Custom and Practice

The intended damage having been done in bringing about both the 2019 General Election and its result, Keir Starmer has lately claimed to be opposed to reaccession to the Customs Union and to Margaret Thatcher's Single Market.

But withdrawal from both of them was in Labour's near miss manifesto of 2017, and its 2017 and 2019 economic programmes both depended on that withdrawal, so much of the Hard Right's overwhelming majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party might vote to make any such programme permanently impossible by going back in. Failure to support Rishi Sunak on this would be a threat to Starmer's Leadership, whereas the thing itself would be no threat to Sunak's. On the contrary, this is why Sunak is Leader at all.

That is before considering everyone else in the House of Commons. Even a united Opposition, which there would not be, would then need at least 40 Conservative rebels, which there would not be. Any Conservative rebellion would be negligible. Sunak was made Prime Minister without any sort of contest, without a vote's being cast, specifically in order to do this. He has now let it be known that he has begun that process. He is even openly planning to take us into the Schengen Area, which has always previously been ruled out by all three parties that have been in government during that Area's existence.

We are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.