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 1^st, 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.

28^th December 2020

John McDonnell MP

Clive Lewis MP

Ben Bradshaw MP

Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism

Laura Parker, former Momentum national coordinator

Lord Adonis

Tom Kibasi, economist

Sandy Martin, former MP for Ipswich

Alan Simpson, former MP for Nottingham South

John Austin, former MP Woolwich/Erith & Thamesmead

Anna Turley, former MP for Redcar

Michael Chessum, Another Europe is Possible

Sandy Paul, Labour for a Socialist Europe

Richard Corbett, leader of the Labour Party group of MEPs 2017 to 2020

Glyn Ford, leader of the Labour Party group of MEPs 1989 to 1993

Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance at the LSE

Ana Oppenheim, Momentum national coordinating group member (pc)

Abbie Clark, Momentum national coordinating group member (pc)

Fran Springfield, co-Chair of Disability Labour (pc)

Joan Twelves, former leader of Lambeth Council

Shaista Aziz, Oxford Labour councillor anti racist activist

Zoe Williams, journalist

James Meadway, economist

Pat Murphy, NEU national executive (pc)

John Moloney, PCS assistant general secretary (pc)

Julie Ward, former MEP for the North West

Mary Honeyball, Former Labour MEP for London

Jude Kirton-Darling, Former Labour MEP for NE England

David Martin, Former Labour MEP for Scotland

Lynne Jones, Former Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak

Heather Wakefield, former Assistant general secretary of Unison

Mike Buckley, Labour for a European Future

Andrew Lewin, Remain Labour

Valerie Bossman-Quarshie, Islington North CLP

Andrea Pisauro, Manifesto di Londra and Take a Break from Brexit

John Palmer, Former European Editor of The Guardian

Niccolo Milanese, European Alternatives

Martin Shaw, sociologist

Chris Bertram, Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Bristol

Eleni Andreouli, Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Counselling, Open University

Luke Cooper, LSE Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit

Cat Villiers, film producer

Brian Channer, Lewisham East CLP

Andreas Wittel, Nottingham Trent University

Sally Brooks, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York

Kathy Bole, Suffolk County Councillor

---