OK so Jeremy Corbyn has taken a position over Brexit you disagree with. However, how can he always do politics exactly the way ‘you’ want. He is leader of the opposition for the entire country…not just you…or just for Remain constituencies. He’s also a democrat who doesn’t sneer arrogantly at others for getting it ‘wrong.’ He just deals with the hand he’s been dealt in a democratic socialist way.
If people stop supporting Corbyn over this and that lack of support goes on to cost us his leadership, he’ll be replaced by a right-wing or centrist Labour MP (which amounts to the same thing because centrists always bow to pressure from the strong willed right). I personally will NEVER forgive those who walked away. I fully expect not to agree with everything Corbyn says or does. Politics – especially Labour Party politics at this point in time – is messy and complicated and will involve compromises I won’t always like.
However here is the crux of this: Labour does not have the numbers to block Brexit due to an overwhelmingly united Tory party. Therefore aiming to block it is both undemocratic and futile. It would be empty gesture politics which could potentially cost us all our Brexit supporting seats. Yes, it would be a gesture which would give some Remainers a temporary high, but that high would last only until they realised the Labour party was electorally finished and they’d be ruled by the Tories forever! If you want to ensure we avoid the hardest of Brexits, signing Labour up to electoral suicide is not the best way to do it.
Under Corbyn’s leadership this country could get a socialist Brexit with renationalisation, good wages and jobs, as well as decent transport, council housing, schools and hospitals. If people want to throw that away over an empty gesture then I absolutely despair!
So please don’t walk away without asking yourself this very simple question…do you want us to go back to being a Tory-lite Labour party? And if so, why? Do you think a Right of Labour leader would have done anything different to Corbyn on Brexit? If you do, bear in mind that 80% of Labour MPs support Corbyn over this, many of whom are on the party’s right. This degree of unity is rare in our party at this present time. Naturally some MPs who represent strongly Remain constituencies are faced with a dilemma. They risk losing their seats if they don’t represent their constituent’s views. However, the majority of Labour MPs support Corbyn’s position because they know if they don’t we’ll be wiped out by UKIP in England, the way we’ve been wiped out by the SNP in Scotland. Then there is the rarely mentioned issue of hypocrisy, which would be mentioned plenty if Labour MPs had voted against Article 50. The majority of Labour MPs voted yes to an EU Referendum. The Referendum bill carried with it no provisos on the outcome of a Leave vote…no second Referendum…no ‘only if it means staying in the single market’…nothing. Therefore, how can those MPs who supported that Referendum bill now say…”hmm..er..this wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out…we had no idea our decision to support a Referendum would backfire…oh I know we’ll just try in vain to block it.”
So the bottom line is this; if a right-wing Labour leader was in charge right now they would still respect the Referendum result. However they’d also still support austerity, still try to out UKIP UKIP on immigration (which fanned the flames for a Leave vote in the past), still support military intervention as a rule rather than an exception, still support the further privitasation of our NHS and schools, and still fail to address the housing crisis; we’d basically still be offering the electorate the political equivalent of wishy washy sludge.
Yes there would be no coups, and the press would give us an easier ride (at least in the short term if they were rewarding us for ditching Corbyn) so we would probably be polling better, but is that truly something to aspire to?
The General Election is three years away. If we can pull together we can win. At least we would be giving the voters a clear choice in 2020…a banker’s brexit or a people’s brexit.
Turning the Tide 
Excellent
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Well said
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This makes total sense to me but all it’s done (sadly) is to wind up the remainers, who are totally blind to the reality of what the rules that govern how our parliament works, it does not matter to them, how many times it is pointed out. They quote the same things over and over again, because they appear not to accept what the reality of the situation is. Many of the replies on this post, show it’s a losing battle trying to inform them. The other part of the equation is where the EU is heading, they appear to ignore the events that are happening, there is a rise in the Parties on the far Right, it does not make them stop and think ‘why?’ and could this be a bad thing, bad enough to alter their thinking that perhaps the EU not being the panacea they think it is. What is happening in the EU and is it doing something seriously wrong that could cause its collapse. I heard Marine Le Pen saying she didn’t like the way Germany was dominating the EU, I cannot be the only person watching that interview on the news? I have said, it’s Merkel’s fault that we had a referendum in the first place.
