Opinion
Centrist MP Chuka Umunna has been praised by the “People’s Vote” campaign for his ‘power’ and ‘brilliance’ in his statements about a second vote on leaving the European Unions and has acted as a regular mouthpiece to drum up support for the campaign. Umunna dropped out of the Labour leadership race in 2015 before it had really begun.
Umunna’s ‘brilliance’ has a familiar feel to it – as an ardent ‘centrist’ who has allegedly been part of plans to form a breakaway party while at the same time speaking out against it as ‘utter bollocks’, according to Politics Home, he is no stranger to holding conflicting viewpoints depending on the prevailing wind. Or as people would have said about Blair’s New Labour, of ‘triangulating’.
The same applied to his mobile stance on alleged racism in the Labour Party. In 2016, Umunna contributed to a report on alleged antisemitism that was emphatic that there was no evidence of a particular issue in the party – yet he was a prominent voice claiming the opposite over the summer.
And just last month, Umunna was slammed by BAME Labour MPs and activists for ‘exploiting’ racism after he claimed the party was institutionally racist when just two years before he had dismissed the idea:
Umunna is the archetypal ‘weather vane’ – and the same goes for his enthusiasm for a misnamed “people’s vote”. In 2016 – seemingly the year that Umunna is now trying to forget in a series of u-turns – he said this about the idea of a new vote on Brexit:
Brilliance? No.
U-turn. About-face. Weather-vane. Flip-flop. Whatever your term of choice, Umunna adds a new dimension to it.
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Chuck ‘Um is Institutionally Neoliberal Centrist. He so wants to be famous that he will prostitute himself on any cause!
Tom Mapfumo: “Chuck ‘Um ” – I like that – is infamous.
Chuck Chuka, anyone?
“… institutionally …” Like
I’ll hold me piece.
I won’t ingratiate the self-serving sh*thouse with the foul-mouthed tirade it deserves. The utter thunderc*nt.
About time this traitor was chucked out! It says on the back of my Labour Party membership card that the party is a democratic socialist party not a centrist party and not a social democrat party. He is openly been flirting with creating and joining a centrist party, now is taking valuable time off work as am MP to work for some centrist think tank, what more evidence do you need?
LP only chucks dissenters out, no matter how unfair the reasons or how right the dissenters are.
This only validates my reason for voting Leave.
Follow the mirror logic : a ‘Remain’ supporter’s views are validated because the despicable tribe of key neoliberal Ayan Rand Brexiteers (Farrage, Redwood, IDS, Fox etc. etc.) are Leavers …. ???
Looks like a no-brainer if that’s the case.
Thanks.
I can’t remember when the last time was that I pulled someone up for voting Remain, or when I questioned their logic etc etc.
Probably because I’ve never ridiculed someone for voting Remain.
I respect their reasons for voting the way they did. But I voted to Leave and that same courtesy I’ve shown to them has not been shown to me.
And to think there are people equate voting leave to wholeheartedly agreeing with farage, rees-mogg, dummkopf-schmitt et al.
No sense of British irony….
… but that’s what a piece like this does, by implication. The Leavers get tarred with their own brush-style in highlighting Umunna amongst the 700,000 who demonstrated on Saturday, and who represented the majority of the Labour Party and Labour voters – a broad swaithe – albeit including also those who think Blair was a progressive.
Sauce for the goose etc.
.
This article speaks for me more so than the mainstream media.
https://evolvepolitics.com/the-despair-that-remainers-feel-now-is-how-brexit-voters-have-felt-for-the-past-40-years-of-neoliberalism/
Those leading people down the road towards a 2nd Referundum must know it won’t happen because it needs legislation from the Government and they aren’t going to do it, full stop. The only possibility is to defeat them in a Vote of no confidence and have a General election when Labour will keep us (and NI) in a Customs Union, of course people like Chukka prefer the road that goes nowhere to a road that might lead to a Labour Government.
“…of course people like Chukka prefer the road that goes nowhere to a road that might lead to a Labour Government.”
Their road doesn’t lead nowhere though… it leads to further ‘rules based’ authoritarianism, hegemonic profitable wars, oppression of the masses, privatisation of everything in a continued neoliberal/neocon regime (Corporatocracy) entrenchment where they all hope to gain personally from a place within the structures of an increasingly privatised country and world and their allegiance to the systems and structures being built to manage the masses for the benefit of the few.
AND a BIG pay packet for him from his Neolib mates !
Tom Mapfumo: “Chuc ‘Um ” – I like that – is infamous.
Double-talking double-dealing forked-tongued shape-shifting jumped-up swivel-eyed Quisling.
That narrows it down…
Of course he’s only doin this to show 2 fingers up at Corbyn and ” fuck you ” the rest of the membership , just like Chris Leslie similar pictures online from yesterdays march , all pally with Soudbry like .
Just gonna have to suck it up as we can’t effectively deselect or OS these tossers thanks to Conference this year .
