Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Labour’s customs union with the EU is a work in progress

Chuka Umunna’s and other Labour remainers’ hope that the Labour Party will support staying in the single market and the customs union were decisively dashed by Jeremy Corbyn in his much trailed speech in Coventry this week.

That Labour will honour the result of the EU referendum and leave the single market and the customs union and with it end the freedom of movement is not that new. What is new that will prove to be a giant leap forward for the Labour Party is Corbyn making it clear that remaining in either the single market or the customs union is incompatible with Labour’s radical plans for economic and industrial generation, regional development, state aid and state ownership of public utilities — a crucial understanding of the nature of the EU and its institutions that the majority of Labour members are yet to understand.  

Significant too was his recognition that the huge EU membership fees will after Brexit be spent on our public services.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
Monica Crowley, White House chief of protocol (obstructed at left) greets European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, upon arriving to meet with President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, August 18, 2025
Features / 28 August 2025
28 August 2025

US tariffs have had Von der Leyen bowing in submission, while comments from the former European Central Bank leader call for more European political integration and less individual state sovereignty. All this adds up to more pain and austerity ahead, argues NICK WRIGHT

Guillaume Périgois
Politics / 14 August 2025
14 August 2025

Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT

President Donald Trump, center, speaks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, left, during a group photo of NATO heads of state and government at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, June 25, 2025
War Economy / 8 July 2025
8 July 2025

In an address to the Communist Party’s executive at the weekend international secretary KEVAN NELSON explained why the communists’ watchwords must be Jobs not Bombs and Welfare not Warfare