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Talking of rules, the European Referendum Bill says that there is no obligation to implement the result of the referendum or to set a timetable to do so. That seems pretty clear. The government has a choice to take the UK out of the EU or not. If the decision is to leave, it also has a choice on timing, so it could be postponed until after a future general election. You will have heard some of that before but you keep ignoring it. This is not a matter of left versus right; it’s a matter of standing up for what you believe in, or integrity. MPs are representatives not delegates. Do you believe in the death penalty? Probably not. Most do, but yet we don’t have it, thanks to our MPs who are wiser than the population at large and have kept it as a non-issue. Well done! Likewise, a great majority of MPs of all colours know full well that Brexit is bad and that there can be no good Brexit, just bad, very bad or extremely bad. They don’t even need to worry about popular support because opinion poll data since last year has consistently shown a majority, not a large one unfortunately, but a majority for remain. The parliamentary Labour Party is colluding in this unnecessary and destructive act.
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I voted remain but what part of Democracy do the voters not understand. We need to get behind Jeremy the leader to make a better UK for all.
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I agree with much you said. You will know, as I do that this latest ‘squabble’ is intended more at undermining JC than anything else. Those behind it prefer capitalism to Socialism. I seem to recall and Blair saying that he’d prefer a Tory government than one lef by JC. Just about sums it up, but nobody ever said that real change would be easy. JC still represents the best hope working people have of being able to begin to rid themselves of an economic system, which enslaves them and their families.
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It really is a case of people being led by emotion but then not calming down and looking objectively at what they are upset about! I too had a OMG moment when I saw the news but this piece really puts that into the right perspective. Keeping to the battles that are winnable is really important! JC seems to be doing that.
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1. a) no vote is democratic if the information offered to enable people to make their decision is misleading, outright lies and (over) emotional argument…
1. b) just say I offer you a choice of chicken curry or vegetable tagine…and you choose chicken curry; I then serve you pigswill and tell you it is chicken curry…is that acceptable to you? is it something that other people could, reasonably, defend?
I would suggest that to serve pigswill while calling it chicken curry is entirely indefensible by anyone.
2. if you live in a country where the majority voted for Brexit – England and Wales – then perhaps the argument for supporting the democratic process might just work. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where the outcome of the vote was significantly reversed, then the democratic process has NOT been fulfilled in any way shape or form…and effectively we have just been told, as a devolved nation and as individual voters, that our vote means absolutely fuck all.
I am now a member of the Scottish Greens as a direct result of the this travesty of democracy and I will vote for independence if we are given another chance because any reason to remain in order to have a more significant socialist bloc across the entire country has gone as a direct result of Corbyn’s decision…so to the writer of this blog, do not look north to help your cause in the future.
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Labour is now finished in Scotland. Might have recovered if Corbyn hadn’t been SO inept with each of the last few visits. The fact he’s probably been advised by Scottish Labour on them (which is riddled with Blairites and is probably plotting against him) is neither here nor there. Zero chance of recovery in the next decade.
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The decision was a UK wide decision, so you may well live in a part of the UK that voted remain but JC has to take a UK wide decision.
Also, if you vote for Scottish independence believing it will see Scotland become/remain part of the EU then you fail to understand EU politics because Spain will veto any Scottish application (and all it takes is 1 member to veto an application) because if Scotland gets access to the EU then Catalunia would expect a similar outcome, fuelling their desire to be independent from Spain.
Also, lets be honest and admit the remain campaign were equally responsible for exaggeration/ downright lies
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I am afraid that all elections are characterised by lies, deceit and propaganda to one degree or another. Lib Dems promising to oppose tuition fees in 2010 GE and then ratting on it afterwards is just one example. But we can’t re-run every election because of it. Corbyn is a democrat who respects votes and so should we be.
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Absolutely agree – It’s taken me months to recover from the shock of the result of this idiotic referendum. However, the result wasn’t JC’s fault or victory – depending on how you see this. Like a GE, the protagonists, & their associated media, mis-inform & manipulate the electorate -we accept the result & get on with it. Usually, by trying to blunt the worst aspects of it, through debate & agitation. This should be no different. JC & much of the Labour Party is taking the correct approach to this – accept the result, but fight to retain the best of the EU & ensure that the bits we lose have as little detriment as possible.
