28 December 2020.

MPs, trade unionists, and campaigners unite to call on Labour and other opposition parties not to vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

After years of posturing and delay, Boris Johnson has finally announced that a trade deal with the EU has been agreed. The backdrop to the deal is a profound crisis, marked by the government’s mismanagement of Covid. Recent days have witnessed panic, job losses and chaos at the border, but rather than seek any form of extension to the Brexit transition period, the government has ploughed ahead.

This deal is a substantial downgrade of the UK’s relationship with the EU, and is designed to open the door to rampant economic deregulation – a loss of rights and protections for workers, the environment, food standards and many other areas of life. From January 1st, UK citizens will no longer have the right to live and work in Europe, and many European migrants who have made their home in the UK will face an uncertain future. Future trade deals could now entrench the privatisation of the NHS and other public services.

We are witnessing an act of vandalism against our livelihoods, our rights and our horizons.

Given the government’s majority, it is a foregone conclusion that the deal will pass in parliament, but this deal will not ‘get Brexit done’: negotiations over trade and regulatory frameworks will go on and on for years to come. The vital task now is opposition: proper parliamentary scrutiny of this and all future trade deals, and the setting out of an alternative future in which we not only regain the rights and jobs we have lost, but become a better and more equal society. That task gets harder if opposition parties fall into the trap of rallying around this rotten deal.

We call on Labour, the labour movement and other opposition parties not to support the Tories’ Brexit deal when it is put to a vote in the House of Commons.

For a full list of signatories to this statement please see here.

This letter was organised by Another Europe is Possible and supported by the Anti*Capitalist Resistance.