LABOUR is “moving towards” backing a second EU referendum, John McDonnell has suggested at the end of a week in which the party has lost nine of its MPs, in most cases because of its stance on Brexit.
Labour's position, thrashed out at the party's conference last year, keeps open the option of a so-called People's Vote if Theresa May is unable to get a deal through Parliament and there is not a general election.
But Mr McDonnell, in an interview with London’s Evening Standard, suggested the leadership was warming towards backing a second poll.
"On the People's Vote, we've kept it on the table and we're moving towards that," declared the Shadow Chancellor.
He said Labour was "moving into implementation stages around our conference decision, around the People's Vote".
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A compromise plan put forward by Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson could present a route to the party backing a public vote.
The two MPs have devised a plan to support the Prime Minister's Brexit deal on the condition it is later put to a confirmatory public vote. The Commons could be asked to vote on the Kyle-Wilson amendment next week.
Mr McDonnell said any referendum would have remaining in the European Union as the alternative to the deal.
"If we were going on a People's Vote based on a deal that has gone through Parliament in some form, if that got voted down, then you'd have status quo and that would be Remain," he explained.
The Shadow Chancellor said that if it was an option "I'd campaign for Remain and I'd vote for Remain".
It is believed Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, and Sir Keir Starmer, its Shadow Brexit Secretary, are supportive of the push for a People’s Vote, should a general election not materialise.
But Jeremy Corbyn and his close ally, Unite leader Len McCluskey, appear to remain unconvinced given the widespread support for the Leave vote in some of Labour’s heartlands.
A spokesman for the People's Vote campaign said if the Labour leadership backed a second EU poll, then it would “help unite their party as well as avoid the catastrophe for their constituents of a no-deal departure from the EU".
Today, Mr Corbyn alongside Mr McDonnell and Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, will be campaigning in Labour’s target marginal Nottinghamshire seat of Broxtowe, currently held by Anna Soubry, who along with her Remainer colleagues Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston this week resigned from the Conservative Party to join The Independent Group of MPs.
The Labour leader, who regards the new Westminster grouping as an Establishment pro-austerity alliance, will say his party offers hope to people up and down the country “instead of the same old Establishment formula of cuts, privatisation and austerity.”
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