Not just “PEM” tinkering: reverse Brexit!

The Labour government has said it is up for entering the “Pan-Euro-Mediterranean” (PEM) convention to ease trade with the EU, and may consider measures to ease checks on agricultural trade.

PEM is a marginal tweak to the rules about “local content”. It will not make much difference. Syria and the Palestinian Authority are members, but that doesn’t and cannot integrate them into EU economic life. Restoring free movement and putting the UK back into the Single Market and the Customs Union would make a difference. That will require the UK to adapt to EU environmental and safety standards.

The Tory Brexiters and the Ukip or Reform types wanted Brexit because, they said, by lighter regulations it would unfetter profit-making.

But there is no socialist or democratic or working-class reason to favour those lighter regulations.

The Tories planned a “bonfire” of EU-inherited regulations, but backed down. So the adaptation would still be relatively easy. For now.

Rejoining the EU will require labyrinthine negotiations, but is an essential next step (to get inside making the rules as well as inside the rules). Polls now show a 59%-41% majority for another EU referendum. 78% of 2024 Labour voters favour rejoining the EU.

Labour leaders stonewall on the issue, and the stonewalling has depressed campaigning. The third “National Rejoin March” on 28 September 2024 drew at most a few thousand, almost all white and middle-aged or elderly. (The first such march, in October 2022, around the time of the Liz Truss episode, drew tens of thousands).

Solidarity aims to hammer home the arguments and consolidate internationalist opinion so that when politics looks more fluid again, we can get more people back on the streets.