From the beginning of my conversations on Brexit with the Labour leadership, I advocated a “radical Remain” stance: the UK should be for the EU, but not this EU. The labour movement in Britain and elsewhere has been critical of the operations of the state at the national level without calling for its disbandment. Similarly, we can be critical of the EU without seeking to leave it. We can expose the failings of its institutions and be fierce opponents of its neoliberal economic doctrine without wishing for the break-up of the bloc.
I warned Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell that, after almost four-and-a-half decades of entanglement with Europe, it would be very hard for the UK to leave even if it wanted to. “Never would you be more dependent on the EU than after Brexit,” I said. The UK would expend huge amounts of economic and political capital in pursuing withdrawal.
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