I think an interesting aspect of this will be seeing if the newly engerised voters continue to vote & contribute to political, social & economic development. I suspect not – which, then calls into question why this referendum, rather than routine UK politics caught folks’ attention.
The thing that has disappointed me about all of our politics, around this clearly divisive referendum, is that nobody had a post-referendum plan. Regardless of the result, a clear division in the UK would be established & something would be required to be done. No party, including Labour, seems to have had a plan to deal with this.
I believe that JC & probably more particularly JMcD, with an anti-austerity approach to economics, is the way forward.
I hope democracy & socialism is that platform.
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What’s wrong with independence for Catalunya? Comrade Blair was on that side in the 1930s. (eric, btw, not Anthony)
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“…the majority of Labour MPs support Corbyn’s position because they know if they don’t we’ll be wiped out by UKIP in England, the way we’ve been wiped out by the SNP in Scotland”
You do know that this is the reasoning that lay behind the “Blair Revolution” so disparaged by our present leadership, don’t you? A policy that is perceived as unpopular (for which read, “liable to be pounced upon by the rabid Tory rags”) will be abandoned in the desire to achieve electability, no matter how integral that policy is to core socialist principles. Like many reading this blog I have visceral memories of the Thatcher era, when a divided opposition vilified by the Murdoch and Rothermere rags allowed for 18 years of uninterrupted Tory rule: I had no wish to endure that again, and like many in the party I acquiesced to the rightward shift in the nineties, trusting that it would ensure a progressive if not socialist government.
I’m not prepared to do that again. The difference between then and now is twofold: firstly, Brexit is final – we will not be able to reverse it through legislation upon returning to government; secondly, we are living in a darker, more terrible world, with a thin-skinned populist demagogue seizing power in the US and out-and-out fascists becoming realistic contenders for power in many European states – not to mention the rise in hate crimes in our own country and the sense of empowerment granted to home-grown Nazis by the June 23rd vote. The purpose of opposition is not to stand around waiting to take charge again: it is to identify and oppose measures that are inherently wrong and harmful to the body politic. I am ashamed that the party leadership has failed to do so in this instance: I am proud of the 47 Labour and Cooperative MPs who stood up and defied their spineless leaders.
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I think you meant to say ‘stood up to make an absolutely pointless gesture, which they knew full well was pointless and wouldn’t have stopped Brexit even if every single MP had joined them (which they wouldn’t have done), but which allows them to bask in a few days of praise from Guardian columnists’. Voting against Article 50 wouldn’t stop Brexit, not even if a majority of MPs voted against it (May would just call a snap election focused entirely on Brexit and win a clear majority on that platform, then have a completely free hand for the next few years). The Labour rebels knows this, the Lib Dems know this, they know that the only possible outcome of ‘success’ for them in yesterday’s vote would be to deliver the hardest, most right-wing and reactionary form of Brexit as a sure-fire guarantee. The Lib Dems would be perfectly happy to see that happen if they managed to win 20 seats in the next election by lying to people about what they believe is possible.
Telling that of these ‘courageous’ MPs who voted against Article 50 yesterday, I haven’t seen many coming out in public to defend a pro-immigration line and stand up to the Labour MPs and Guardian hacks who are constantly sniping at Corbyn and Abbott over the issue. If they really want Britain to stay in the EU, or even in the single market, they will have to say explicitly that free movement for EU citizens goes with that, but I haven’t seen any of them stick their heads above the parapet to resist the anti-immigrant hysteria; Corbyn and Abbott have been left to do all the heavy lifting there and take all the flak. These people would happily throw immigrants under the bus for the sake of a few UKIP votes but now they’re the very incarnation of political courage? Give me a break. If you really believe that, they’ve played you for a fool. If you’re counting on Ben Bradshaw, Heidi Alexander and the like as a bulwark against right-wing reactionary politics, you might as well resign yourself to the inevitable victory of fascism. ‘Spineless’ is the most apt term for the lot of them.
