Some in Labour believe that the EU is a trojan horse wherein neoliberal values enter and lay waste to our socialist paradise.
Never mind that the UK is to the right of the EU. Never mind that that the world has changed since the 1960s but that belief has not. Never mind that the EU is a safeguard against the values of the Hard Right who fought and funded Brexit. Never mind that under the microscope of evidence the belief shrivels and dies.
Nevertheless. For that belief, Labour’s leadership will sacrifice the prospect of remaining in the EU, the opportunity to deliver a better Brexit in the Single Market, and the wishes of Labour’s membership.
And it does so believing that it will have no price to pay at the ballot box in 2022. Because by then Brexit will be done and you will have forgotten Labour’s betrayal.
Would you like to say to Labour, ‘I will not forget? Deliver a Brexit outside the Single Market and come what may I will not vote for you?
‘I will abstain. Or I will vote for an alternative. But in no world will I vote for you.’
It is important. The Tory Party is divided on Brexit. A Labour Party for the country – for the country and not an ideological relic – would split the Tories. Labour could deliver a better Brexit – or none at all.
Would you support a campaign? Would you publicly pledge: betray my future, deliver a Hard Brexit, and I will not vote for you?
Please vote in this poll:
Waiting for Godot 
I reluctantly voted Labour to avoid a Tory landslide, so that bit worked okay. (Well not really – I live in a Tory stronghold.) But their direction of travel now on Brexit is unfathomable. Starmer’s six tests don’t seem to be Corbyn’s, so they are every bit as chaotic as the Tories. I’m also shocked at Corbyn’s implied attack on migrant Labour. The 48% are now totally unrepresented and I hate to think how this will end. I’m still hoping upon hope the whole Brexit project will collapse and we’ll get our lives back.
A reaction to Barry Gardiner’s latest contribution? I had delusions that Labour could be swayed on the subject as events unfolded, but the veil has now been ripped away. Maybe Barry Gardiner can tell me which country to live in when the UK falls out of the EU and my wife loses her right to work here and I have no right to work in the UK. I’m not being melodramatic. The parallels that I have evoked from the start with the First World War, when both sides thought the other would blink and they both ended up in the worst place imaginable, are getting ever more stark.
Reblogged this on RemainerAction.
I will only vote for the party that wants to rejoin the EU. No compromises.
I am not convinced by Labour’s current direction of travel, but I think it’s important to be accurate about what Corbyn said:
“Migrant workers come to this country, work incredibly hard, pay taxes, receive actually less in benefits than the rest of the community — without them we wouldn’t have much of a health service or social care system. So lets be realistic about it.
“We’ve got an ageing population, those workers are necessary in this country. My point is that employers, particularly the construction industry others as well, recruit overseas in order to bring in the whole group of workers to destroy existing wages and working conditions, so Mike Ashley can bring in workers in Sports Direct to pay grotesquely low wages and appalling work conditions.”
I don’t necessarily think this was an attack on migrant workers, I assume it’s a somewhat badly phrased attack on sectors that supply from agency staff (Sports Directs use of companies like transline).
I voted remain. I also voted Labour to get the Conservatives out. Liberals stood no chance. The Conservatives previously had a decent majority but they lost to Labour by a narrow margin. If Labour are not going to differentiate themselves by delivering a Soft Brexit or preferably No Brexit then next time around I will be voting Conservative. As I say it is a slim majority. If the Country is going to Burn, assuming it has not been Burned already, then may as well burn it properly. At least I will be punching my own face rather than having others punch it for me.
We now need to keep the pressure on individual MPs and candidates. Emma Dent-Coad miraculously won Kensington for Labour, with the support of Best for Britain. She has since voted in favour of continuing membership of the single market. As the old saying goes, “to eat an elephant, you must slice up the elephant”.
The reasons given by Labour Leave for having to Brexit are of course drivel. The EU won’t let us nationalise the railways? Really? When so many EU train operators are state-owned?
Nor do we need to leave the EU to have Scandinavian style welfare states or French-style public spending or German-style co-operation.
And that sort of social democracy is what ?most? ?almost all? Labour voters want.
They accept the fundamental judgement of Blair & Brown that you work with the market economy to get prosperity and use the state to reduce the harshnesses and unfairnesses of life. Labour voters would probably want someone to the left of Blair/Brown, but still in the centre ground.
Blair & Brown called themselves socialists and were social democrats —accepting the market economy and individual freedom in society.
Corbyn calls himself a socialist and is a socialist. His vision seems to be closer to Eastern Europe before the fall of the iron curtain. Of course, he would not want the repression of those regimes. But you cannot do socialism without telling people what to do and enforcing that. Corbyn has of course realised that: the serial rebel has turned enforcer of party discipline.
To get to real socialism, you do have to leave the EU.
Labour voters need to be much more demanding of Corbyn. What exactly could he not do in the EU? Is that true (what do the treaties say? What do other countries do ?)?
And then they need to ask whether they would like Corbyn’s Brexit Britain. If no, time to change Labour. If yes, they need to ask whether they want the opportunity of Corbyn’s Brexit Britain enough to risk getting Theresa May’s.
Agreed absolutely: I may suspend my membership on this issue also
You doubtless know that “People’s Pledge” was a petition set up to pressure Cameron’s government into ceding a referendum in the first place. It got 130,000 signatures in 5 years
A couple of us set up “Pledge For Europe” last Christmas with a view to focussing anti-Brexit sentiment electorally but it hasn’t been a roaring success – the twitter account continues to gather followers however.
I’m going to plug your initiative, Jolyon, on the various email lists I’ve got but can I suggest asking people to tweet their postcodes. That way we could identify constituencies
My initiative was a sighter… Response was OK – have seen better.
Sorry, Jolyon, I dont know why my name came through as anonymous. Am I to assume your initiative is no longer active ?
It was a sighting shot – not the actual initiative. ‘would such a thing be worthwhile?’ is the question I was trying to ask and answer.