John McDonnell has suggested that a 'People's Vote' should not include the option of staying in the EU. While it might placate the press, it will damage Labour's goals.

It’s the zombie Brexit argument that just won’t die – ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s nationalisation plans can’t work if we stay in the EU’. Often delivered disingenuously by people who have no interest in the prospect of a Labour government, it also happens to be entirely untrue.

Across Europe, the nonsense of this claim is self-evident – French state-owned energy company EDF makes huge profits for its government, while in Germany the entirety of the country’s railway infrastructure and the majority of their train services are in public ownership and also are amongst the best in the world. Both companies are so successful they run privatised services here in the UK – with the profits serving to boost public finances back home.

It’s often maintained that EU state aid rules would prevent a Labour government from intervening in failing privatised industries, but the truth is that the rules of the Single Market do not prevent public ownership. Only this year, the British government was forced – following the failure of yet another private sector franchisee – to renationalise train services on the East Coast Mainline. The issue of compensation for nationalisation is a matter of UK law informed only by the European Convention on Human Rights – not by law deriving from the European Union.

While state aid rules do place some limits on what national governments can and can’t do, it’s very unlikely that they would frustrate any of the social democratic ambitions of a future Labour government. Indeed, it’s often forgotten that state aid rules can serve to protect consumers and citizens from big business, as they have in Ireland where the tax breaks given to Apple have been ruled illegal by the European Commission. In departing the European Union, the UK would be losing this fundamental protection against becoming a tax dodger’s paradise.

You don’t have to be the owner of a beret adorned with an EU flag, or even a great fan of the European Union as it currently exists to accept that the Tories’ ‘Mad Max’ Brexit is a fundamentally bad idea. Left critics of the EU point with some justification to its failure of Greece, the mismanagement of the migrant crisis and the de-emphasis of ‘social Europe’ in recent years. But these failures haven’t happened in a vacuum – they’ve happened as a direct consequence of the dwindling fortunes of centre-left parties and voices in the European institutions.

The answer to these failures doesn’t lie in abandoning Europe. Models for the way forward can be found here in Britain, and Portugal too, where parties of the centre-left are once again finding success by speaking authentically to their values and voters.

The British left is at a crossroads where we can choose either to retreat into isolationism, or to live up to our internationalist ideals and serve as an example of the ongoing electoral viability of parties of the European centre left.

In opting to resist a hard-right Brexit which will serve only to entrench austerity and poverty, Labour has an opportunity to lead on articulating a different vision not just of Britain, but of our European institutions too. We can bring to the fore once again the Delorsian vision that spoke so powerfully to the Labour movement in the first place: a Europe built on principles of social justice, equality, solidarity and workers’ rights across borders.

It’s vital that if Brexit can be stopped and as we move forwards, that these issues and our vision of a different, better Europe are articulated far more strongly than they have been hitherto. But we must also recognise the moment and political context we now exist in, where populist, nationalist and far-right forces are on the rise.

The Lexit fantasy serves only to give succour to people who would see every social aspect of the European project torn asunder and Britain turned into an ultra-capitalist bolthole.

Labour’s manifesto isn’t just achievable within the European Union – it’s fundamentally incompatible with Brexit. Departing on the terms the that Tories have set out will leave Britain in chaos and Labour with policy pledges that become impossible to deliver.

How can we implement such an ambitious and transformative programme of investment from a position of such scarcity? How could we ever deliver on our promises of nationalisation of the railways, water, the energy grid, and Royal Mail, or deliver greater investment in the NHS and education in the face of the huge hole Brexit will blow in the public purse?

Labour voters deserve more than a post-Brexit firefighting government, attempting to clear up the Tories’ mess but delivering none of the real change our communities so urgently need. In John Harris’ recent ‘Anywhere But Westminster’ series, it’s a striking pattern that no matter where Harris goes, or who he talks to – city or town, leave or remain – that austerity is at the heart of people’s fears for the future.

Labour can and should aspire to win back those voters who – via UKIP, Brexit and the Tories – have drifted away from us. But the way to do so, and ultimately to deliver our radical vision can no longer be by seeking to placate the right-wing media and their powerful pro-Brexit allies. The time for boldness and clarity of purpose is now.

Patrick Moule is a Supporter of For our Future’s Sake, a youth and student-led campaign calling for a People’s Vote on the Final Brexit Deal. He is Chair of Springfield Labour and Student Officer of the Labour Irish Society.

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