For over 40 years, Britain has pushed extreme, free-market policies in the European Union (EU). While the EU has delivered, for Britain, better workers’ rights, cleaner air and water, and more enforceable human rights, Britain has consistently argued against the regulation of big business and big finance and against better social protection. 

So it might seem strange to suggest Britain could help save the EU from the existential crisis it finds itself in – a crisis caused by too many years of kowtowing to big business, deregulation and stripping back the welfare state. Even more so, given that Britain is set to leave the EU in 12 months’ time. Yet this is exactly what a group of Labour Party activists posit in a new report released on March 8, “The Corbyn moment and European Socialism”. 

They argue that Britain cannot tackle the power of big business on its own, and, indeed, a future Labour government locked into hard Brexit would be beset by economic and political chaos, caused by Britain pulling out of Europe, falling prey to financial destabilisation and to bullying by big business and Donald Trump.