Written by Brendan Chilton
This articles was first published in Brexit Central, and we re-publish with their and the author’s kind permission
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The general election was always going to be about Brexit. Three years since the referendum, with a Parliament doing everything within its power to thwart the democratic wishes of the people, an election was necessary to break the deadlock. The British people were fed up with the bickering, the delay and the filibustering. They were outraged that our politicians had the audacity to claim that they knew better than the people. The Brexit election broke the deadlock – but it has also broken the Labour Party.
In 2016, Labour Brexit policy respected the outcome of the referendum. Indeed, Jeremy Corbyn was the first major UK political party leader to call for Article 50 to be invoked. We were very clear that we would be leaving the European Union. It was on that basis that we went to the electorate in 2017 and we were able to deprive the Conservatives of a majority. We were able to do this precisely because we held on to our vital Labour Leave vote.
Since then, a core within the Parliamentary Labour Party, supported by external forces in the now defunct and defeated People’s Vote campaign, undermined the policy of the party and applied enormous pressure to change its direction. They succeeded, and earlier this year Labour endorsed the holding of a second referendum with the option to Remain. It is almost certain that if that referendum had taken place, a very significant proportion of Labour MPs would have campaigned against Labour’s own Brexit deal in favour of Remain.
The Brexit policy of the Labour Party at this general election was largely responsible for the disaster that unfolded. A North London Remain clique had placed their own fanatical commitment to the EU above the electoral prospects of the Labour Party. The Labour Party was sacrificed on their altar to Brussels and now dozens of Labour seats have fallen to the Conservatives. Labour is now slain, struck down in the very communities in which it was founded over 100 years ago.
Seventy percent of Labour’s constituencies voted to leave the European Union at the 2016 referendum. A majority of our most marginal seats voted Leave, and a majority of the seats we needed to win voted Leave. Between four and five million Labour voters supported Leave. At the 2019 European Parliament elections, the strongest levels of support for the Brexit Party were in the strongest Labour Leave areas, but the party hierarchy took no notice.
The official policy of the party was that it would negotiate a new deal with the European Union that would maintain a customs union with the EU. This, of course, would deny a future government the ability to determine its own independent trade policy and negotiate its own trade deals. It was an absurd proposition. This deal was then to be put to the people in a referendum in which the leader of the Labour Party would remain neutral. The voters did not buy it and they rejected it wholeheartedly. With Boris Johnson, at least voters had clarity of purpose and a clear direction on policy and they supported it.
The working classes of this country overwhelmingly supported Brexit. The former Labour heartlands were made up of the post-industrial working class communities. How it has become possible that a party became so far removed from the views and concerns of their own electorate on such a big issue will be the subject of political seminars for years to come.
If Labour wishes to recover and become the great champion of working people once again, the first step it needs to make is to abandon its support for a second referendum. It must work with the Conservative Government in a collaborative and constructive fashion to get Brexit done. This means accepting that the Government now has a mandate to proceed with its Withdrawal Agreement and it means accepting that the British people have, for the umpteenth time, voted to leave the EU. The last thing that Labour needs to do now is follow the advice of the Shadow Foreign Secretary and oppose the deal and fight it all the way.
Many of us saw this disaster coming. We warned the Labour Party at every opportunity that this devastating defeat would unfold. But we were ignored. Now is a critical time in the history of the Labour movement. Our decisions and actions over the next few weeks will be key to how quickly we recover – if, indeed, we recover at all.
The country is watching and millions of voters who lent their votes to the Conservatives will be waiting to see if Labour starts to reach out to them. I hope and pray, for the sake of our party, that wise heads will prevail and that we will now become a pro-Brexit party.
Has Labour ever done what it needed to? Thought not…
It and its avid supporters will remain a large cohort of the enemy within. As with any other enemy they need to be watched very carefully and their actions stamped on before they get out of hand.
Corbyn is staying on so that he can ensure we get more of the same Corbynist labour party.
