Galloway: Labour’s volunteered to kill off Brexit, they’ll be labelled ‘betrayers’
by George Galloway
February 25, 2018
Sir Keir Starmer is an excellent backstabber. Nobody knows that better than Jeremy Corbyn who has just been led by the nose by him like a beast to the slaughter in what Frank Field the Labour MP has described as a “deadly electoral trap”.
Starmer was a key conspirator in the coup against Corbyn in 2016, resigning from the Shadow Cabinet in the most insulting and wounding way. Yet Corbyn, it is clear, has been led by the QC MP into an actual U-Turn – and one which ineluctably will lead to a second and thereafter, why not, a third.
Labour has now volunteered to be the executioner of Brexit, Theresa May, to her considerable relief no doubt, will be the champion of the 17.4 million betrayed. The stage is set.
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The label “betrayer” will be pinned to the back of every Labour MP (virtually none will be “deselected”) in the 70% of Labour-held constituencies which voted Leave in the referendum and the many others which Labour came close to winning in 2017 and now will not.
The “stab in the back” narrative which will now be spun by the Tories and their press backers will be overwhelmingly powerful. The gratitude of the Macchiato-classes will be scant and short-lived and electorally useless in vast tracts of the country.
Theresa May will say: “I tried to leave the EU even though I didn’t agree with it, because that’s what the majority voted for. Labour and a few dozen of the drunk and the dismissed on my own benches have betrayed us. This is now a question of respecting the democratic will of the British people.”
It’s true that a very substantial number of British people don’t want to leave the EU – though less now than in the referendum in my view. The problem for Labour is that most of those live in the best-off areas of Britain, areas where paradoxically Labour is already strong. They can look forward to piling up massive majorities in Remain areas.
But 60% of parliamentary constituencies voted Leave in the Referendum, and more importantly 70% of Labour constituencies voted Leave. In those constituencies today’s move is a cloud the size of a man’s hand which will prove a harbinger of great storms to come.
This represents a defeat for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell – whose policies for Britain cannot be implemented with Britain in the Single Market – whether they have gone along with it or not. It represents a victory for Tony Blair and his ramp within the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Labour apparatus, whose leader Ian McNicholl is shortly to re-emerge wearing the ermine robes at last.
U-turn if you want to Mr Corbyn. I and millions like me are not for turning.