The word “Brexit” rears its head just once in Polly Toynbee’s Panglossian assessment of Labour’s prospects (Labour has shelves of winning policies. Now the party must get people to listen, 12 April). The party’s policy, or non-policy, on Brexit is deeply cynical, deeply flawed, and liable to prove utterly disastrous at the next election. Cynical, because no one believes that it truly reflects the personal views of Keir Starmer and his shadow cabinet on our relationship to the EU. Labour canvassers such as myself, who don’t understand it, will be either unable or unwilling to defend it on the doorstep.
Its stance will completely unravel if Starmer and his colleagues cannot offer coherent, agreed solutions to the many visible disasters of Brexit – NHS staffing crises, rising food prices, plummeting exports and trade, lorry queues at Dover, etc.
