Welcome to this Centre for European Reform podcast. I'm Charles Grant, the CR's Director.

I'm here today with a very special guest to discuss Britain's relationship with the EU.

This is Stella Creasy, who's been the MP for Waltonstow for the last 14 years and is the

chairman of the Labour Movement for Europe. Tell us about what is the Labour Movement for Europe, Stella.

Hi, Charles. The Labour Movement for Europe is the only affiliated organisation within the Labour Party and the family of the Labour Party dedicated to the future relationship with Europe of the UK. What does that mean in practice? Because we are an affiliate to the Labour Party, it means that our members can be represented at every level of the Labour Party. So we have delegates in local constituency

labour parties, about half of all local constituency parties in the UK are connected to the

Labour Movement for Europe and we have people who go and represent us at their meetings. It means

we're on the regional boards in the policymaking process and it means that we have

elected representatives. So there are now more Labour Movement for Europe MPs in Parliament than there are Conservative MPs, as in MPs who are part of our movement and stood as LME candidates at the election to focus on the relationship between Europe and the United Kingdom, which is in a practical basis means there's a lot of us.

They've got a growing membership. We've almost doubled in the last 18 months.

But it does mean that we are more than perhaps a ragtag bag of reenactment to people

when it comes to our relationship with Europe because we have that formal structure within the Labour Party.

So if you're asking if we are the pro-European equivalent to the ERG, very much

not. We're much bigger, much more scary and much more organised than they are, shall we say.

And you're not going to put the fear of God into the government like the ERG did for the

government. No. What we focus on doing now is helping people understand what the future

relationship with Europe could look like and also helping to connect people who are interested in European issues within the Labour movement. So as much of

our work is about our relationships within the Labour Party and also we work with our trade union

colleagues, with other socialist societies as it is externally in terms of what the future

relationship with Europe could look like.

Because I think especially after Brexit, for a lot of people in the UK, frankly, understandably,

they never wanted to talk about Europe ever again.

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