It’s an important discussion to have but I resoectfully disagree with @SKinnock on this for two reasons.

1. We got Brexit seriously wrong before ‘People’s Vote’ was started

2. *The* biggest mistake came later

Let me explain https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1206555692401860608

We got Brexit wrong from day one, literally. Jeremy’s instinct was to get A50 submitted right away.

We should have launched a cross-party programme to understand what Leave voters expected from Brexit and why Remain voters were anxious, then settled on a unifying way forward

The only study to do this was @ucl - their ‘people’s assembly’ concluded that leaving political institutions, remaining in Single Market, and exercising existing controls on migration was the unifying way forward.

Armed with this insight we can spot Labour’s 2nd big mistake...

...brilliantly, @Alison_McGovern and @SDoughtyMP established ‘Labour for the Single Market’.

But our leadership disagreed and whipped MPs heavily to vote against that option (I broke the whip).

This was another terrible missed opportunity. And then...

...we did the next best thing and proposed staying in the Customs Union which the union movement said was essential.

Again we were whipped to oppose. 5 frontbenchers were fired and I was disciplined for breaking the whip.

A month later it was Labour policy

After visiting Norway and meeting their lead negotiator, a new package was proposed with bespoke relationships with SM and CU, called ‘Norway Option’, similar to ‘Common Market 2’ that @SKinnock championed.

Again we were whipped to oppose it

Along the way Theresa May drew her own red lines, different to Labour’s as no one was talking or working for consensus.

Labour missed several key opportunities to spell out a clear vision yet at the same time opposed everything from Tories & ideas from within the Labour movement

Then we entered the 2017 election with a glaring contradiction at the heart of our manifesto:

- We matched the Tory promise of the ‘exact same benefits’

&

- We will leave the Single Market & CU

You Can’t have *any* of the benefits outside SM & CU.

We fudged it

And then Theresa May came back with her deal and the rest is history.

Along the way Labour ambiguity ruled. Once Jeremy told me something to my face and 30 mins later a journalist called and said ‘a spokesman says’ the exact opposite.

One shad cab member goes on TV saying we’re a Remain party, another goes on tv saying we’re a Leave party

*After* all of this the @peoplesvote_uk was founded in April 2018.

By then the damage to Labour was done.

Leave voters thought we were a Remain party and Remain voters thought we were a Leave party.

MPs in all areas were getting angry messages about Labour well before PV.

It wasn’t that we were taking the wrong position that wound most people up, they told us it was we were taking *no* position, or every position in a single day, that was driving them to distraction.

All the way through the policy merits and demerits remained the same: Single Market or ‘Common Market 2’ was the least damaging Brexit.

What changed was the politics.

Our body politic screwed Brexit up and over time a majority of voters came to want another say

I didn’t call for another referendum after the referendum - I changed as the circumstances changed as did a majority of Labour MPs.

We didn’t get to this mess by accident, we were led here. But once here there was only one way out - putting the deal back to the public

So if supporting a referendum wasn’t Labour’s big mistake, what was?

Answer: supporting a general election before Brexit was resolved and Labour had the chance to head broader warnings about its appeal

Boris Johnson wasn’t telling Jeremy Corbyn we were going to have an election, he was asking for one as he needed the votes.

At the time Corbyn was the most powerful LOTO since Atlee. It was he who would decide the timing of an election, not Johnson

MPs begged not to allow an election before Brexit was resolved.

Ian Lavery, chairman, said ‘we are the most election ready we’ve ever been’.

Jeremy promised our anti-austerity socialist platform would retake Scotland.

Most shadow cabinet encouraged it:

*This was our mistake*

I voted for 3 kinds of Brexit: SM, CU, CM 2.0

I voted against A50 as govt weren’t ready.

I voted against the deal that would limit trade and travel and security.

But to bring it to resolution I would have allowed it to pass parliament in return for a confirmatory referendum

I also voted against having the general election - the public didn’t want a Brexit election and so many residents told me they didn’t want to face a choice between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

The only vote I regret was for the referendum in the first place.

But from there most Labour MPs adapted as the politics shifted, I believe my voting record reflects that and I’m proud of it.

A referendum was avoidable but became necessary. Not delivering it was the mistake