Sunday, August 27, 2017

Labour's temporary u-turn

Flying flag for Europe Gateshead Quays Mar 17 (42)

At last, a bit of clarity from Labour on the most important issue of the day: Brexit. After months of confused statements from Labour in which they hovered close to the Tories' hard Brexit position while trying to appear pro-EU, Labour today have some out in favour of keeping the UK in the Single Market and the Customs Union, but only for a short period after March 2019. The policy was announced by Kier Starmer who, just a few weeks ago was dismissing the same proposal as not allowed under EU rules. He was wrong, as Norway will be able to tell him, but that didn't get in the way of getting out of a tricky question about Single Market membership put to him by Sky News.

The problem now is that after the unspecified transition period, what is Labour's policy? Watch out for more smokescreens. In the meantime, Labour's conversion to a soft-now-but-probable-hard-Brexit-position-in-the-future is welcome.

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