Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Labour's referendum mess

Corbyn's Labour is now stuck on the massive horns of a dilemma about its Brexit policy and there are real signs of tension as the splits and the rows amongst the splitters (oh what a surprise) get worse.

On Twitter yesterday Paul Mason was panned quite severely by Ian Lavery the Lexit supporting party chair when he demanded the sacking of the Milne faction who he blamed for the disastrous showing of Labour in last weeks Euro elections. He also came out strongly for a "Peoples Vote" (ie a rerun of the 2016 referendum) in which Labour should campaign for Remain.

The row was summarised on the ultra Corbynite site Skawkbox here. Look at the viciousness of the attacks on someone who was once a Corbynite pin up boy. Its just shows how vehemently the opposition to a Labour change to a Remain stance would be resisted by the people now in charge at the top of Labour.

There is no easy answer here for Labour, it seems the only way they will move to an explicit Remain stance is if Corbyn, Milne, Lavery and McCluskey are removed or sidelined and the views of a number of Northern MP's who are very anti a new referendum are overridden. But that would most likely be the end of Corbynism and the Hard Left takeover would be over. Also it is far from clear that a Remain stance would do them any good in a new GE, would the people who moved to the LDs in the Euros come back to them, and they would surely be severely affected in the North and Midlands.

I can just imagine what the new slogan of the die hard Corbynites such as Skawkbox would be to Watson, Mason et al if they forced a Remain policy - "Why don't you just F*** off and join the Lib Dems ?" And given what the result of positing towards a Remain policy would mean they might well be right.

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