The Establishment – in and out of the Labour Party – is trying desperately to shift the blame for Theresa May’s dismal Brexit ‘deal’ onto Jeremy Corbyn and his team. Those efforts have redoubled since a string of polls showed Labour building a lead over the Tories – including from some within Labour who don’t want the party to succeed under Corbyn.
But a few facts show just how desperate – and desperately dishonest – the attempt is.
The referendum campaign
The old – and long-discredited – claim has been dug up from its mouldering grave that Jeremy Corbyn didn’t do enough to campaign for remain, with even supposedly Labour figures regurgitating the two-year-old lie as if it’s received wisdom.
The chart below from the time of the ‘chicken coup’ shows Corbyn’s media campaigning compared to other Labour figures – including Labour’s head of the remain campaign:
But it wasn’t just media activity. Even Corbyn’s opponents in the party were saying during the referendum campaign that they couldn’t believe how he could keep up with a punishing schedule that would have brought people half his age to collapse.
Labour’s ‘lack’ of opposition
The other smear being vomited up again is that Labour ‘haven’t opposed’ the Tories. But an EL4C video published this summer graphically displays the utter nonsense of that claim:
Corbyn honoured the result of the referendum, as he had to. But he and his party have resisted the Tories’ constant incompetence every step of the way since.
And Labour will vote against May’s disastrous deal now, because that’s the best thing for the country – it’s taken levels of incompetence that are scarcely credible even from the Tories, but somehow May has come back with a deal that is worse than no deal and any Labour MP that supports it in its current form is in the wrong party.
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John Harris in today’s Guardian takes the biscuit for blaming Labour, pretending he simply can’t understand why the party won’t go Full Remain as if this political commentator didn’t know that some/many Labour voters went for Out. Like other ‘centrists’ they never mention the disadvantages to the Left from the constraints of the Single Market. The Remainers are making the same mistakes they made in The Referundum; arrogance.
John Harris spent the last few years writing articles about Leave areas and working class people who wanted Brexit. He painted their grievances as valid and accused Labour of not listening, Its rich now that he doubles back and says that once again Labour arent listening, Presumably this time to middle class people who are anxious to get back to talking property prices and weekend breaks in Europe.
“Presumably this time to middle class people who are anxious to get back to talking property prices and weekend breaks in Europe.”
The breadth of analysis and contact with reality is amazing!
I think Harris is a bit more perceptive.
Harris thinks he knows which side his bread is buttered,and so plays along with the editorial line at the neo liberal Guardian.He may live to see his bread isn’t buttered at all.
Meanwhile Rentoul in the Independent is demanding that Labour votes FOR May’s deal. You couldn’t make it up.
“some/many Labour voters went for Out”
The large majority voted ‘In’ (the facts are available). And of course the constraints of EU economic policies were factored in. We just found a journey to La La Land and subservience to the US a far worse option.
If there was any doubt, a quick look at the key Brexiteers and the ex-pat media millionaire backers put to rest any doubt about what the real cunning plan actually was!
Oh – and I read John Harris’s article – and he wasn’t ‘blaming Labour’ at all – just pointing out the unsustainability of current policy.
The Harris should have insisted on a more accurate and honest headline to his article shouldn’t he RH.?Harris ,like most of the columnists in the Guardian/Observer is not worth my time reading,though he isn’t the worst by any means.
Oh dear! I just went to check. What is inaccurate and dishonest about (probably the sub-editor’s) headline?
I’ve often called out the Guardian’s crap journalism when it is crap (and often got censored) – but Harris’s writing isn’t that. He has been consistently thoughtful and considered in his OpEd stuff – even when I don’t agree.
What you mean by ‘dishonesty’ is that he doesn’t agree with you. Nor do the majority of Labour Party members and voters, for that matter. Are they all dishonest or members of the self-defined ‘working class’? And is the aim of the true socialist to perpetuate – and indeed, deepen – poverty, whilst uttering platitudes about a crudely fictionalised ‘cosmopolitan middle class’ as a collective straw man.
Wishing poverty on the nation as a whole isn’t ‘working class’ solidarity – or socialism. My indisputably working class forbears would have made short shrift of this sort of nonsense :
” Poverty – ’tis no disgrace – but ’tis great inconvenience’ ” is a judgment that I remember from some who actually knew about what the Brexiteer swivel-eyes wish to bring back.
Too much reliance on estimates from you RH. You’re not posting in the Guardian where they lap up pro remain polls and crap from the IMF etc. If we walked away now the worst that would happen, if we had no alternative deals lined up, would be 8 to 10% drop in GDP, the world wouldn’t end and the EU would continue trading with us….they’re Capitalists first and foremost and nothing they can do will change London’s position as a leading financial market.
No one can predict the outcome of our leaving the EU, it may be that the Eurozone collapses and we do very well in the long term, I realise you’d hate that, but it’s just as likely as your doom mongering.
The other smear being vomited up again is that Labour ‘haven’t opposed’ the Tories.
That one’s got ‘umunna’ written ALL over it.
like ‘umunna’ who would actually like to join them
It’s not just the establishment, Guardian comments show that the readers blame Corbyn rather than May for Brexit. They may have been led by false-flag sock-puppets, but have enthusiastically joined the fray, leading with the old chestnut “Corbyn never campaigned for remain” you illustrated above. I despise that illiberal newspaper and it’s fake Labour readers.
Problem is, the vilified “no deal” is the only way to enable a Labour programme which allows very substantial state support to industry and the extension of public ownership (in terms of public monopoly rather than a capitalist market with nationalised firms vying with private ones).
With “soft Brexit”, private corporations will simply be able to go to court and get Labour’s programme crushed.
https://www.thefullbrexit.com/no-deal
Or else, a customs union, as proposed, with a get out clause on state intervention – unlikely? I’m still waiting for a Brexit proposal from the LP which incorporates that part of the manifesto convincingly.
Though, in fairness, the JC speech to the CBI seems to make (muted?) reference) to this.
I haven’t heard them try to blame Sadiq Khan for selling Boris’s bargain basement £320,000 water cannons for only £11,000 – not yet anyway.
Lucky escape that Carillion went bust before Boris was able to sign contracts for his brilliantly-conceived bridge over the English Channel.
IIRC we only lost £3 million on research for his Garden Bridge project – phew!
£3 million?
Try putting an 8 after the 3 and you’re not far off.
Clearly I didn’t RC then ‘~’