However the real issues of the Labour Party include the extension of public ownership – which can only take place if we leave the EU Treaties, and do not replace them with further neoliberal entrenched charters beloved of the Blairites and Tories.
It was the organisers of the ‘Peoples Vote’ (the irony of that title – the people have already voted) who offered that stage to Umunna et al.
I’m fed up of being told, with passive aggressive smiles that I can vote again and I get it right this time. Who do they think they are?
I want the original vote respected.
Tell that to “The People’s Vote”. We’ve already had the referendum and we aren’t having another one. Inciting over 700,000 people to hope for something politicians know can’t happen is akin to inciting them to revolution. Do you want violence on the streets because you didn’t get your own way?
There must be many others like me who voted to leave the EU and who are reading about this ‘People’s Vote’ stuff and who also feel sick of being patronised and labelled ‘racist thugs’.
I wonder if they feel as insulted and angry as I do, and I wonder if they share my sense of disbelief that a vote has been and gone yet a vocal, albeit large minority is contesting the result and feels entitled to belittle those who voted.
The remain campaign is in very rude health Ella. It’s awash with money, foreign and corporate, the problem is, there’s no one with any kind of vision to guide them, there’s nothing except stay in the EU. This is unsurprising because everyone campaigning is doing so out of self interest. The problem is, they don’t care if democracy is usurped whereas, if remain won like it was supposed to, we would have accepted the result apart from the obvious fanatics like Farage etc.
The remain campaign is extremely undemocratic and driven by self interest. I have read many veiled comments in the Guardian threatening/predicting violence if they don’t get their own way and politicians who support them are very irresponsible, they know full well there can’t be another referendum.
I’ve not come across The London Worker before but here’s their take on the people’s vote march.
http://www.londonworker.org/the-peoples-vote-is-britains-euromaidan/
I can just imagine the faux democratic options in a peoples vote… something like May’s deal or remain!
Remainers seem to think a people’s vote wont involve the same catalogue of misleading claims, lies, shenanigans and dire predictions surrounding EURef.
Very little can be predicted in a Brexit except the ‘establishment’ doing all it can to stop any reverse of the power grab and roll back of social, worker and economic public gains they have achieved since Thatcher. That wont change in a remain situation and may be even harder to fight.
I am not a believer the EU can be reformed it has to be completely dismantled.
That’s a great article Maria. I’ve shared it and kept it. Thank you. Thank you lundiel too.
When Umunna said for JC to “Call off the dogs”, he knew of course that it would be widely reported by the MSM, and he knew of course that Jeremy has no say or influence over what CLP’s do in this regard, but knew of course that most people don’t know that THAT is the case AND that it was implied in what he said that Jeremy DOES. In other words, it was not only a slur against JC and CLP’s, it was also a Big Lie contrived to deceive millions of people/voters, and yet no action was taken against him for doing so. But he did so of course knowing full that if disiplinary action was taken against him, the MSM would faithfully report it as an attack on him for speaking out to defend MPs who criticise JC and the left membership. Anyway, I came across this a bit earlier:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/13/the-dogs-of-democracy-chuka-umunna-versus-the-labour-membership/
By contrast, someone who was obviously framed – ie Kelvin Hopkins – is still suspended from the LP after almost a year. And it’s no coincidence of course that the (phoney) allegations were only made after JC became leader AND – regards the crotch rubbing – THREE years after it supposedly happened. And just in case there’s anyone who hasn’t seen it, here’s the statement that KH made at the time the story broke (which most of the MSM completely ignored at the time, for obvious reasons!):
https://skwawkbox.org/2017/11/03/excl-kelvin-hopkins-formal-statement/
Like
Danny, Ella, Lundiel, I’ve made a modest contribution, currently at the end of the ‘Astonishingly Crass…’ thread, that (I think) supports the main thrust of your position.
You always enjoy reading your comments Paulo.
That’s funny Ella, I don’t always enjoy reading my comments – occasionally I wish i’d kept my big mouth shut…
BTW, I don’t have emoticons – please attach a smile for me at the end of above comment.
Paulo… I truly regret half of my comments. But hey ho…
Better embarrassed than regretful.
🙂
Ooops. Meant to say ‘I’ always enjoy reading your comments Paulo..
(No edit function!!!) 🙁
No like button, no emoticons, no edit functions – it’s me age you know – keep ’em coming Ella and have a good day!
And the reason the LP is behind is of course due to all the lies and half-truths and smears etc, concocted and designed precisely to that end. The point being that it makes no difference whether we’re in or out if the Tories remain in power.
Unless I’ve missed something, it seems to me that having achieved what they set out to achieve, the smearers have eased off in recent weeks, but I have no doubt whatsoever that should Labour start to creep up again, the smear campaign will be reignited.
I’m stuck with Hodge as my MP so thinking about moving to Chuckups constituency as he seems to be slightly less of a treacherous bum wipe.
One picture worth a 1000 words? The gruesome 2some of UpChuck & Soubry, singing ‘we’re on the road to nowhere’.