The march for a Final Say will be huge because Brexit is the biggest political issue we’ve ever faced

The Final Say march in London this Saturday is likely to be enormous.

Labour is the only party standing across Britain that is committed to delivering a second referendum on Brexit – neither the Tories nor the Liberal Democrats will offer that if they are in government.

The fact is that Brexit is the single biggest issue driving British politics right now. It has brought down two Conservative prime ministers; it is possible that it could soon dispatch a third.

The prospect of a second referendum is itself controversial. Yet, in the current circumstances, this controversy is unwarranted: politics is above all an expression of what people are in favour of, not what they are against. Any policy built primarily on what people are against quickly falls apart. This applies to David Cameron’s 2016 ill-conceived Brexit referendum.

Labour respects the outcome of that referendum, but all it showed was that there was, in 2016, a majority against continued membership of the European Union. So be it. But there was no agreement expressed on what people wanted instead. The entire struggle over the last three years has been to try to establish that alternative.

The foolish claim that we could have a “clean-break Brexit” is bluster. The only thing that will be cleanly broken is the economy and our living standards, and the wrangling with the EU would continue for years afterwards.

Labour has consistently argued to defend and improve the living standards of the British people. Some may claim that the Brexit referendum gives the government a mandate to leave irrespective of how much worse off people will be, but politics is not a branch of mass telepathy. There is no divining what people “really meant” in that first referendum. There is only what was on the ballot paper: in or out. And there is no evidence that a majority of the British people are happy to be worse off in order to leave the EU.

As all the Leave campaign fantasies have gone to die where pledges from Boris Johnson repose, the Tory proposition is equally straightforward. It is a Trump Brexit. Once the US president had set his policy on promoting Brexit, favouring Nigel Farage, making his support for Boris Johnson conditional on achieving a no-deal exit and threatening to put the NHS on the table, then the overwhelming bulk of the Tory party fell into line.

The actual Brexit in front of us is one that will, as Trump wants, “make America great again” via Britain – with all the lower safety and food standards and environmental protections, the accelerated privatisation of our public services and the Americanisation of our workforce that entails.

Boris Johnson’s latest proposals still take Britain outside a customs union and with no alignment to the single market. On the contrary, he is consciously aiming for the scope to race to the bottom. That is what a no-deal Brexit entails. Under these circumstances, there is a concrete choice: a “Trump deal” for Britain, versus a deal which protects our own rights and living standards.

Labour’s policy is clear: we will block no deal. We will then call a general election. We will negotiate a reasonable Leave option, which keeps us in the customs union and closely aligned to the single market, to protect jobs, living standards and the environment. And finally we will put that option back to the people, versus the option of Remain.

The march on Saturday will be huge, because the issue is huge. So large that all political forces have been affected. I know that Labour has, and I believe that the People’s Vote campaign has redirected its focus on opposing Brexit too.

The time for divisiveness is long gone. All of us who oppose the Trump, Farage and Johnson’s Brexit must come together, to represent the best interests of the majority.