Cards on the table, I campaigned and voted to Remain in the 2016 referendum. I have not changed my mind. I still believe it is a profound mistake for Britain to leave the EU.

My constituency took a different view to me in 2016 and voted to leave the EU by a margin of roughly 60 to 40.

As an elected representative, therefore, I said from the start that I would respect the result of the referendum and I did not oppose the Government when, early last year, they sought the endorsement of Parliament to trigger Article 50 and give notice of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

The issue for Parliament since then has been how to oversee and hold the Government to account over the way it has sought to negotiate the terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

Labour has been clear throughout the past two years that we would have approached those negotiations very differently from the Conservatives.

Richard Burden
Richard Burden, Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield

For example, Theresa May was wrong to declare – before negotiations had even started – that she ruled out continued membership of a customs union with the EU post-Brexit. That was never in the interests of jobs here in the UK, as I explained in a speech to Parliament in the summer.

Paradoxically however, the result of that early intransigence has now left the Prime Minister with the worst of all worlds.

The realities of our economy and the future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic have forced her to end up accepting a deal that retains continued customs membership for at least two years and with apparently little power for the UK to make its own decisions about what happens after that.

Had she shown more flexibility and listened to what Labour and others were saying at the start, Britain might by now have been close to a post-Brexit customs union with the EU which we had at least been able to shape.

We will never know for certain about where a different approach could have taken us by now. The reality which we must now face is where we are.

That reality is that the Prime Minister has brought back a deal that has been attacked on all sides.

The fact that Britain could be tied indefinitely into a form of customs union with the EU has infuriated Brexiteers in her own party, provoking Cabinet resignations and calls for the Prime Minister to stand down.

Yet it is also a deal that is unacceptable to those of us who urged a different approach from the start.

Whether or not Theresa May survives as Leader of the Conservative Party, it is difficult to see how her deal will ever be able to secure a majority in Parliament.

So what is the alternative? According to the terms on which the UK triggered Article 50, theoretically Britain could crash out of the EU on 29 March next year without having agreed anything with the EU about the terms of our withdrawal – the so called “no deal” scenario.

The consequences of this could however, be nothing short of catastrophic for people here in the UK – with potentially no frameworks being in place to govern travel between Britain and the EU, let alone the chaos it would cause to trade between us - in everything from motor vehicles to essential medicines.

It is a prospect that no Parliament could responsibly countenance.

So if Parliament will neither endorse Mrs May’s deal nor accept crashing out of the EU without a deal, how do we break the logjam, particularly if the Conservatives and their erstwhile allies in Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party also refuse to vote for a General Election that might allow a different government to change course?

Faced with that situation, we will have to look at other options and I currently do not see any practical alternative but to ask the people to decide the course the UK should take in a people’s vote.

To be able to do hold such a vote, or indeed if other options do emerge to break the logjam in Parliament, however, first we must give ourselves the time to put them into effect before Britain leaves the EU.

There is little prospect that this could happen before 29 March next year, the day on which Britain is currently scheduled to leave the EU according the terms on which we triggered Article 50 nearly two years ago.

Prime Minister Theresa May holds a press conference at 10 Downing Street, London, to discuss her Brexit plans.

A suspension or extension of the Article 50 process is therefore likely to be necessary to enable Britain to decide the course of action we wish to take – whatever that may be - rather than crashing out of the EU simply because we ran out of time.

Holding a people’s vote must not be an attempt to re-run the 2016 referendum.

That referendum asked a single question of whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU. We now know that some pretty disreputable claims were made at the time, as each day passes, some of the ways parts of the Leave campaign were financed now look more and more murky.

Nevertheless, a decision was made. The overall majority was wafer-thin overall but it was a decision nonetheless.

A referendum now should be about asking people what they believe should be done two years on - after the Government has tried and failed to secure a Parliamentary majority for the Brexit deal it has negotiated.

Faced with that reality there are three possible courses of action that our country could take. The first would be to disagree with Parliament and to endorse the Government’s deal.

The second would be to leave the EU without a deal and the third would be to remain in the EU.

It will not be a simple task to translate those options into the question or questions that could provide people with a decisive choice in a new referendum. But it is not an impossible one (see p.13 in ‘The Road Map to a People’s Vote’, published by People’s Vote UK here ).

As I said at the start, cards on the table, if given the opportunity in such a referendum I would again vote to remain in the EU.

This time however, I would not do so based on a theory of Brexit might look like. This time I would do so knowing the reality of the deal on offer, and about what would be at stake if the UK crashed out of the EU without a deal.

I genuinely believe that both of those options would leave the UK worse off than we are now – and considerably so.

Supporters of Best for Britain and EU for Brum, during a 'Bin Brexit' rally in Victoria Square.

That would be my choice, but in the event of a people’s vote being held, my vote would be worth no more or less than that of anyone else. The people would decide.

If Parliament cannot agree on a way forward in the coming weeks, right now I cannot see another way.

And whatever we do, we must do it in the spirit of healing the damaging divisions that are disfiguring not only the UK but other countries in Europe and the USA too.

Part of that involves politicians jettisoning rhetoric that puts creating scapegoats ahead of finding solutions and which substitutes insults for political debate.

And part of it involves recognising that many, many people in my Birmingham constituency and elsewhere struggle to see how their families will have the future they deserve when our country remains so unequal and when so many people are left behind by the way our economy works.

Whether we address that inequality and that sense of powerlessness is going to determine the kind of country we can be in the years to come, whatever decisions we take on Brexit in the coming weeks.

  • Richard Burden is the Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield

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