00:00 Luke Cooper: Well, I'll say something about what I think happened after last week, why it happened, and then what we're going to hopefully do going forward to try to rebuild the left after this defeat. And I do think it should be understood as a major defeat for the left, and perhaps the most serious political defeat I personally have experienced in my political lifetime, to be honest. I say that carefully, because I have been active since the early 2000s in left-wing politics. We campaigned together against the Iraq war, and the Iraq war happened, and nearly a million Iraqis died, and we've seen many barbaric things occur in those years. But why is this defeat in particular so serious? Well, we all know that if there was a referendum held on the Iraq war, our side had clear mass majority support, and we would have won that referendum — excuse me, bit croaky, start again — so we would have won that referendum, and the war wouldn't have happened if Parliament respected that decision.
01:02 In this case we haven't seen that occur. We've seen a majority vote to leave the European Union on the back of a very nasty and very racist leave campaign. And I think it's a credit to you in this room, Alan and his book, for understanding what was at stake in this referendum from, you know, a relatively early stage, when lots of the radical left in the UK — not the left in the broader sense, but the revolutionary left, if you like — have understood it as an opportunity to give the establishment a kicking, if you like, without seeing the way that it was so profoundly and massively inflected by very racist, xenophobic sentiment.
02:06 And this was something that we could have always anticipated at the outset, when the referendum arose. I think it's the first opportunity the British public has ever really had, if you like, to vote on their attitude to mass immigration in one single moment, in one single vote. And they've never supported mass immigration, and we've never won that argument with the British public, unfortunately, to saying immigration isn't a problem and certainly isn't anything to do with the massive difficulties that working people face. This was their opportunity to vote on that issue, and sadly they took the opportunity, by a small majority, to vote against the free movement of people in those 28 EU states.
02:38 Now, nonetheless, you know, we know that that rise in racism and xenophobic sentiment now is massively rooted in the post-financial-crisis situation. So we know that there's a massive number of people out there who are really struggling. The political spectrum is polarising as a result between the right and left, and it's the job of the left to try to build in this context a movement of the majority, in the interests of the great majority. And we have an opportunity to do that, but we haven't been able to do that on anything like a sufficient scale since 2008 to really make a difference in mass electoral terms, in the way that a referendum is. You know, we can — we have and we must still build and participate in massive demonstrations, but the thing about electoral politics is that it's an opportunity for literally everyone to participate, and a form of participation, voting, that most people do, in a way that most people in their lives won't go on a demonstration. So it's a huge job of reaching out to the whole of society, not just the most politically conscious and active section of society.
04:11 So the referendum was always going to be defined by free movement and immigration. I mean, nonetheless, I was still somewhat surprised at moments at how racist some of the leave campaign material was, and particularly the Vote Leave postcard. And remember, Vote Leave were not the Nigel Farage [?] wing of the out campaign. They were the designated leave campaign, headed up by Michael Gove, who's obviously a cabinet member, and Boris Johnson. And they put out that terrible leaflet that went to every single house in the country saying, you know, Turkey is going to join the European Union and 78 million Turks will then have access to free movement, basically, and then also highlighting a picture of Syria, [if] extremely misleading. There's obviously absolutely no chance that Syria is going to join the European Union anytime soon. And just basically trying to say, you know, look, if you vote this way all of these people in a majority Muslim country could turn up in the UK. So it's a really nasty playing of the race card, not just the immigration card. And obviously we also saw the Farage posters as well, with all those Syrian refugees and with the big notice "Breaking Point", etc. So it was a really vile and racist campaign that makes the defeat all the worse in that sense.
06:13 So if that's the starting point, I think we also have to say that this campaign has, will and potentially, you know, reshape the left — reshape what we want the left in Britain to be doing in the future, and the kind of mass movements that we want to build, and what should be the policies and the values at the heart of those movements, and how can we combine defending the most vulnerable sections of society, including, you know, the disabled, migrants and so on, with a movement of the majority, in the interests of the majority, which is, you know, what I guess I really want to emphasise.
07:16 And so going forward, we have an opportunity to do that, to build that movement of the 99% versus the 1%. I still very much believe we're in a situation that's still defined by decades of Thatcherism and the alienation that that has created in many working-class communities all over the UK. And we need to find a way and find a vehicle to piece together all of the interest groups that have a stake in the future of our country and want to put it in a progressive direction. The Labour Party I think is an important part of those pieces that need to be put together, but it's not the only part. I think it's really important that we try to build and establish a progressive coalition and a progressive movement that has, you know, three dimensions, essentially: a parliamentary element, a social movement element and a workplace element, and that puts internationalism and free movement at the very heart and fundament, and makes it absolutely fundamental to what it's trying to do and achieve.
