Roundtable: The European left after Brexit

Like that of Britain as a whole, Labour's debate on Brexit has been strikingly insular. It has not recognized the impact of Brexit on European sister-parties, is not interested in the nature of their neighbors' varying commitments to the European project, and has consequently not even begun to reckon with likely responses to British negotiating positions. Other than the UK, the country that will be most directly affected by the UK exit from the EU is Ireland. 250,000 UK citizens live in Ireland, second in Europe only to Spain, and 380,000 Irish citizens live in the UK, the number one destination in the EU for Irish citizens. The volume of trade between Ireland and the UK runs at over E1 billion a week, making Ireland the UK's 5th largest market, and the UK exports more to Ireland than it does to China, India and Brazil combined.