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If the Labour party is for anything its for helping and protecting those in society that have no recourse to normal channels of support. This is why I find JC’s stand on Brexit so perplexing, we have 3 million EU citizens here with no effective representation. 3 million people who stand to be most affected by this Brexit vote and couldnt do anything to change the out come and can’t do anything to protect themselves. The Labour party should have stepped up to the plate and fought!
I campaigned for Labour Remain in the referendum and we had no support from Labour. Everything we did we had to find funding to do, no one came to our area to support us. Yet we managed to keep the leave vote down to 55% in an area where if they put a blue rosette on a pig it would win. UKIP, in the same area, had bags of support and money and still had a hell of a battle to win.
JC has been all too eager to throw in the towel, its well known that he was luke warm on Europe so its come as no surprise that he supported Art 50.
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I can only speak for my CLP during the Remain campaign – but we had loads of campaign material (possibly too much), regular local & regional meetings & some really high profile events within short travel distance. It’s a shame this wasn’t your experience However, lack of support from Labour wasn’t the issue in my area voting to leave – it was the take back control/save the NHS misinformation peddled by Murdoch media.
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I had always supported him as a potential leader but not anymore, someone who can not stand up for his own beliefs is nothing more or less than a coward. Britain has had too many cowedly leaders, I don’t feel I can ever forgive this man for stopping his own party from making their own choices and for turning his back for frankly pathetic reasons. One day this country will come to terms with what a poor decision brexit actually is and in that sometimes what seems an incorrect corse of action at the time is also the correct corse of action for the future. Now that people have seen the result of lies and aspersions made by politicians we should get the chance to democratically vote again. You can bet if the remainers had won we would be having another vote, just like there will be another vote for Scottish independence. This is not a decision that will only last the term of a few years, this will affect us all for the rest of our life’s for better or worse, Great Britain is not so great anymore..
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I agree with the original post. Don’t get distracted by this….support JC and pull together. Once again the media are undermining JC ….noticed it immediately on mainstream news BBC….when vote was declared.
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You say that opposing it would finish labour but why? Brexit is THE issue now. Why would anyone in their right mind vote for labour when the tories are offering it and delivering it?!
Had they opposed this they would have had over half the country to get votes from (remember, many didn’t vote who could, many voters have recently turned 18, and many Brexit voters did so on the basis of NOT leaving the single market so the Brexit majority is undoubtedly gone now).
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Because 70% of all Labour constituencies are Brexit supporting constituencies. The distribution of Remain voters, even if they all went to Labour which they won’t (they’ll split off between Lib Dems, Gteens, SNP, non-voting and even Tory) is not even over the country. So we would lose over half our seats and give the Tories no opposition to their hard Brexit wet dreams. And for why? Even with all opposition parties united we do NOT have the numbers to block Article 50 and even 2 Lib Dems defied their leader and abstained because they represent Leave constituencies. That’s 20% of the total of Lib Dem MPs who refused to vote against Article 50. So the idea Labour should fall on its sword to make a gesture that achieves precisely nothing seems like an irrational one to me.
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I am entirely happy and absolutely determined to continue supporting Jeremy Corbyn and will not allow the brexit issue to derail that support. At the same time I do find it difficult to understand his position on the three line whip thing. How can anyone honestly say brexit is the democratic will of the people when people’s voting decisions were subject to such gross manipulation, lies, misinformation and blatant populist/racist propaganda and there was so little in the way of honest analysis of the possible outcomes. The whole thing was a disasterous Cameron led vanity project that saw the rise of right wing bigotry and scapegoating and much more – and we are supposed to let that pass? However as I said, I don’t blame Mr Corbyn, he’s in a difficult position and I have the utmost respect for his integrity. I hope most sensible folk will be capable of coping with a bit of cognitive dissonance. What has annoyed me is how the right wing of the Labour Party has used this as yet another opportunity to make it look as though those of us who lament the farce that was the referendum are somehow against Mr Corbyn because he has to hold a very complex number of considerations at the same time. Why don’t the right wing just back off and set up their own party and leave those of us with socialist values to belong to our party of choice? And yes, I know everything is always a lot more complicated than we’d like it to be!
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You can vote for a party that represents your views, or not.
Labour just betrayed half the people that bothered with the referendum to side with xenophobes and capitalists. And the referendum was only supposed to be advisory, but we don’t bother to even mention that now, do we, we just parrot that “will of the people” UKIP shtick in a pathetic attempt to curry favour.
