I do not wish to rain on any one's parade this morning, but I think it's only right to note a big chunk of an article in the Guardian yesterday. They reported:
Labour has broken its long silence on Brexit, laying out detailed plans to improve, not scrap, the deal Boris Johnson struck with the EU, in a move it concedes will enrage remain supporters.
On the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, confirmed the party would seek only limited changes and would not seek to rejoin the single market which would bring the return of free trade and free movement of people
“We are not going into the next election saying that we will enter the single market or the EU.
“You might not like it but Labour is determined to govern the entire country,” he said adding “there cannot be a rehash of arguments” made in remainer constituencies like his in London.
“The British people have made a decision and we have to honour it,” he told the UK in a Changing Europe's annual conference.
To not put too fine a point on it, that is full scale electoral cowardice of the first degree.
Labour can win by-elections against a corrupt government.
It could even win a general election.
But when it wants to duck Brexit and won't either talk about how it will tackle inflation or stand up for working people, let alone offer a vision of how it wants to transform the UK, then it's a long way from being near delivering what the country needs.
And that is the downside of this morning.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
please please keep away from the Labour Party. Your vision is not the one the electorate want and certainly isn’t one which will her the Party elected. Take your wishes to the SNP or Greens. I fully expect you to be as hostile to a Starmer led government as you are to this one.
You think the electorate wants Brexit?
Pull the other one
Trust me. The electorate has for practical purposes been asked if they wanted this question in 2015, and been asked in 2017 and 2019 if they wanted to go through with this.
There was a brief window of opportunity where the best half-way option of Single Market was possible without EU membership. The SNP, Caroline Lucas, Dominic Grieve and others voted against remaining in the Single Market.
What’s a gal supposed to do?
They were not asked that
To sy so is quite ridiculous, as in 2018 the issue was not clear and in 2019 they were lied to
I find this surrender to assumed public opinion, quite frustrating.
We need bold decisive policies, not Tory policies tinkered with to make them less repulsive.
I am reminded of your book title, The Courageous State.
We need politicians with courage, vision and drive.
Agreed
What’s the upside?
Better than fascism
‘To not put too fine a point on it, that is full scale electoral cowardice of the first degree.’
Well said.
They’ll never get my vote again until I see some common sense.
The crazy thing is, Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens could all say they would rejoin the single market and customs union, and seek a harmonious relationship with the EU, and disarm critics by pointing to the 2016 Leave campaign, who said that we would stay in the single market
Agreed
Concerned about the Loyal Opposition? Two words: Blue Labour.
Maurice Glasman (founder of Blue Labour) worked with Phillip Blond (Red Tory) after the 2008-9 Crash to promote an ideology that they both call “radical conservatism”, approaching the same solutions from (opposing) viewpoints, and arriving at “family, faith and flag”, or “work, family, community”. (Pardon me for hearing Kirche, Küche, Kinder here.)
An early manifesto for the Liberal Press:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/apr/24/blue-labour-maurice-glasman
Blue Labour has nobbled the Labour leader to the extent that Glasman was keen to use the Tory-leaning Unherd site to praise Starmer as “a conservative”.
The philosophy is to return to the (alleged) localism of pre-1945 Labour, building action to alleviate the UK’s problems through Guild socialism, churches, pubs and football clubs, and charities and voluntary groups. Oh, and staying out of Europe.
If the UK isn’t healing it would seem, in Blue Labour’s politics, that “we the people” just aren’t doing enough. The State doesn’t appear to have a rôle. I am not holding my breath for policies from Labour.
(Fair Wikipedia articles on Glasman and on Blue Labour, the About section on Blue Labour’s Facebook page is useful, the most helpful is the Wikipedia synopsis of “Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics”.)
“Labour has broken its long silence on Brexit, laying out detailed plans to improve, not scrap, the deal Boris Johnson struck with the EU”.
How the hell do you improve on Johnson’s agreement without doing something very similar to rejoining the SM and CU? Given how much of the economic mess we’re in has been caused by the tories’ disastrous Brexit, it’s not going to be fixed by minor tinkering.
The main reason I was so enraged by Brexit was the sheer dishonesty of the Leave campaigns, and the stupidity of many Leave voters in believing the lies. What’s the point of a Labour party that is too gutless to take on the dishoesty and stupidity of it all?
I keep hearing the same despairing phrase when I talk with people about the Tories and Labour etc., : ‘ They’re all the same’.
And it’s true.
What are Labour going to do about this – the age of ‘no ideas’ as Tim Snyder calls it.
It’s very frustrating.
My vision for the left might be heading for publication soon
but it is centre where the electorate want to be.. and i mean recent centre aka the Blair years
That was 25 years ago
You are right that there is a limit to how far Labour can go by simply being not-Conservative. They need people to make a positive choice of voting for them.
But … there are reasons to tread softly in the current situation. As we saw in this morning’s results, Labour’s best chances come from people voting tactically. It is not in their interest to appear so dogmatic that LibDems or disaffected Conservatives don’t feel they can vote Labour in a constituency where they are the opposition party with the best chance.
I do agree though they are too quiet on Brexit. They need to be quite clear that the Brexit the Tories produced is bad for lots of people with no visible compensating benefit, and that a Labour government therefore has to have a policy of negotiating a relationship with the EU that is better for the UK. However I am not sure it would be helpful to pre-empt future negotiations by committing now to a particular policy on the Single Market.
Alignment is possible without negotiation
And it was promised by Brexiteers in 2016
It depends on what you call “negotiation”. There is no problem in establishing alignment of SPS standards, for example, as far as I know they haven’t changed significantly. But it would require some sort of discussion with the EU (but not renegotiation of the Withdrawal Agreement) to establish that they will accept the UK inspection system without needing further border checks, and undertakings on both sides to maintain alignment or at least give good notice of change.
Is Starmer sufficiently keen on beating the Tories to clamp down on party figures advocating tactical voting for the Tories in order to keep nats out? The list of such figures is quite extensive – MPs, MSPs (current and former) Lords and Labour-friendly journalists. It made no difference at the last GE, but at the preceding one it was enough to give May victory….however slender.
“To not put too fine a point on it, that is full scale electoral cowardice of the first degree.”
The Labour Extreme Left would like to include the abolition of the monarchy in Labour manifestos. The Tory Right would probably like to include the privatisation of the NHS. Some might like to even reintroduce Victorian workhouses. But they don’t make too much protest when they aren’t included because they know these policies are vote losers. Is this cowardice or an acceptance of electoral reality?
The centre ground in politics hasn’t had this dilemma previously. But it does now. From a more left perspective we can’t afford to let the Tories in again by continually fighting and losing on the same ground.