WHAT the Tory general election campaign has shown — as has Nigel Farage pulling from Tory seats to help enable a Boris Johnson victory — is that the hard right is seeking to fully hijack the 2016 EU referendum result. 

However, rather than “taking back control” of our economy and public services as promised, it is in fact happy to sell off our public services to multinational corporations.

This is why the hard right is vehemently opposing Labour’s plans to bring back vital utilities and services into public, national ownership.

That’s what taking back control would really look like.

Labour has rightly always been opposed to the Tory idea of a “bargain basement,” tax-haven Britain post-Brexit, where Brexit is used to make the current inequalities and insecurities facing people even worse.

Labour is opposing Johnson’s proposed “Trump Brexit,” which is enshrined in the Tory manifesto, and would mean US corporations getting the green light for a comprehensive takeover of our public services.

In Corbyn’s words, the proposals in Johnson’s deal “risk triggering a race to the bottom on rights and protections: putting food safety at risk, cutting environmental standards and workers’ rights, and opening up our NHS to a takeover by US private corporations.”

We also need to be clear that Johnson’s deal ties us into a reactionary neoliberal framework.

Rather than the Tories’ approach that will keep the country divided and polarised, as Corbyn has said, “We need to get Brexit sorted and do it in a way that doesn’t leave our economy or our democracy broken.”

The way Labour proposes to do this is to negotiate the best deal possible for people’s jobs, living standards and the economy.

This means explicitly guaranteeing the rights and protections that Johnson refuses to — including in terms of workers’ rights and environmental standards.

In contrast to the neoliberal Tories, who are more than happy lock us into a deregulatory framework and seek to tie the hands of a future Labour government by limiting its ability to intervene in the free market to transform our economy, Labour could also seek to negotiate protections, clarifications or exemptions where necessary in relation to privatisation and public service competition directives, state aid and procurement rules, and on areas such as the posted workers directive.

Such a deal is also deliverable. As Steve Howell has previously noted: “EU leaders have, on several occasions, indicated that such a deal is of interest, and it’s obvious why: not only is it in their interests to retain access to the UK market, it also eliminates the competitive threat of having a low-wage, low-standards economy on their doorstep, in turn making the backstop redundant.”

It would allow a credible Leave option that could put the living standards and rights of the majority of people first, unlike Johnson’s deal or a hard-right “no-deal” departure.

Corbyn is then clear in this situation that Labour would “end the Brexit crisis by taking the decision back to the people with the choice of a credible Leave deal alongside Remain,” as he believes that “after three-and-a-half years of Tory Brexit failure and division, the only way we can settle this issue and bring people back together is by taking the decision out of the hands of politicians and letting the people decide.”

This should be a position that voters who are both for leaving on a progressive basis and remaining can unite around.

And, for those who support leaving the EU on a more progressive deal, Johnson must be defeated.

That unity is to defeat Johnson is crucial, so we can end austerity and begin implementing our programme to transform people’s lives.

This election has highlighted how we already have an unprecedented depression in living standards, record foodbank use and homelessness at a level which can only be described as a national scandal.

Again and again the Tories have acted to make life worse for the overwhelming majority of people — both Leave and Remain voters — with their failure to invest in our future, their approach to the Brexit negotiations and their inaction on our climate emergency.

These are three national crises that threaten our future and only Labour can address them.

Selling off our NHS to Trump through a one-sided, “race to the bottom” trade deal won’t solve any of this — coming together to defeat Johnson’s reactionary agenda, including what Corbyn has termed his sell-out Brexit deal, is how we start that road to a better future.

Matt Willgress is national organiser of the Labour Assembly Against Austerity and editor of Labour Outlook www.twitter.com/LabourOutlook.