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The rebel Labour amendment in the Lords opened the prospect of a Commons vote on the EEA – a less stringent version of the single market – after 83 Labour peers voted against the party whip.
Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP who co-chairs a pro-European Commons committee with Conservative Anna Soubry, said the leadership would now have to come off the fence and make it clear where it stood.
“The time for constructive ambiguity is over: our members and our voters will be delighted with this clear signal that we will not go along with this Tory Brexit,” he said. [...]
On the key EEA amendment, Labour peers were whipped to abstain. But 83 defied the whip to back the amendment, including a former party leader, many former ministers and a former chief whip. Seventeen Conservatives also backed the amendment.
It was the third defeat of the afternoon for the government and an unexpected triumph for a cross-party group that included Waheed Alli for Labour, the Conservative peer Sandip Verma and the crossbench peer Karan Bilimoria.
All the amendments to the bill that have been passed in the Lords will have to be considered and voted on by MPs when the bill returns to the Commons, perhaps as soon as next week.
Lord Alli told the House that continued membership of the EEA was vital to ensure the future profitability of the UK’s export business and the jobs and livelihoods of many thousands of people.
“It is the EEA that deals with services, services like retail, tourism, transport, communications, financial services and aerospace where we have a £14bn trade surplus,” he said.
“The customs union only will benefit our European neighbours in their imports and without an EEA equivalent it will damage our profitable export business.” [...]
But the leadership will now have to face the tension between its strongly pro-remain rank and file membership, its largely pro-remain MPs and the policy consequences of remaining in any arrangement with Europe such as the EEA, which limits its plans for greater state involvement in the economy. [...]