Yes, since you ask, I WOULD rather have a strong, principled opposition than a supplicating, isolationist Labour government. And if my European life partner loses his right to reside in this country after 23 years of paying tax here, I will be following him out of this hell hole or die trying.
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Reblogged this on The love of God and commented:
Have to save this one. I’ll be voting Labour if Corbyn will rule it at that time.
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No Brexit. Nothing is more likely to ruin this country than Brexit. Nothing is more likely to make it the sort of free-market deregulated capitalist state hellhole the Labour Party should despise. Not a centrist Labour leader not even a Tory government with the UK in the EU. That is why it is the central issue. That is why this labour voter will not vote Labour.
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Fair play, this is an excellent article. You should submit this to the Guardian. Labour voters and members need to see this!
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Labour won’t win without Scotland, and absolutely sod all has been done to represent the views of former Labour voters here who were sickened by their stance with the tories during the independence referendum, and the complete lack of opposition to the Tories currently.
I’ll tell you here and now that unless something significant is done to address the damage done by ranting lunatics such as Jim Murphy you’ve lost an entire generation of Scottish Labour voters.
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The Crux of this argument is: Accept Corbyn or get a right-wing Labour leader. which is the same false argument advanced by failed Labour leaders in the past: “accept my leadership or the Conservatives will be in government”.
Corbyn has failed to communicate the virtues of socialist economic policy, or a humanitarian foreign policy. he is a disgrace to the political left and has humiliated and delegitimised left wing policy.
he has caved on Nuclear power, nuclear weapons, state surveillance, and the Monarchy to name but a few
his ‘leadership’ has shown us how deeply flawed politics in this country is. however he remains committed to a political establishment which rejects the simple and fundamental principle of ‘One Person, One Value, One Vote’. So long as he remains in opposition to electoral and constitutional reform then the Labour Party is cursed to be a failure to the people it is supposed to represent.
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I had a real problem with the abysmally low quality,information poor and little demand for fact/information and verification,with the heavy duty politicisation/polarisation and reactionaryism of the debate and actually how this metier is now haunting political discourse.Prejudice and name-calling means more than facts/information-the louder you shout the more seriously you’re taken.And this totally flawed process becomes the ‘democratic will of the people’ and is used to bludgeon people.
It dosen’t make sense.
The British public were sold a pup-the EU ref.[a tory ploy to stop voter drift to UKIP],and were then spoon-fed msm asisted lies,hype,fear-mongering and prejudice by both sides.
Anyway,I’ve got that t-shirt and I can’t look at this like it was a seerious debate,or that it was a process of decision-making of colossal kind.
My conclusion is is that this is about anger,rage and disappointment.Of such powerful emotions that only cliches can hold any power.The tories have starved and wrecked the UK for the ideological purposes of implementing savage and far-reaching cuts to the public sector/Welfare system.Some to ease the tax burdens of the rich and corporate,and some to cash-starve public sector into privatisation[the underlying markets of the public sector would make lots of profit for an international investment private sector who have major funds and dwindling investment opportunities.
The tories didn’t care who they hurt[or killed].Their ideologically driven ‘Austerity’cut the tripe out the economy enabling their ideological implementatoin[have to stop banging on about this].The idea of investing in housing transport,infra-structure using cheap money[interest at lowest rate] while the economy goes through what is known as a cycle,and keeping the economy on the bubble and providing valuable resources was not entertained.the ideological possibilities of th austerity were humungous.And,Boy,did it work.We’re all hating each other now and have created an untermensch class-the Welfare recipient to pour our contempt on.
Reason is the last thing that can be expected.Just the channelling of rage,hate and anger.
The migrant worker is another element of the untermensch.May had powers to control immigration.She chose not to use them.Bitish businesses made £billions out of cheap,exploitable EU labour.Would British businesses have exploited cheap EU labour if they had had to pay them the national minimum wage,which was never monitored.
The absence of such monitoring is credited as having been responsible for the exploitation of EU workers.
Government ‘mis-management’ has a lot to answer to.
