A former shadow cabinet member has called on the Labour leadership to do more to fight against a hard Brexit, saying the party would not simply accept the results of a referendum on bringing back the death penalty.
Chuka Umunna, who is fiercely pro-EU, said Labour should not rule out the prospect of a second referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union because people may well change their minds when they realised promises made by the Leave camp could not be delivered.
"For me there’s no point being part of a political party and subscribing to our values unless not only are we going to respond to people, we are going to lead the charge for a fairer and more equal Britain," he told a fringe event at the Labour conference in Brighton on Monday evening.
"If we had a referendum today – and I know it’s probably not the best analogy – on hanging, all the polls indicate that bringing back the death penalty would get voted for. But would we go, 'Oh, we as a Labour party are just going to go along with that?'"
Umunna made the intervention after shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, who was on the same panel, once again refused to be drawn on whether Britain should remain in the single market on a permanent basis after leaving the EU.
The NEC made clear in its Brexit statement, published this afternoon, that as "democratic socialists we accept and respect the referendum result".
"At the end of the day, of course, we’ve got to respect the referendum result," Umunna continued. "But people’s views on these things are not necessarily static. We had a referendum in 2016 based on hypotheticals.
"I think it’s absolutely fair for us to talk about whether this thing is deliverable in the terms that people thought they were buying this thing.
"And having bought it, they’ve gone and looked round the house and they don’t really like the state of it. ... They’ve found damp and all this other stuff, then I don’t think we should take off the table the ability for people to change their minds about this and think about it again."
He added: "It is possible to respect the will of the people but also to be advocates for what we believe in. I’m just not prepared for us to walk away and leave the field open to the likes of Nigel Farage and the rest to set the agenda for this country. We as a party must lead on this issue – I’m pleased we’re doing that but we’ve got to do it on much stronger terms."
Fellow shadow minister Yvette Cooper distanced herself from Umunna's analogy. "If this had been a vote on hanging, I would have said at the very start, 'You know what, whatever the result of this referendum, I'm never going to vote to legalise hanging because I believe it's morally wrong'.
"But that's not what people said about this referendum. ... This issue isn't a moral one – it might be a structural one and it might be a political one, but fundamentally it is a sovereignty decision."