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The Labour members who want the UK to remain in the European single market and customs union should be careful what they wish for. The only countries that can have full membership of the single market are EU member states. Others, such as Efta members, can participate in it by belonging to the European Economic Area but have to accept the EU’s four freedoms in goods, services, capital and people.
What this means in practice is that a post-Brexit British government would be obliged to tender its public services and utilities to the benefit of European multinational capital. It would be unable to prevent the further privatisation and fragmentation of the public realm and, crucially, would be powerless to stop unscrupulous employers continuing to exploit free movement of labour to undermine collective bargaining by the deployment of cheap labour from other parts of the EU, a practice that informed many trade unionists’ decision to vote for Brexit in the first place. As for the customs union, outside its own borders the EU is extremely protectionist, and its neoliberal free trade policy is not something that should be emulated.
Nevertheless, given the proximity and importance of the wider European market to the UK, it is entirely logical that agreement is reached on a mutually beneficial trading relationship. However, some of the more conservative elements in the British trade union movement also seem to think that their interests, and those of the working class, are synonymous with those of big business and are echoing the call for access to the single market and customs union on the basis of the current EU rules, thus running the risk of inheriting the worst aspects of EU trade policy without any influence to change it once Brexit becomes a reality.
Bert Schouwenburg
International officer, GMB
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