Even putting this down,it is clear that so much has been going on to raise temperatures that any political mechanism is going to be overwhelmed with huge,and therefore unreasonable,emotion which has been exploited by politicians and vested interest,and which has not been amenable to sober discourse ,necessary to make the best,most cogent decision,and the best thing for the complexity that is the UK.
A bit like asking drunks in a bar to discuss…anything.
Fuelled by rage,anger,and disappointment,a brawl is the only outcome.
As a kick in the arse,the politicians who carried out this ideological savagery and damaged so many in their incompetence and brutality are now instructing us,smelling of roses.
They gave the kicking and will do so again,and we will be fighting and brawling with each other.
They are clever and we are stupid.
As far as we are concerned,the system is broken.
But it’s working for the politicians and their masters.
[We can hardly remember the pain caused.]
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I supported Corbyn in both leadership elections, but I was voting for a politician who stood up for his principles, whether they were popular or not, in the conviction that if they were right people would eventually come round to agree with them. He is not giving us principled leadership now – he is terrified that the Stoke by-election will go to UKIP and re-open the question of his leadership so he is trying desperately to shore up the Labour vote by giving a clear pro-Brexit message. This is betraying the majority of the Labour members who supported him, and tearing the party apart. I was at a ward meeting last night, where the atmosphere has gone from predominately pro-Corbyn six months ago to 90% saying “he’s got it wrong”. This was the worst possible moment for Jeremy to discover the attractions of triangulation!
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Reblogged this on Declaration Of Opinion .
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“Give and extra £350M each week to the NHS on the same day as serving Article 50”
Why?
‘This was a significant promise made during the referendum, and should be delivered.’
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/178557
They should do a Donald and keep to their word….
Vote Leave made the promise, so we don’t have to say where the money should come from. That’s down to the Foreign Secretary and the PMs Special Envoy to the USA, both of whom loved to stand in front of the bus.
The total cost over two years is about one third of the stimulus package spent in the week after the referendum, so the funds could come from that direction.
The Government could add 1p onto all tax, or 1½p onto tax over £50k and that would fund the NHS for the foreseeable future (according to the FT).
They could raise the same amount by introducing a £0.001 tax on offshore financial transactions by the clearing banks.
Shame ‘from’ the same day would not fit on the petition web site, it would not let the two extra letters in, but the point is to make them debate it.
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Brexit transcends party loyalty. It will affect the UK for generations. It is a fraud perpetrated by the right wing of the Tory Party and Labour have been unable to see that for what it is – a Far Right coup.Once the centrist conservatives lost the debate on Europe within their party the Far Right would take over. When I argued with Lexit friends during the referendum I said it would lead to the ascendancy of the Far Right throughout Europe and increased xenophobia and racism. For me understanding this beat any other arguments although I also felt the EU does need to reform in terms of the Commision’s powers and the weakness of the european Parliamnet. Brexit is a fraud open your eyes
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html Out of Europe the UK will become a 53rd state of the USA and Singapore style tax haven with increasing levels of inequality.
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brilliant read and very true but it not us you have to convince it the labour supporters who dont have social media as they only see one side bbc side with there fake bias news reports
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Well, that genius strategy went well, didn’t it. Not one single amendment. Tories and UKIP and Labour, all in it together. *slow clap*
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Firstly, let’s ditch the “support the referendum result” nonsense. If you are doing something destructive like formatting your computer’s hard drive, you get asked “are you sure?”. And it’s fairly certain now that if we asked the British public, “are you sure you want to leave the EU the way that Theresa May is doing it?”, the answer would be a resounding “NO”.
Remember, the result was so narrow that only 634,751 Leave voters needed to change their minds and vote for remain to change the outcome — and there’s plenty of evidence that many more than that have done so.
And now let’s look at the electoral realities for the Labour party. The Tories have achieved the one thing Cameron wanted to do when he called the referendum, and brought the Mail-reading UKIP voters back into the fold. So with their right-wing UKIP supporters drifting back to the Nasty Party, that leaves UKIP ready to eat Labour’s lunch by appearing to shift left, and appealing to all the working class racists.
