there. And that was very, very frustrating. And as it turned out we were right to be scared.

“I come from the tradition in the Labour movement that you don’t mourn, you organise. That translates to me into ‘I’ve got to get involved in changing this’. You can’t go backwards – Brexit has happened – but you can be part of trying to repair, renew, rebuild what really matters here, which is people’s lives. Because I see first-hand the damage it’s done.”

This is where we must pose what Creasy calls the “Mark Francois question”. The movement is most definitely not the European Research Group, she says, not least because it has a party-wide structure, whereas the Brexiteers never published a list of the ERG’s members, never had a website and were essentially a group of bankbench MPs plotting in Peter Lilley’s office.

“We’ve got a grassroots membership of thousands. We are working with trade unions,” stresses Creasy. “It is not an organising hub within Parliament – it is an organising hub within the Labour movement and therefore it takes in every strand of that.

“So for me our time has come to bust the myth that this is about wrecking amendments and parliamentary shenanigans, to rehabilitating what drove people like me into politics and what was that sharp wake-up call in 2016.”

She stresses that the aim of the movement is not to rejoin the EU but to mitigate the worst of Brexit’s effects – at least at this stage.

“I’m absolutely clear that the endgame at this point of time is not to rejoin, and I’ll tell you why. Because you can’t make Brexit work, right? Brexit is the disaster many of us feared it would be – in fact, between 2019 and 2024 the last government was like, ‘we’ve burnt down the house’ and then what they thought they’d do is pour acid on what was left so people couldn’t use the bricks.

“So, things like the border operating model – it’s horrific. I get emails every single day from people trying to bring food into this country tearing their hair out at the charges, the regulation, how it’s being managed. That is self-inflicted. That is nothing to do with having voted to leave the European Union – that is how the Conservatives took Brexit and made it Tory hard Brexit.” Now, Creasy says, businesses are asking “will we invest in the UK, or can we be sure what the regulatory framework is – or shall we just not risk it?”

“Every single day people are coming across the consequences of Brexit, and we don’t have the time it would now take to repair what we’ve broken. Right? That’s 10 years of treaty negotiations, that is the uncertainty of another referendum, the toxicity… we need a salvage operation right now. 

“So I’m really clear to people: the Labour Movement for Europe is not about rejoin. The Labour Movement for Europe is about what is in the interests of the British people, the British public, because Brexit has happened. We take responsibility for having lost that argument and we take responsibility for, what can we do to salvage what there is so that at least in the future there might be something more?

“What do I mean by that? Well, if you are one of those businesses thinking ‘do I invest in a plant here in the UK, or do I go to Belgium or Italy’… creative industries, for example. You talk to people in the creative industries, you know, it’s not just touring that’s been killed off, it’s all the skills, all the technicians, all the training, and actually, if you’re the big international event companies, you’re starting to train people in Belgium. Because why wouldn’t you? That’s cold hard business fact.

“A salvage operation is, do we make it possible for them still to invest in the UK because, actually, there is still a relationship, there is the possibility of getting a visa, there is things like the Pan-European-Mediterranean [PEM] Convention that we could join that would tackle all the rules of origin paperwork that they’re getting.

“It’s because I view Brexit as being such a serious thing that I’m super-aware that if we don’t do some salvaging now, there’ll be nothing left. We can’t go back, but we can try now to repair what we’ve got so that there is something to build on for the future. So if you’re looking at me, saying ‘come on, this Labour Movement for Europe is just the Labour Party people campaigning to rejoin’, I’d say no, because we owe it to the British public to do more than that, which is to try and make sure that there’s something left at all.”

One of the tangible things the movement is pushing for, says Creasy, is “more democratic parliamentary involvement, engagement, in what comes next”, as Keir Starmer begins his reset with the EU. The Commons’ Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union was abolished in January 2021, there apparently being nothing left to discuss. The UK has still yet to appoint its members to the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, which should meet to monitor the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. “And that is a problem, because that is an important part of the review process of the TCA deal,” says Creasy.

