News release
The Labour government is deluding itself if it thinks it can cherry-pick the “best bits” of EU membership without rejoining the bloc or becoming part of its single market, the Rejoin EU Party says.
In a newspaper interview, Chancellor Rachel Reeves reportedly said “Brexit has not been good for Britain” and that the UK should align more closely with EU regulations.
She said there was now “an awful lot we can do to improve our trading relations” and argued that closer ties with the EU were the “biggest prize” economically.
But she appeared to imply Labour wouldn’t reverse Brexit, saying “that ship has sailed”.
Labour is highly unlikely to be able to significantly boost the economy without rejoining the EU’s single market and customs union, particularly given rising oil prices caused by conflict in the Middle East, the Rejoin EU Party says.
In an interview with LBC radio on Saturday evening, Rejoin EU Party chairman Brendan Donnelly said he believed Reeves’s comments about closer alignment were “pretty thin gruel”.
“If you want to make a difference to the British economy through a genuinely closer relationship with the EU, you have to ask yourself questions about the role of the EU’s single market, customs union, free movement and the European Court of Justice,” Donnelly said.
“I don’t get the impression this government has seriously thought through those questions. I’m afraid we’ll find ourselves in a position of just tinkering at the edges or maybe worse, accepting decisions others have made. The answer is to rejoin the EU and become part of its law-making structure, not hoping from the outside that you can have your cake and eat it.”
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The Rejoin EU Party is campaigning to re-join the EU because we believe re-joining is the only way to solve the multiple problems Brexit has created. Brexit is broken and it’s breaking our country too. All the promises on which Brexit was sold to the electorate in 2016 were nonsense. Far from reducing red tape and providing £350m a week for the NHS, Brexit makes trading with the crucial European market more complex, difficult and expensive and threatens to reduce funding for public services. If you agree Brexit is making our country poorer, less tolerant and less united, join us and send a message to Westminster that you want your EU membership back, with all its freedoms and benefits.