David Miliband is often presented as a potential leader of a new centrist force in British politics, and he certainly presented a series of radical principles at odds with the leaders of both major parties. He was passionately pro-European, arguing that the EU provides crucial protection for workers from the forces of untamed capitalism.
He also acknowledged mistakes made by the governments he was a part of: including the Iraq War, a general sense of complacency about rising inequality, as well as a failure to defend the European project when it was criticized.
But now he was trying to make up for lost time, and urged Jeremy Corbyn to stop standing aside and allowing the government to push through a hard Brexit that will pull Britain out of the Customs Union and threaten peace in Northern Ireland. “Jeremy Corbyn shouldn’t be the midwife of a hard Brexit. You can’t just stand aside and wait for events to take their course, because the course of events will impoverish precisely the people who the Labour Party was originally set up to represent,” he said.
He argued that there should be a second referendum once the terms of Brexit are known and said, if such a referendum were to happen, he would campaign for remain. “The case I think to say, look, the Brexit you were offered is not on offer, the world has changed since 2016, not least the election of Donald Trump, and the new position of the US in the international environment, the new facts that have become clear, and also some of the new impulses for reform within the European Union mean that it’s totally legitimate to say that the people are able to look at the details of the deal before it goes through,” he said.
“It’s the same argument that says you can put in an offer on a house, to rent it or to buy it, but you’re going to see the house and see the surveyor’s report before you actually complete and move in.”
If you liked this, you might like to see Bridget Kendall talking about the Cold War at 10am on Sunday.
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