THE trade agreement passed today “hardwires Thatcherite economics into Britain’s permanent agreement with the EU,” Labour’s No Holding Back initiative warned today.

In an analysis of the deal released just ahead of the vote, Labour MPs Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett and councillor and former MP Laura Smith said the “whole agreement amounts to market triumphalism,” noting that it defines its own objective as “the free movement of capital and payments related to transactions liberalised under this agreement.”

Any economic damage consequent on the deal will hit the poorest hardest, they argue – while measures required to stop it doing so, such as “a huge financial aid package to Britain’s struggling regions, a campaign to drive up productivity across industry, including direct intervention to build new industries [and] the refinancing of our public services” appear to be ruled out in the text of the agreement.

The agreement pushes “free and undistorted competition” and outlines measures to prevent “anticompetitive business practices [that] distort the proper functioning of markets,” a paragraph No Holding Back says “expresses the overarching theology of the whole new relationship between the UK and the EU.”

The commitments to workers’ rights in the document only rule out regression where this is “in a manner affecting trade or investment.”

The Labour Party is now faced with a decision on whether “we will seek to deepen our offer of transformative change” developed under Jeremy Corbyn or “accommodate the prevailing consensus which has existed unchanged since Thatcher,” the three conclude, arguing that Labour should set out a compelling alternative vision for a post-Brexit Britain that challenges neoliberal orthodoxy.