08:18 To say something about the outcomes, then, of the vote and how we go forward from here. There are some welcome retreats, you've probably noticed, from the leave campaign, that are now essentially the stakeholders, if you like, in the future of the UK. They hold in some way the balance of power, as we predicted that they would — the extreme right wing of the Tory party. They're making noises that say, oh well, it's not all about immigration, maybe we won't be able to halt free movement. They're saying that there may be a Norway-like agreement — remember, that would protect not only the free movement element but lots of the environmental and workers' rights at work legislation which is protected in EU law — might be an option, and they're going to be prepared to negotiate. I say that's welcome because I don't want us to lose the human rights, the workers' rights and the free movement and the environmental rights that are absolutely at stake in this referendum.
09:20 It is on the other hand a poisoned chalice, because it opens the way to Nigel Farage and UKIP to say, well, we've been betrayed, we haven't got what we've been promised. And clearly the immigration issue is not going to go away anytime soon in British politics. You will have seen probably the Farage–Le Pen comments in the European Parliament — Farage and Le Pen speaking one after the other; they both celebrated the victory. I mean, it was a very historic, acrimonious scene and argument, as you can imagine, in the parliament itself, Nigel Farage pointing at everyone saying, you laughed at me, but I told you I was going to bring this whole place down, and I intend to, etc. And Le Pen speaking immediately afterwards and following it up with similar comments. And I think that's what those on the left who backed the exit position didn't really understand: that what's at stake in this referendum is the entire break-up into competing right-wing-led, extreme-right-wing-led [?] potentially, nation states, and a break with the unity that was and has been established in the post-war period.
10:54 So in that context, on a European level, clearly the Democracy in Europe Movement of Yanis Varoufakis remains key to the wider European situation for the radical left, and also the Plan B movement for Europe, that's more focused on austerity as well. In the UK it's created a major constitutional crisis. Again, in the European Parliament, the Scottish MEP who spoke from the Scottish nationalists got a standing ovation when he said he didn't want the European Union to abandon Scotland. And there is a likelihood, a potential, of some kind of a second referendum in Scotland, and potentially an independence vote there as well. It throws into question the whole peace process in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin have called for a referendum on a united Ireland, as they have a right to, actually, under the Good Friday Agreement.
11:54 And lastly, the Labour Party is clearly in crisis as well. And I will be qualified and careful in what I say about the situation that Corbyn is facing. When your friends are in trouble you should not attack and criticise your friends, and I will absolutely defend the Corbyn leadership from the right wing of the Labour Party. But I do think there has to be, within the context of that basic position of defending his position, an argument — a constructive criticism of how to take the Labour Party forward, and criticism of his role in the referendum campaign as well. I'm sure this will come up in the discussion; I won't say too much about it. But if you saw the email that Jeremy Corbyn sent to all the Labour members and supporters in the country the day after the vote, I'm afraid it did take up and mimic the left exit rhetoric of saying that this was a massive vote against the establishment, in its first line. And I think if he's going to try to reposition himself as someone who was actually in favour of Lexit, he would be making a huge mistake, both politically — in terms of it being the wrong thing to do — and electorally. Let's not forget that 65% of Labour supporters backed remain.
13:27 And so, very last thing, in terms of what the Another Europe campaign did and will do in the future. I mean, we're consulting our supporters at the moment, so if you signed up to our email list you would have received a message saying, what do we do now? We want your response. And we've had hundreds of responses already to that call that only went out last Friday, so it's really, really positive. Over the course of the campaign we accumulated about five and a half thousand supporters, and we raised tens of thousands of pounds and gave out something approaching half a million leaflets. So we're pleased with the role that we played, but we weren't able, in the short time we had, to build a movement that was sufficiently big and strong enough to impact on the vote. But I think we did play a role in consolidating the left around a remain position. You look at the SNP, look at the Labour Party, look at the Green Party — they all ended up being really quite united on a remain position, relatively. So going forward, I think that points to the kinds of progressive alliance that we need in the UK: not just the Labour Party, multiple parties pushing for radical and progressive change.
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