A socialist Brexit to reshape UK and Europe

The morning after the general election, the British woke up in a different world. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s brand of recycled socialism was not so unelectable after all; young voters had become an electoral force; and Theresa May’s Conservatives looked hapless and exhausted.

But a major question mark still hangs over Brexit — and more specifically, what the Labour Party’s electoral gains will mean for Britain’s exit from the bloc.

The fundamental debate is no longer a fight between those who oppose Britain leaving the bloc and those who want to rip off the band-aid. The tension lies in different visions of where the country is headed.

In the wake of the June 8 election, the issue now is what to do with Brexit; what kind of society to build using the degrees of freedom that the separation will create. And while May spends time defending Brexit against its opponents, Corbyn is looking further ahead — opposing her brand of Brexit in the name of a more social, more revolutionary version.

May has outlined the vision of a U.K. more free to profit from the global economy and more closely aligned with Donald Trump’s United States in reducing the role of international regulations. Corbyn, meanwhile, sees Brexit as an opportunity to strengthen the role of the state in economic life. The Labour Party wants the state to be the main agent in job creation and the official guardian of families and communities against the winds of global economic forces.

If Corbyn were to take over as prime minister, Brexit could become the vehicle for a movement of socialist renewal.

Corbyn understood this better than anyone else. The Brexit referendum — prompted and promoted by others — left Corbyn with the space he needed to promote a socialist renewal. He drew a sharp distinction between a race-to-the-bottom Brexit and a jobs-first Brexit.

It’s hardly surprising that the Labour Party made a point of embracing Brexit. After all, so much of its manifesto is in direct violation of European Union law. Corbyn has vouched to regain control over energy supply networks, discriminate against companies that don’t recognize trade unions, and actively support struggling industries through state aid — ideas the European Commission and the European Court of Justice would find very difficult to accept. Only by leaving the EU can the party hope to implement its pledges.

In Brussels, people are wary. Frankly, everything was going well enough. European institutions and member countries were happy with the way Brexit negotiations had been shaping up. They could hardly have asked for a better opponent than a coterie of Conservatives trapped — fairly or unfairly — in the political maze of imperial nostalgia.

Now, they’re not so sure. If Corbyn were to take over as prime minister, Brexit could become the vehicle for a movement of socialist renewal — something that might capture the imaginations of southern Europeans, who have longed for exactly that for years.

These past weeks there have been whispers in Spain and France that perhaps the reason Corbyn is prospering while French and Spanish socialist parties risk extinction is that he, unlike them, is soon to be free of EU shackles.

Forget hard or soft Brexit — it’s really about whether Britain goes left or right after Brexit.

The distinction between a hard and soft Brexit was always deeply flawed. In the end, a hard Brexit is the only thing that makes sense. The only way the high costs of leaving Europe can be justified is by aggressively pursuing all potential advantages in the areas of regulation and trade. And these advantages cannot be pursued if the U.K. stays in the single market or the customs union for any amount of time.

But it would be a mistake to start off with a hard Brexit — for the simple fact that its advantages are not yet ready for the taking.

Why should the U.K. want to leave the single market in the first five years after exiting the EU, while London still contributes to the EU budget and has not yet developed its own thoughts on how to regulate its economy?

And why should it leave the customs union now, given that it is extremely unlikely it will be able to negotiate its own terms of trade with third states in the next decade or two?

With any luck, in this new political environment, government and opposition will be able to reach a wide agreement on the terms of its exit: soft at first, progressively harder as time passes.

That, of course, is only the technical part. The politics of Brexit are only just getting started and divisions will deepen. The battle between a liberal and a socialist Brexit will shape British and European politics for decades to come.

Bruno Maçães is a senior adviser at Flint Global and the author of the forthcoming book “The Dawn of Eurasia.” He was junior minister for Europe in Portugal from 2013 to 2015.