Apparently Jeremy Corbyn tweeted that the real fight against Brexit started last night. That was after he had forced his MPs to vote for triggering Article 50.
Unsurprisingly many people are annoyed.
So they should be. There is no reason at all to think that there will be any such fight from Corbyn. I well remember sitting in Portcullis House (where most MPs have their offices) with one of his most senior advisers in February or March 2015 and being told that he and Labour were pretty much going to sit the referendum out because it was a chance to watch the Tories tear each other apart.
There was no understanding then of the significance of the issue. It was, apparently, just a party political game. But even at that level Labour has played this very badly indeed. At the level of acting in the best interests of the county it's done much worse. The last person we can rely on now is Jeremy Corbyn.
I've said it before and no doubt I will say it again: he is a charming man who I like. But he is not a suitable leader for the Labour Party or the Opposition. And the result is that when watching parliament anyone can see Labour in disarray and next to it is the SNP, working together to great effect to achieve common aims that let them put their differences aside to deliver their message to great effect. If the Labour leadership had one tenth of that gumption maybe it would take a fight. But right now it's hasn't. And we're all the losers as a result.
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Look at it from Corbyn’s point of view.
He’s got exactly what he wanted. He wanted us out of the EU and doesn’t want membership of the single market. Anything we do to distance ourselves from the EU is fine by him.
Once you accept that even his lukewarm support during the referendum was a sham and that that he never wanted to remain, then it all falls into place. Don’t be surprised when a well known Eurosceptic supports our disengagement from the EU.
It should have dawned on all those who backed this utterly useless and unprincipled mediocrity that they have made the most colossal mistake – TWICE – in electing him as leader of the Labour party.
The real fight is to get rid of him.
I am afraid he will have to agree to do
But I am worried when people start talking of Rebecca Long-Bailey as a replacement
I know Rebecca – seen her this week – and her day may come. But it should not be yet, in all honesty
As you say, Richard.
And the Deputy Speaker told the SNP off for whistling and singing ‘the Ode to Joy’!
I doubt whether Labour’s supine showing will garner them many extra votes in the forthcoming bye-elections. They’re supposed to form the main opposition – but instead, they’ve rolled over on their backs like frightened puppies – you could almost see the little drops of urine glistening on their bellies.
I almost hope they lose both seats…
Yes, it does seem strange that we have a Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition who both supported the Remain campaign during the Referendum campaign both kow-towing to UKIP and the extreme right wing of the Conservative Party. Also a majority of MPs supported remain and now vote against their consciences for a complete disaster for (“0ur”?) country!
A lot of people will have to adjust to the reality that Labour is finished as an effective political entity. It long ago gave up on the co-ordination of collective action as a means to ensure governance in the interests of the vast majority of citizens. For me the final confirmation of Labour’s political irrelevance was its response to the continuing retail electricity and gas market rip-off of the vast majority of households and small businesses. It has veered from a totally economically illiterate and stupid price freeze proposal, through echoing the government’s view that if consumers are being overcharged it’s their own fault and they should shop around, to flirting with price caps and some totally woolly notions about the “democratisation” of energy supply before finally returning to a price freeze.
Inndividual energy consuming housholds and businesses can be atomised, isolated, disenfranchised and then ripped off mercilessly by the energy suppliers. The competition, consumer protection and regulatory are a total and utter waste of space and have been captured totally by the industry. The single most effective solution is the establishment of a statutory collective buyer on behalf of all households and small businesses with all households and small businesses being given the option of opting out and doing their own deals with the rip-off energy suppliers. The energy suppliers would have to compete via periodic auctions to supply the collective buyer and efficient and equitable pricing would appear in short order.
This is just one example. There is huge scope for co-ordinating collective action to ensure the efficient, effective and equitable provision of local services and utility services in a way that would benefit the lives of most ordinary citizens. There was a time when Labour delivered these benefits. But it doesn’t know how to do it any more. For very good reasons its support is being eroded on all sides. But it will be a long, lingering political death.
Thanks
You know that I’m not going to disagree with you on this, as we’ve both been consistent in our criticism of Corbyn almost from the outset. But I have to say that I was absolutely astonished by the tweet: this was an own goal so awful in its inappropriateness that it made many of his other errors pale into insignificance. And if he – and perhaps more worryingly his advisers – can’t see why then god help us all.
Precisely
I’m sure you’ve seen this, but this is the closing paragraph of an excellent piece by John Harris on the subject:
‘Which brings us back to Real Fight Starts Now Club, and a few requirements so basic that most tweeters did not think to mention them: competence, vision, consistency, and a modicum of strategic nous. Does anyone at the top still have any of that stuff? Or is Labour now so collectively befuddled that all hope is lost?’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/09/twitter-parodies-corbyn-supporters-deserting-labour-brexit
John has been hitting the right targets for a while now
Re the above.
Gas and electricity privatisations have been a disaster.
They should be renationalised.
We only have one set of electric wires coming into our houses and only one gas pipe. (Water,similar.)
Brexit will be a total disaster. The end of the UK as we know it.
Yes, we need MPs to oppose vigorously. And indeed Lords.
I am a Scot; ergo, I have a political solution to support and look forward to. Equally, I don’t take a Schadenfreude pleasure in England and Wales woes; and the woes are legion. England has a social political malaise that I have never experienced before – and certainly didn’t expect to see.
Will a “good England” rise Phoenix-like from the acrid ashes of this right-wing bonfire of post-imperialist vanities? I truly hope so.
I agree Labour is finished. Perhaps a revitalised Lib Dem movement with cahones as wel as a social conscience will be the outcome. I don’t know, but you need a solution; a remedy; a beneficial outcome – and you need it fast.
I genuinely wish the decent-minded neighbours of ours well; don’t shut yourselves off with isolationist walls and impoverished parachronistic dogma, dribbled out of rabid self-serving mouths.
When Labour MPs troop though the lobbies to support the most right wing governmen any of us have ever seen, then they have utterly lost the plot. I have moved from ‘give him a chance’ to pitying, to now utter disgust.
I wonder what all those younger people who joIned Labour in a naive enthusiasm for Corbyns supposed fresh approach are thinking now? They are the ones who will lose the most and may be lost to Labour for decades.
As for the likes of Hoey, Stuart, Field et al. They are the ones who should be being deselected, long before the so-called Blairites
Richard, you and I have spoken very positively of my MP, Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East). She has a great deal of backbone, especially regarding Brexit, and disagrees with Jeremy Corbyn on certain matters but has remained civil towards him nevertheless. If only I could get her to join the Green Party…hmmm, better stop there!
If only other Labour MPs were like her and Neil Coyle (Bermondsey), and we had PR.
The electorate did not vote to make itself poorer, or for a hard Brexit. We could leave the EU, but stay in the EEA and the single market, IF we really must leave the EU.
Indeed we have
A strong local campaigning MP