Abstract
AbstractThis article looks at the UK Labour Party’s view of the EU single market over the last four decades, focussing on three case study periods when this issue was particularly salient: first, the time of the single market’s introduction under Neil Kinnock’s leadership; second, the A8 accession with Tony Blair as Labour Prime Minister; and third, between the 2016 European referendum and 2019 general election during Jeremy Corbyn’s time as party leader. This historical narrative uses the theoretical approach of Harvard economist Dani Rodrik—of a ‘trilemma’ faced by national policy makers in response to globalisation—as a lens to describe a clear arc in Labour’s policy towards the single market across the three case studies. A position of initial scepticism moved to support under Kinnock’s leadership, and then active encouragement under Blair, before coming back again under Corbyn to uncomfortable non‐commitment. This arc directly correlates with the ebb and flow of the party’s overall economic approach—first the Keynesian, national Alternative Economic Strategy at the time of the party’s 1983 general election defeat; then, the deviation under Blair to a policy that actively encouraged cross‐border market liberalisation; and finally the return to an Alternative Economic Strategy‐style approach under Corbyn.
Highlights
SINCE THE 2016 EU referendum, the Labour Party’s view of the single market has been a significant part of its overall intentions for the UK’s future economic relationship with Europe
This article looks at the UK Labour Party’s view of the EU single market over the last four decades, focussing on three case study periods when this issue was salient: first, the time of the single market’s introduction under Neil Kinnock’s leadership; second, the A8 accession with Tony Blair as Labour Prime Minister; and third, between the 2016 European referendum and 2019 general election during Jeremy Corbyn’s time as party leader. This historical narrative uses the theoretical approach of Harvard economist Dani Rodrik—of a ‘trilemma’ faced by national policy makers in response to globalisation—as a lens to describe a clear arc in Labour’s policy towards the single market across the three case studies
There was a political motive for Labour to do so: Gallup polling at the time showed 55 per cent of British people saw membership of the EC as a ‘good thing’; and while Margaret Thatcher was openly hostile to this sort of European legislation, as Kinnock later recalled, Labour could use this ‘social dimension’ to position itself as the ‘better Europeans’
Summary
SINCE THE 2016 EU referendum, the Labour Party’s view of the single market has been a significant part of its overall intentions for the UK’s future economic relationship with Europe. That the British people can benefit from European safeguards’ and ‘poorer countries are not disadvantaged as a result of the Single Market’.27 In committing to this policy in its 1992 manifesto, Labour sealed the transformation of both its European and economic strategies that took place over the duration of Kinnock’s leadership: euroscepticism had turned to acceptance, at the very least, of EC membership; the selection of Rodrik’s combination of national sovereignty and democratic legitimacy had increasingly become a preference for that of national sovereignty and economic globalisation. Rather than the free movement of labour, Corbyn’s personal opposition to other areas of European economic globalisation—the free movement of capital, and the EU’s institutional controls on national state aid—better justify the party leader’s preference for leaving the single market after Brexit He was consistent on this point, both before and after the 2016 referendum. The trade-off is the market economy and it is the option favoured by Labour’s eurosceptic hard-left faction, whose policies of increasing nationalised ownership offer a form of state socialism in one country’.77
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