Voters are hungry for new politics – bring on a leftwing Brexit | Rachel Shabi

Labour’s manifesto energised people across the country at the general election – we need to approach ‘Lexit’ along similarly bold lines

• Rachel Shabi is a freelance journalist

Does anyone remember Lexit? Back in those oblivious days before the referendum vote to leave the EU, it was the leftwing case for Brexit. The position cohered around the idea that the EU is anti-democratic – witness the way it dealt with the elected leftwing government in Greece– and an enforcer of devastating unfettered free-market economics and austerity programmes (again: see Greece).

But any progressive case for leaving the EU was quickly quashed by the rightward thrust of Brexit, which, with its narrow nationalism characterised by hostility to migrants specifically and foreigners in general, became an outright racist campaign. To argue for exit from the left in such a climate would fuel this tendency. At the time, you could say of Lexit: not bad as a theory, but absolutely not now.

Related: Brexit: British officials drop 'cake and eat it' approach to negotiations

The rewards of a progressively run economy would have to outweigh the cost of giving up full common market membership

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