There is no-one left in labour worthy to lead. Bimbos and blockheads.
Perhaps I have missed something as I was under the impression May called the 2017 GE not Labour. Also it is debatable that Labour stopped May getting a majority, as you say. It may be a case of delusion, as again my impression was that it was the deplorable public riff-raff that did that not the Labour Party.
It is not my intention to subjectively cast doubt on the veracity of your article but flags are going up in my mind.
So what you are saying is that it was an outside force that corrupted the true majority of Labour MPs?
That conflicts with the understanding that, at the time of the Referendum, many Labour MPs in those ‘northern and midland heartlands’ were Remainers.
Not only have Labour ignored its support base in terms of immigration, one law for all, child rape, wealth generation, welfare dependency, gender confusion, political correctness and NHS effectiveness, it had ignored the effects that the EU is having on British society as a whole.
Please do not take this as a personal criticism. The Labour Party is not the only party undermining the development of democracy and the use of common sense. The point I want to make is that we cannot now accept that it has all been about events post June 2016 or in fact post 2014. No, one would have to go back at least forty years to get anywhere near the start of the deceit.
Now having read all of your article it does seem to me that you are trying, but yours eyes are still only half open. It is no good jumping on the Brexit bandwagon because the game is up, or indeed supporting the Conservatives who are also a unworthy shower.
The proper course of action would be to deliver Democracy in every area of governance and work from below the electorate where politicians should be, not above them where they have all clearly failed the electorate, and are unfit to be.
Johnson’s Conservative Party may have won this election but like the Labour Party they are also losers in a pejorative sense. The real losers are the British Public who at the moment have been given nowhere to go. Sorry just letting some steam off.
Who cares? The Labour party does not own the right to be the voice of the the working class and indeed the middle classes, it has relinquished that right.
What is that pejorative? Yes – populism and it is gaining traction all over because it represents what people are wanting, real representation, and there are others that will provide this.
Are Starmer, Lady Hugee, Abbott, McDonnell and a host of other rampant hypocrites and liers going to be booted out of the Labour Party? No, and until they are then they will never truly represent us. Starmer is even being touted by some as the next leader, unbelievable, but it really looks to be another harriden so as to truly represent Labour values, ’nuff for me. I suppose he could always self identify to be in with a chance, more than ’nuff for me.
If Labour really wants to get me to return to pre 2017 and being a Labour voter then they need to do a lot more than just support Brexit. They will need to drop the obsession with identity politics, poisoning childrens minds, climate change emergency and reverse most of Blairs harmful legislation just for a start, plus the horrifying spectre of totalitarianism revealed during the election campaign. Of course Boris will have to do this if he wants to retain me as a Tory voter. I only voted this time to stop Corbyn & Co.
Blairs harmful legislation. Somewhere I read that it was Blair’s government that introduced P.F.I.s in the NHS. They have been shown to be a more expensive way to provide lower standards of support to the medical staff and patients than the preceeding arrangemts. That, I would say was typical of ‘New Labour’. They tried to be Tories in all but name but actually hadn’t a clue how to do it. It was also them that destroyed the system that gave fair assistance to the disabled.
Yes you are right about populism. Populist Parties are challenging traditional Parties throughout Europe for a start and the old parties no longer represent anything actual or real in the population I’d say. We, the people, no longer fall into those old stereotypes of upper middle and working class.
Labour hasn’t been the champion of the working classes for decades. It just used them as pawns to wage class war in the 70s and 80s losing us our old industrial dominance (bad management of course played a big role too), then from the 90s onwards it has abandoned the indigenous working class in favour of electing a new people from the 3rd world. I’d rather Labour disappeared up its own fundament and was replaced by Ukip/BXP/Reform party or whatever. You know, a patriotic party that puts its own people first.
‘ ……a patriotic party that puts its own people first’ A fine sentiment of which I dearly hope will come to pass.
Hear Hear