Political

Labour’s Brexit lottery

Lottery balls

Image by Carabo Spain from Pixabay.

Five thoughts on the Labour conference mess over Europe today as they let down Remainers, once again:

And Jo Swinson:

Jeremy Corbyn has again shown a total lack of leadership on Brexit and settled on yet another fudge on the biggest issue facing our country. Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly had the opportunity to put the full force of the Labour behind a Remain position, but he has once again shown today that he is a Brexiteer at heart.

He is determined to negotiate a Brexit deal if Labour win an election, despite all the evidence that there is no Brexit deal that is good for our economy, our NHS and our security. By refusing to say how the Labour Party would campaign in a second referendum, Jeremy Corbyn is letting down the millions of people who want to see the UK remain in the EU.

The Liberal Democrats are the only main party going into the next election promising to end the Brexit chaos. If the Liberal Democrats win the next general election, then we will use that democratic mandate to revoke Article 50 on day one and stop Brexit.

The clarity of the Liberal Democrat position on Brexit really shows up the confusion by contrast over Labour’s.

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9 responses to “Labour’s Brexit lottery”

  1. I have mixed feelings about this. Will the self-immolation (which I think this is) of the Labour Party give the Lib Dems sufficient boost to prevail or will it lead to Tory dominance including the completion of a profoundly damaging brexit? It is a very big ask
    but we must do our level best to provide Jo with the country-wide backing that she needs to win through.

  2. So the only question is: when does the election come? Left to the present incumbency, we may be two and a half years into a no-deal. Corbyn extremely unlikely to be Labour leader by then. Having passed up the opportunity of a pre-no-deal election, and with a new Speaker of the House, are we really so sure that there is an election ‘sometime in the next few months’ or ‘before the end of the year’ as the pundits keep telling us?

  3. Mark – it would be really interesting if you were able to publish the boost to our membership over the next few days after Labour’s shambolic conference. Similarly next week’s Tory conference. Many are saying online they’ve left Labour today to join the LibDem’s.

  4. If we are to go into an election as it stands …
    Vote Lib Dem to “End Brexit Chaos”
    could be an appealing slogan to those who are just tired and fed up with the whole saga, as well as those who passionately want to remain.

  5. Just listened to Chukka Umunna on ‘Politics in Crisis’ on BBC 2. Seriously impressive speaker. A great ‘catch’ for the LibDems.

  6. I’m a Labour supporter who nevertheless votes LibDem in my constituency because Labour are so weak. I shall enter the lion’s den, and put the case for Labour’s policy on Brexit.

    Labour is the one major party in England that is actually proposing a second referendum. Brexit Party and Tories reckon they know “the will of the people”, so just pursue their favoured version of Brexit. LibDems are saying “ignore the first referendum”. I find both positions arrogant. If the LibDems have their way there will be seething resentment for the foreseeable future that “the People” are being ignored, while the Brexit Party and the Tories assume that “the 52%” have the same view on Brexit as they have. In my view only a second referendum can bring about at least some resolution to the discord created by the first referendum, which was flawed from the start being a “choice” between the specific “status quo” choice of remain and the wholly vague “leave” option. Where I disagree with Labour is that I think there should be three specific options on the ballot, with voters having a first and second choice – a single transferable vote. These options would be: “remain”; “whatever deal eventually gets negotiated” – Johnson’s, Corbyn’s, somebody else’s, or, as a fallback, May’s; and…. “no deal”. Yes, I’d put it on the ballot paper, not because I want it, but because there’s a very big minority who want it, and they shouldn’t be ignored, even if they are very misguided. I’m confident Remain will win, since the Leave campaigns will now have to defend specific options, rather than just sling mud at “Remain” – which gave them a huge advantage first time round.

  7. Labour by its own actions has allowed the LibDems to be the effective Opposition to both Brexit and this Government. It is time to see Labour off as a major party (the case for a union dominated socialist nirvana alternate party of government is long dead) … in this digital gig economy the fault lines are liberal/conservative not capital/labour.

    • Noel, A gig economy is basically what we had prior to the rise of trade unions: workers waiting on the dockside or wherever for bosses to select them on a day to day basis.
      It’s intimately bound up with capital/labour.

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