Labour's Keir Starmer plays down chances of second EU referendum

Keir Starmer has urged Labour colleagues not to “look back in grief” at the 2016 Brexit vote but instead try to fight for the best possible deal as Britain leaves the EU.

The shadow Brexit secretary told MPs that he understood why people were demanding a second referendum but said the party could not “rub out” the vote to leave.

He warned that remain campaigners could face losing a rerun of the vote when he spoke at a session of the parliamentary Labour party on Monday in which some politicians questioned him about the leadership’s position.

Starmer tried to appease colleagues who think Labour should be much tougher in calling for the UK to stay in the single market by saying he understood there was a sense of injustice at the way the referendum played out. However, one MP present at the meeting described the comments as a “hardening of the leadership’s position rather than reaching out to concerns from across the party”.

Starmer said the frustration was that Brexit campaigners “wrote a series of things that were not true such as £350m for the NHS”, according to the Huffington Post.

“But there are a number of obvious difficulties [with a second referendum]. I don’t think we’re going to know what ‘out’ looks like at 2021 at the earliest. And therefore the only point you’ll be able to measure out is in several years’ time, but we will have exited the EU in 2019; and therefore ‘in’ is no longer an option.”

According to MPs at the meeting, Starmer said the argument went beyond the practicalities and into a more fundamental question for Labour.

“If we sit here as a party aspiring to govern, then we have got to recognise that if we spend all that time looking back in grief about what many of us didn’t want to happen, thinking how do we rub it out, then we are unable to do what we need to do which is to fight for the [final deal] that reflects what we stand for and that is right for Britain in the 21st century,” Starmer said. “It is a really important distinction: are we looking back in grief or looking forward to the challenge of the future.”

He said that too much focus on the question of a second referendum was a distraction from that cause.

Starmer’s appearance came after one MP, Wes Streeting, claimed on Saturday that Labour policy on Brexit was the biggest barrier to staying in the single market. “With Labour, there would be a majority in the Commons for single market membership, but not without us. If the Labour party announced tomorrow that we would keep Britain in the single market and customs union, it would be a game-changing moment in British politics. The policy would command a majority in the Commons and a majority in the country,” he told the Fabian Society’s annual conference.

Starmer thanked MPs for their support on the EU withdrawal bill and in pushing the government to publish impact assessments and he insisted that Labour was fighting for a close economic relationship with the EU.

“I remind colleagues what we said in our manifesto that we will demand that the final deal delivers the benefits of the single market and the customs union,” he said.

“That’s a really important manifesto commitment that we made - and I think it’s really important that we all emphasise that at every opportunity with colleagues, with party members and with the media.

“In the summer, we were able to spell that out for the transitional period. And after that it means staying as close as possible to the single market with no deregulation of rights and protections or standards. And that a customs union was a viable option.”

He argued that keeping the “party and proposition united” was critical and argued that Labour had to be ready for the next general election.

On Sunday, Jeremy Corbyn told ITV’s Peston on Sunday that he was “not supporting or calling for” a fresh vote but did want a meaningful say for MPs on the final deal.