RIGHTWINGERS in Scottish Labour were told to back off from the “dangerous game” of opposing Brexit at the party’s conference yesterday.

Shadow Scottish secretary Lesley Laird, a Westminster MP currently serving as Scottish Labour’s interim deputy leader, fired a warning shot after an intervention from the right failed to put EU single market membership on the agenda.

Scottish Labour for the Single Market, which is backed by former Holyrood leader Kezia Dugdale and ex-shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray, had promoted a conference motion calling for Britain to remain in the single market.

But Labour’s Scottish executive committee agreed a “unity statement” late on Thursday night that will supersede constituency motions in the Brexit debate tomorrow.

At a lunchtime fringe meeting yesterday, Scottish Labour MEP Catherine Stihler, a supporter of the pro-single market faction, urged delegates to press ahead with their motions regardless.

“You should still go up and represent what your [constituency Labour Party] mandated you to speak for,” she said.

Ms Stihler said she had “tried to argue” for the inclusion of single market membership in the executive committee statement, adding: “Sadly, I was unsuccessful.”

Ms Laird, however, told the conference:“I voted to retain our membership of the European Union. I do not like the result, but I believe in democracy above all else.

“Telling people to keep on voting until they get the answer we want is a dangerous game and we are not going to play it.  
There are those who want Labour to become simply the anti-Brexit party. To block everything and try to force a second referendum.  

“That is not our role. Our job now in Parliament is to expose the arguments, to scrutinise, to amend, to safeguard vital interests and ultimately to ensure the best possible outcomes.”

Under Ms Dugdale’s leadership, Scottish Labour had gone as far as advocating a second referendum in a bid to reverse the Brexit process.

But her more left-wing successor Richard Leonard broadly favours Jeremy Corbyn’s approach of seeking single market access without formal membership, along with a new customs union.