So Labour have a choice — they can double down with an effort to keep those voters by being complicit in May’s bait-and-switch fraud, and alienate the decent people of Britain. Or they can come out strongly against May’s Brexit with a clear message about why *that* isn’t what people voted for anyway, let UKIP have the deplorables who are so blinded by hate that they can’t see that, and provide a decent Opposition to the evil that Theresa May is attempting to impose upon us.
I do think Corbyn has made the wrong choice. I suspect Labour will get slaughtered in the next election because of it.
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Jeremy Corbyn represents a constituency that voted over 78% to Remain. Who exactly is he representing by voting to trigger A50? Let alone whipping the whole parliamentary Labour party to do the same? Technically he does NOT represent the whole country.
On the one hand you say, “Labour does not have the numbers to block Brexit due to an overwhelmingly united Tory party. Therefore aiming to block it is both undemocratic and futile”. To this I say RUBBISH! A lot has changed since the referendum.
On the other hand you say, “this country could get a socialist Brexit with renationalisation, good wages and jobs, as well as decent transport, council housing, schools and hospitals”. Am I missing something here, or does Labour since that last paragraph now suddenly HAVE the numbers to force change?
What you call “empty gesture politics” I call principles, I call doing the RIGHT thing. If we change policy to get or to keep votes, then what are we? Just empty hearted, empty headed populists.
Democracy (when pure, which this referendum clearly was NOT, being built on Leave lies) is one thing. But when it is quite obviously broken, when it is overrun with mistakes, lies and bigotry, it is very dangerous.
In the UK we have parliamentary democracy, not individual democracy. Any sensible referendum effecting the biggest policy change for hundreds of years would/should have a margin built in. 60/40 or 2 to 1. Or a 2nd referendum safety net, when the deals have been made. Yet Britain offers none of these things…
Poll tax was defeated by rebels, by principles, by doing the right thing. Not rolling over and appeasing the stupidity of far right madness.
You say, “the majority of Labour MPs support Corbyn’s position because they know if they don’t we’ll be wiped out by UKIP in England, the way we’ve been wiped out by the SNP in Scotland”. What dross? Have you no faith in education, debate, principled lobbying and truth? Have you no faith in the 48% being right, and in being able to convince their peers in the deceived 52% that the Murdoch press are not the bastion and protector of the working public, those “benevolent” billionaires and millionaires who fled the scene after the result… They really have got you beaten haven’t they? SHAME!
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The thrust of this article seems to be that the Opposition should always vote with the Government, because they cannot win a vote against the ruling party. If that were the case, we would have a single-party state. Had the Opposition parties united against the Tories over Brexit, they would have only needed 6 Tory rebels to carry the vote. Corbyn imposed a three-line whip intended to compel his MPs to vote against their consciences, against their constituents’ wishes, and against basic Socialist principles in order to support the most right-wing Government I have seen in my lifetime. In doing so, he has rendered Labour unelectable, has split the party, and has given Theresa May a blank cheque to do whatever she wants to – if he was working for the Russians he couldn’t have done a better job.
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Not voting with the opposition, respecting democracy…big difference!
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Enough with the nonsense about “respecting democracy”, please.
Firstly, respecting democracy means actually telling people the truth. If you misinform the public when asking them to make a decision, then “respecting democracy” has gone out the window *long* before you actually get the result counted.
Secondly, people DID NOT vote for Theresa May’s radical form of Brexit. We were told, repeatedly, that we could remain in the single market and that leaving it would be tantamount to economic suicide. And now she’s claiming, falsely, that she has a mandate to leave the single market too. And the ECHR, which is nothing to do with the EU at all! Look at the numbers — if just 634,751 of those Leave voters believed what we were told, and wanted to leave the EU but not the single market, then THERE WAS NOT A MAJORITY for leaving the single market, even on June 23rd of last year.
Thirdly, if we’re going to “respect democracy”, perhaps we should have ensured that all those affected by the decision were allowed to have their say, rather than disenfranchising many of those who *live* on the Continent, as well as 16-18 year olds here whose futures were are affecting more than anyone else.
And finally, when I click on the “format hard drive” button on my computer — even if Boris did change the icon so it was promising free porn — it thankfully still pops up a clarification about what it’s going to do. And asks me “are you sure?”. I am extremely *thankful* that it does not “respect the will of the user” and just go ahead and do it without confirmation.
