Labour MPs must now engage with the Brexit issue - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Jas Olak, Vice Chair, Leeds for Europe, Roundhay, Leeds.

Your Comment column aired what many across our region can readily agree on: a decade of “drift and division” has left no one feeling better off and exporting firms handicapped by new trade barriers and bureaucracy (Right to ask what sort of relationship we want with EU, October 1).

You commend “brave” Andy Burnham for at least raising the idea of rejoining the European Union. Hopefully, that courage will prove infectious.

In recent years, there have been a handful of parliamentary debates on our post-Brexit relationship with European allies and trading partners.Whenever Leeds for Europe has contacted local MPs urging them to attend, the response has typically been that they would love to – but were prevented from doing so by a competing event in their diary.

Busy schedules inevitably force MPs and their diary managers to prioritise what is important – and provides an excuse to skip anything party policy makes awkward. Labour’s self-imposed “red lines” surrounding talk of rejoining – or even single market membership or a customs union – probably made Brexit one such issue.

But now that the Prime Minister has broken those taboos, that excuse has gone. In previous debates, MPs from other parts of the country highlighted the harm Brexit has done to local businesses and voiced their constituents' concerns. Yorkshire’s representatives should do the same.