Keir Starmer should apologise for Labour’s promise to seek a second referendum on Brexit, three former shadow ministers have argued, saying the policy had left many of the party’s leave-backing traditional supporters “in a rage”. Ian Lavery, Jon Trickett and Laura Smith, all of whom held frontbench posts under Jeremy Corbyn, have produced a report into attitudes to the party among its supporters, based on discussions at 50 virtual events. Before the launch of the document, titled No Holding Back, the trio said a considerable element of Labour’s falling away in support among working-class voters in 2019 was due to its approach to Brexit. The party went into the election promising a second referendum, a stance seen as largely led by Starmer, who was shadow Brexit secretary. He replaced Corbyn as party leader in April. Lavery and Trickett are still MPs, while Smith lost her Crewe and Nantwich seat in December. In a joint article for HuffPost UK, they said: “Labour got it wrong on a second referendum. The party went against one of the only times in recent history that people felt they could finally express their justified anger at the present political system. “To rebuild trust that has been lost and restore people’s trust in politics, Labour should say sorry. This is not only about Labour winning elections but restoring faith in democracy. We do not believe that the party can move on until it has put this issue behind us.” They went on: “The country, our voters and our activists all deserve an explanation and perhaps an apology by the party for our actions in the years after the referendum up until the December election.” The Brexit policy led by Starmer is seen by many Corbyn-inclined Labour MPs as one of the major reasons for the party’s crushing defeat in the election, although others in the party query its significance amid polls showing Corbyn’s unpopularity with voters. Since becoming leader, Starmer has sought to stress that Labour’s focus is now based around acknowledging Brexit has happened, and holding the government to account over the way they handle it. In their article, Lavery, Trickett and Smith said even many remain-backing traditional Labour supporters were baffled by the Brexit policy, as they “accepted that the country had voted to leave and just wanted to get on with the job”. They wrote: “And, of course, there were many tens of thousands of Labour-inclined leave voters who were the angriest of all. They felt that their arguments had won the referendum vote and were often in a rage at the idea that our party had betrayed that vote. “But the truth is that the Brexit vote was symbolic of a wider breakdown. We had lost the trust of very many voters. “At a time when many people think politics is broken and trust in the establishment is at a very low ebb, it is critically important that we reset the relationship between the party and the electorate. It may be that in order to do this we will need frankly to accept that we were mistaken.”