Should Labour support a second Brexit referendum?

Jess Phillips: Yes. The people should use their voices without fear of reprisals

I didn’t come easily to the position of supporting another vote on leaving the EU. I resisted for more than a year, for a number of reasons. The main reason was that my constituency was a leave majority, but also, I found some of the arguments and rhetoric of the campaign for a People’s Vote arrogant. It was some way distant from my experience of leave voters. The people where I live are not stupid, they are not racist, they are more than capable of looking at the facts presented at any given time and deciding, with either their heads, hearts or in most cases both, what is best for them and their families.

The facts of course have changed. We now know much more about what is on offer. The political class has been forced to remember that Northern Ireland exists, and has come face to face with the reality of leaving an institution we have become completely integrated with.

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Parliament has completely failed to come to a decision, not because MPs are useless and out for themselves (although there is a definite smattering of that), but because there is no perfect, gold-plated outcome to all of this. It seems to have come as a huge surprise to those in Westminster that the UK is made up of many different places with many different people who think many different things. Representative democracy in a hung parliament means deadlock, because alas, we do not all dream the same dreams or want the same things. That is what people voted for in the general election in 2017.

I support taking the decision back to the people because I am certain it will not be made in Westminster. I trust the people where I live to look at the facts as they exist today and make the right decision. It is not because I hate what they said last time and want another go. This is not a game.

It will not be easy. We have to accept that we are not coming out of this period unscathed. Trust is low, the economy and jobs are at risk, democracy will be called into question – whether that be direct or parliamentary. But, you know what, it already is. I already wade through voices calling me a traitor, and threatening to “put me down”. I’m already told daily that my support of more democracy, of asking people what they think of where we are today, is going to unleash dark forces and rightwing terror. Fear of evil will only ever make me stand taller. The Labour party does not appease threats from purveyors of hate. Those purveyors are already at it anyway; one of my friends is dead and another was very nearly taken too. The Labour party shouldn’t let them win by offering mealy-mouthed, halfway-house appeasement because we are scared. I’m much more scared of bowing to hate than of fighting it.

There has to be a different way to win back trust, to build hope and foster political honesty. We must at least try. This stuff isn’t easy, but what massive change ever was? The bottom line is this: Westminster is stuck and I trust those who I live among to unstick it one way or another. The Labour party has always been the voice of the people; let’s let them use their voices.

• Jess Phillips is Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley

Gloria De Piero: No. The working class cannot be ignored by the political class yet again

I was one of the 25 Labour MPs who wrote to Jeremy Corbyn recently asking him not to back a second referendum on Brexit. Despite what you might hear, a second referendum is not the Labour party’s preferred option: that is to get a deal with the EU, and that is why we are in talks with the government at the moment. We have always said that we wanted to negotiate a deal that allows companies in Britain to continue frictionless trade with Europe and one which protects jobs and workers. I want us to continue fighting for this.

A second referendum will only serve to divide the country further. I would need a daily stream of voters telling me that they had changed their minds and wanted another vote in order to be convinced to overturn a democratic result that all politicians at the time said they would honour.

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The Brexit vote has in some ways been a class issue – a working-class revolt against a political status quo that has neglected them for far too long. Only one in four Brexit voters had a degree, whereas a whopping 80% of British graduates under 34 voted to remain in the EU. Many leave voters see this as an opportunity to rebuild a country that works for them outside of the European Union.

In one poll, 58% of those who voted to leave said that politicians don’t listen to people like them. Holding a second referendum would just prove that point, and far from being an exercise in democracy, could result in putting off millions of British citizens from ever voting again. I was a remain voter, but a million more people in this country voted to leave than to remain, and we must respect that result. I have spoken to thousands of people who voted for Brexit since 2016, but could count on two hands the number of people who have changed their mind – there has been no seismic shift of opinion. Rather than fantasising about overturning the result, what we need to do now is to bring the country together with a deal that works for both sides of the argument. That is going to mean compromise.

The underlying problems in Britain – the unfair distribution of wealth and power – were not created by being in the EU and will not be solved by leaving. For that, we need a Labour government.

• Gloria De Piero is Labour MP for Ashfield