Second referendum is only way to beat Nigel Farage, warns Tom Watson

Labour deputy leader in shock intervention that threatens to ignite row at party’s highest levels

Toby Helm and Michael Savage
Sat 20 Apr 2019 20.30 BST Last modified on Sat 20 Apr 2019 23.30 BST

Labour will never defeat Nigel Farage if it continues to “sit on the fence” over Brexit and offers only “mealy-mouthed” support for a second referendum, the party’s deputy leader says today.

In an extraordinary intervention that exposes the tensions at the top of the party over Brexit strategy, Tom Watson warns that Labour will lose to Farage’s new “far right” Brexit party in May’s European elections if it continues to give the impression that “we half agree with him”.

Writing in today’s Observer, Jeremy Corbyn’s deputy argues that Labour needs to give much clearer and more enthusiastic backing to another referendum and also spell out a positive, radical vision of how a Labour government could advance socialist values by working with other centre-left parties inside the European Union.

Stressing that Farage is a real threat not just to the Conservatives but also to Labour, he writes: “We cannot just sit back, watch this fight on the far right, and allow Farage to prosper with a backward-looking brand of politics that offers no solutions. Instead we must offer a radical alternative based on our values that speaks directly to the people we represent and demonstrate Labour has a way forward out of the crisis.”

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