What is Labour’s split over the possible EU trade deal actually about?

It would make Keir Starmer’s life simpler if the trade talks between the UK and the EU collapsed in acrimony and the country prepared to leave the EU single market without a deal on 1 January. At least it would then be obvious what the Labour Party’s position was: opposed to a no-deal exit and condemning the prime minister’s mishandling of the negotiations. 

Given, however, that most people expect a deal to be done, the Labour leader has been thinking for some time about how he should respond. The deal does not legally need to be voted on in parliament before ratification, but Boris Johnson is bound to hold a vote anyway. 

Recently, Rachel Reeves, who shadows Michael Gove, the Brexit fixer, spoke in the shadow cabinet about how the party should be ready to vote for Boris Johnson’s deal. It would be better than the alternative, which would be to leave without a deal, and voting for it would show that Labour was listening to the voters it lost last time. There is no doubt that she was expressing Starmer’s view, and trying to prepare the ground. 

This provoked a reaction, including, on these pages, from Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former press secretary, who argued that Labour should abstain in order to give itself the freedom to criticise the deal in future. (Not many Labour voices are urging the party to vote against the deal, because that would imply either that it wanted a no-deal exit or that it was still trying to block Brexit.) 

This is an argument that splits the party from top to bottom. Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, is understood to agree with Campbell that the party should abstain. She is supported by Emily Thornberry, shadow international trade secretary, David Lammy, shadow justice secretary, and Bridget Phillipson, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. 

Against them are ranged Nick Thomas-Symonds, shadow home secretary, Lisa Nandy, shadow foreign secretary, and Jonathan Ashworth, shadow health secretary. 

One big problem the abstainers have is that Starmer ordered his MPs to abstain on the coronavirus restrictions this week, and another abstention on an even more important vote is going to begin to look like chronic indecision. 

The biggest problem faced by those urging Starmer to vote for the deal is that whenever they criticise the terms of the deal in future, they will be reminded that they voted for it. 

It was interesting that Peter Mandelson, another big figure from the New Labour government, waded in yesterday. His argument was that the party should not get hung up on this debate, and should focus its attention on trying to improve the relationship between the UK and EU in future. That is an important point and a good way to move the argument on, but it doesn’t solve Labour’s immediate dilemma. 

Lord Mandelson’s article was interesting for another reason, which is that he admitted that Labour, by trying to reverse Brexit and pushing for a second referendum, had helped bring about a harder version of Brexit than had at one point been on offer. 

Many Labour MPs are haunted by the feeling that they should have voted for Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement while they had the chance. That would have kept the UK – temporarily, she said – in the EU’s customs union, and made the Irish border more manageable. 

But they didn’t take that opportunity and now they have to calculate which vote (or lack of a vote) they are more likely to regret in years to come.