The promise of extra jobs from completing the single market, cooperation on climate change, getting rid of tax havens and more intelligence sharing should convince British Labour supporters to vote to stay in the EU, Gordon Brown said in a speech in European Parliament Wednesday.
The former British prime minister warned that fear of globalization is driving xenophobic movements around the world, with people buying into “bringing control back home” ideologies. But the U.K. would have more opportunities if it stayed in the EU than if it voted in favor of a Brexit in the June 23 referendum, he said.
“The Leave campaign will say that a Britain which gained only grudging concessions from our neighbors before the vote will be treated harshly after the vote,” Brown said. “The opposite is true. With a clear domestic mandate, we will be in a far stronger position to shape Europe’s future.”
Brown said the U.K.’s upcoming six-month turn in the presidency of the Council of the EU, from July 2017, would give the country an opportunity to drive the bloc’s agenda.
The U.K. presidency would focus on creating stronger labor laws and push for the creation of a new EU fund to compensate British communities that have been adversely affected by an influx of foreign workers, Brown said. The measures would protect local workers being undercut by cheaper labor from elsewhere in the EU in what he called a “dog-eat-dog race to the bottom.” Brown said 500,000 additional jobs would be created in the next decade as the EU completed the single market.
“The positive agenda I propose is not only essential to convince Labour and progressive voters to turn out on June 23 but it is also the correct way forward, with Britain discovering a post-imperial role that makes us proud to be in the vanguard of the next stage of Europe’s development,” Brown said. “In short, we should be leading Europe, not leaving it.”