“The priority cannot be, ‘let’s indulge in a fantasy that Brexit can be overturned in, you know, 18 months and it’ll all be like the Dallas bad dream,” she says. “Not least because this is not just about us. There’s an arrogance to the perspective that, having tried the patience of our European colleagues for decades now, they would have space, willingness, capacity to go through the whole process again. But we can show that we are people that you do want to work with.

“I speak to businesses every single day who are basically about to give up. So I can’t ask them to wait 10 years for treaty negotiation – and that’s 10 years with fast tracking. I can ask them, right, what is the primary thing? If it’s the paperwork, what makes the difference? 

“PEM membership makes a difference to the paperwork, an SPS deal [Sanitary and Phytosanitary] makes a difference to the paperwork, an energy sector deal makes a difference to the paperwork. And if we can do that, does that give you enough hope to keep investing in the UK, to keep being part of what we’re doing so that, yes, absolutely, some of those bigger conversations about, right, where do we want our future to go… think of it as breathing space.

“So let me be explicit: the Labour Movement for Europe is absolutely focused on that.”

Is the movement, if not calling for a return to the EU, countenancing the single market or customs union, I ask?

“Look,” says Creasy. “One of the challenges you’ve got at the moment is there’s a kind of fatalism, which is: Europe is unbending, it’s the four freedoms or nothing and the referendum was about no single market, no customs union, no freedom of movement. And, you know, there’s people saying things repeatedly on all these sides and not going, ‘ok, turn it round, what is possible?’.

“Look at the Windsor Agreement. Look at what Europe is doing with Moldova. Actually, there is a lot of flexibility, there is a recognition of mutual interest.”

One of the other areas the movement is pressing on is youth mobility. The EU wants a scheme to give 18-to-30-year-olds the right to live, work and study in the UK for a limited period, something that Labour ministers worry could be seen as a return to freedom of movement. 

“That’s a good example of something which was not part of the conversation in the referendum, it was not part of the conversation in the deal, it’s not been part of the conversation for the previous government,” says Creasy. 

“Do I think most people in this country know about the many youth mobility deals we already have? Probably not enough people in this country know that we have youth mobility deals with Uruguay, with Japan, with Canada, with New Zealand, with Australia. Why wouldn’t we do one with our next-door neighbours bearing in mind that it is exactly not freedom of movement, because it is a series of conditions under which people can come here and have to leave?

“The reality is it’s become a litmus test for the European Union about whether we are serious about resetting the relationship. So the sooner we get on and negotiate a youth mobility deal, the sooner we show what being ambitious but also achievable about Europe can look like, and that does salvage jobs and it salvages opportunities.”

It is, she stresses, one of the examples of tangible change her movement is focusing on and why it is – much as it might pain readers of this organ – not simply chanting, ERG-style, for an immediate return to EU membership.

“I am not sat here wearing a blue beret with gold stars on it singing Ode To Joy because I don’t think that is in the best interests of the British public,” she says. “I’m being clear about what I think is in the best interests of the British public, which is to negotiate and focus on now. We’ve got to have a conversation rooted in not just what is possible but what is principled. And the principle is: it isn’t going to help the people at the sharp end, the people I came into politics for, to be spending 10 years in treaty negotiations. If it is gonna help to get membership of PEM, to get an SPS deal, to get the Europeans to take us seriously again, then I’m gonna make that argument every single time. 

“People aren’t going to agree with all of it – I’m sure many of your readers would want us to be saying ‘rejoin should be on the table’, but actually, if that distracts us from achieving the things that are the salvage operation,” says Creasy, that would risk being, to quote Nye Bevan, “pure but impotent.” 

Will it work or might Creasy need to be more Mark Francois? The movement will be watching closely as Starmer tries to reset relations with a new trade and cooperation treaty next Spring.