Since June 23rd last year, a lot has become clearer — especially as the prominent members of the Leave campaign voted against their own promises when they were presented as amendments to the bill, and as Theresa May seems set on her “Brexit means the most destructive form of Brexit we can imagine”. Respecting democracy would mean giving the people a final say before we jump off that cliff. Not clinging to a decision made at a single point in time last year. Because if the decision is set in stone for ever… why on earth wasn’t that true of the 1975 referendum too?
So please, enough of that ‘respect democracy’ nonsense. It’s utterly unsupportable, and it shows that you can’t actually make any *better* argument why we should do this insanely destructive thing.
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Are you suggesting that only perfect democracy should be respected? If so why haven’t we overturned the Scottish referendum result where a multitude of lies were told, or the GE result…again achieved through lies and spin? We have to accept democratic results warts and all because elections are run by humans with all their flaws. As for people not realising we might leave the single market, well quite frankly that’s patronising bull! People knew that risk was there. I knew it, most people knew it, but only the Remainers why refuse to accept the result, refuse to acknowledge it. One of the key issues in the referendum was immigration and the fact it could not be controlled whilst we were part of the single market. I might disagree with people’s views on this and voted Remain myself, but I was not deaf and blind to that view. Unsurprisingly recent polling shows that more people favour controls over immigration over access to the single market, i.e, a hard Brexit. It’s one of the reasons the Tories are polling so well. They are trusted to deliver what most leave voters wanted. Yes you can argue these people are deluded, brainwashed or naive, but you cannot argue with the fact that’s what they voted for. That’s called democracy. And yes, the MSM have steered public opinion into an anti-immigration position, but that’s the shit press we have. If you want to talk about democracy maybe start by attacking a predominantly right wing press who does so much to scapegoat immigrants and poor people and so little to blame the real causes of poverty and poor life chances.
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Labour’s problem is a moral one, whilst claiming to defend the masses they can’t promise to defend jobs, housing and nhs if that means putting locals on a same footing as anyone arriving in the country for the first time. Sounds harsh but if they say “we’re all in this together” that commendable outreach of hospitality pushes everyone on the end of a longer cue.
Where’s Labour’s vision for the crumbling countries people are so desperate to leave?
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Three line whipping MPs to vote to trigger Article 50 wasn’t providing the Tories with any opposition at all. Corbyn hasn’t ever voted pro-EU in the Commons. There are figures out there saying that 70% of Labour voters voted Remain and Corbyn completely ignored that, just as previously Remain Theresa May turned on Remainers also.
Brenda from Bristol speaks for many with the oh-no-not-another-election attitude. Millions are heartily sick of the electioneering and the lies. The British press is heavily right wing and controlled by only a handful of people, most of whom don’t live in the UK and aren’t British. This will make many feel that Brexit is inevitable.
It’s not and I’m not suggesting that somehow the Liberal Democrats will beat the Tories, despite FPTP. Gina Miller’s case and the crowdfunded The People’s Challenge case, succeeded in stopping Mayhem from using the Royal Prerogative arbitrarily to take away our EU citizenship rights. That sheeple MPs wimped out and Corbyn sided with Tories was unfortunate.
It’s May 2017 and we still have until March 2019 to stop Brexit.
Carole Cadwalladr of The Guardian has sent the Electoral Commission and Metropolitan Police proof that Vote Leave broke campaign law. We already know that Nigel Farage is accused of using EU money to fund his campaign and that the EU is satisfied it happened. The Electoral Commission is investigating. It’s likely that the European Parliament would vote to lift his political immunity. Brexit Justice is investigating both Leave and Remain campaigns, for a private prosecution of politicians. The Information Commissioner’s Office is also investigating the use of social media users’ information to target them with political ads. There’s a case going to the European Courts of Justice about EU citizens (that’s Brits too) deprived of votes in the referendum ie people not getting votes they were entitled to, people getting votes when they don’t return MPs ie yes to Gibraltar no to Channel Islands. Ultimately, if the European Courts aren’t satisfied the referendum was held in a constitutional manner, they don’t have to uphold the result. And more than one document exists to show that in the UK a referendum can only be non-binding and advisory.
The LAW transcends political parties and even governments are bound by the Rule of Law.
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