Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit strategy risks pushing voters to the SNP, Labour MEP warns

Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to Brexit does not reflect how Scotland voted in the EU referendum and risks pushing voters towards the SNP, Labour MEP Catherine Stihler has warned.

Speaking in a Brexit fringe at the Scottish Labour conference, Stihler, one of two Scottish Labour MEPs, also questioned the effect of Labour’s plan to leave the EU single market on the Irish border.

Jeremy Corbyn has made clear that Labour supports joining some sort of customs union with the EU after Brexit, but rejects continued membership of the single market.

But opposition to the stance has been growing within Labour, with a new campaign group, Scottish Labour for the Single Market, recently formed to push the leadership towards supporting a closer relationship with the EU after Brexit.

Speaking in Dundee, Stihler, one of the co-chairs alongside former leader Kezia Dugdale and MP Ian Murray, questioned how voters would react to Corbyn’s stance.

“We should be in no doubt that we [as a party] do not reflect how the majority of people in Scotland voted, which was to remain part of the European Union. We will pay the consequences for that electorally, at the hands of the SNP. Sixty-two per cent of people in Scotland voted to remain, and their voices are continually absent from the UK debate, and from the UK Government’s deliberations.

“The next year is not going to be like any other that has gone before, or any other that will come, and what we do as a party and as a movement will not be forgotten. If the situation arises where our party and movement defeats this current Tory government and their broken record in a snap general election, we will be the ones given the responsibility to conclude the withdrawal agreement.”

She added: “It’s a political choice to rule out the single market or rule out the customs union. These are political choices and they don’t need to do that. If the UK government turn round and say ‘we want to be part of the single market’ then the EU negotiation team would not be talking about a free trade agreement, they would be talking about how we remain part of the single market.”

Meanwhile, Stihler also questioned the effect of leaving the single market on the Irish border, describing Corbyn’s plan as “a step in the right direction”, but adding “if you have a customs union then you still face a hard border.”