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Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn, who said on Tuesday that the Labour party was ‘not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle’. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Jeremy Corbyn, who said on Tuesday that the Labour party was ‘not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle’. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Trying to pin down Labour’s position on free movement

This article is more than 7 years old

Many thousands of people joined the Labour party and voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader because he offered something uniquely different to other politicians as he appeared to say what he meant and mean what he said. So when he asked me by email, as Labour leader, to support the Labour In campaign I willing did so. While disappointed with the EU referendum result, the motion passed unanimously at conference – “Unless the final settlement proves to be acceptable, then the option of retaining EU membership should be retained. The final settlement should therefore be subject to approval, through parliament and potentially through a general election” – gave me hope that Labour was committed to staying in the EU.

You report (10 January) Corbyn as saying that “Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle. But nor can we afford to lose full access to the European single market on which so many British businesses and jobs depend.” Yet the EU says that the single market goes with the freedom of movement. It really is time that the Labour leadership started to take note of party policy on Brexit and the 65-70% of Labour members and voters who voted remain. A good start would be to oppose invoking article 50 and act like a real opposition.
David Melvin
Mossley, Greater Manchester

After scratching their heads for months, Labour have finally caught up with us. We have been saying for months that it is inevitable, not probable, that Brexit will happen. So, in November we published our three commonsense goals that any Brexit plan should meet: secure people’s jobs and livelihoods, fully fund the NHS, and create a fair immigration system that benefits our country. Since then thousands of supporters have joined us. We’re delighted that common sense has finally prevailed with one of the two major political parties in the UK, which means we’re now just waiting for the government to arrive at the party. Let’s hope they bring a decent crate of lager rather than a cheap three-litre bottle of cider.
Kyle Taylor
Director, Smart Brexit

Jeremy Corbyn and his circle, having made the political calculation that Labour has more to salvage by appeasing Brexit voters than by placating remain supporters, have cobbled together policies with unpromising historical precedents. Copying Ukip and the Tories by restricting the free movement of labour resembles paying Danegeld to an enemy who has occupied your territory. Promising to revive ailing British industries by recovering the power to offer them state aid looks remarkably like Stalin’s policy of “socialism in one country”. Nine hundred years apart in time, these policies have one thing in common: they both failed.
Glyn Turton
Baildon, West Yorkshire

Aditya Chakrabortty should not be disappointed by Corbyn’s “triangulation” on freedom of movement (Is it time for a maximum wage cap? Our panel responds, theguardian.com, 10 January). Freedom of movement is currently synonymous with freedom for employers to degrade pay and conditions at one end of the labour market, and freedom to asset-strip poorer economies at the other end.

It does not have to be so but, as Corbyn has suggested, foreign workers would not be so attractive to employers if they could not be exploited and had to join a trade union.

Calls to stop the misuse of reserve armies of overseas labour should be supported, regardless of whether or not a reduction in immigration is a byproduct. Any other position objectively sustains exploitation and the neoliberal enterprise.
Peter McKenna
Liverpool

Jeremy Corbyn now campaigns for freedom of movement in Europe for goods, services and capital, but not for people. The champion of the “true” left now campaigns for Theresa May’s reactionary project. It is as wrong as it is futile: readers of the Sun and the Mail will not flock to Labour as a result.

In France, this process goes by the name of “lepénisation of minds” (“la lepénisation des esprits”). Marine Le Pen doesn’t need to win elections to hold power. Politicians of all persuasions now speak her language. It is very worrying to see the same mechanism so effectively at work in the UK.
François Chabat
London

Now that Corbyn has “insisted Labour has no principled objection to ending free movement”, one can only guess what the next objection the rightwing MPs will make to his leadership. Could it be that those who are “intensely relaxed” about people getting obscenely rich will now condemn his statement on the radio about capping high pay? After all, how could the leader of the Labour party in this country possibly see anything wrong with top bosses earning in three and a half days what the average worker earns in a year?
Bernie Evans
Liverpool

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