The huge welcome by EU leaders for Jeremy Corbyn’s vision of Brexit has panicked centrists into a breakaway – planned for next week
The unbridled warmth of EU leaders for Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit plan – outlined in his letter to Theresa May this week – has a section of his so-called ‘centrist’ opponents in and outside the Labour scrambling for a way to regain relevance.
Comments by Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker, Guy Verhofstadt – who described Corbyn’s plan as ‘heavenly’ – and others have dealt a huge blow to centrists already reeling after the embarrassing climbdown by MPs advocating a so-called “people’s vote” in abandoning their parliamentary amendment calling for a new referendum.
Corbyn’s clear and successful display of statesmanship has shaken a core group of centrists. So deeply, in fact, that they have put a rush on their on-again-off-again (and on-off-on-off-on-off) plans to form a new party.
Their current plan is to announce their move as early as next week, to try to claw back some semblance of relevance before Corbyn’s proposal might be embraced by enough equally desperate Tories – and the public – to save the day.
In spite of their panic, however, the resolve of the not-so-intrepid band is still wavering and they have been desperately trying to persuade or manoeuvre a number of high-profile back-benchers into joining them before finalising their jump – a context that sheds light on other events this week.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
Only time will tell whether this will be yet another false start or damp squib for dithering but ego-driven MPs more concerned about their own careers and relevance than the country’s desperate need for a Labour government.
But the panic moves, confirmed to the SKWAWKBOX by a number of Labour sources, show just how serious a blow they have suffered this week as Corbyn’s intelligent and strategic handling of the Brexit issue bore fruit.
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But in the meantime they’ll continue to infest the party.
It’s a broad church everybody says……..
Sometimes churches get burned down. Knoworrimean?
Broad church….But some would prefer it was a narrow synagogue.
Not called for. Nothing to do with Jews and everything to do with neoliberals in the party.
Precisely. Judaism is just being used as a cover and distraction by the new right. It has a double purpose in distracting from their blatant self-serving interests, and also keeps yhe appalling behaviour of the Israeli state off the agenda.
The media fall for it every time, and, as said elsewhere, are too inompetent/venal/timid to call it out for what it is.
Not clever, The Toffee . Withdraw the joking comment If I were you, That sort of thoughtless comment simply feeds the Right’s narrative .
I agree. It’s ammunition to the right.
Absolutely. This kind of remark gives credence to the Blairite/Zionist allegation that the Labour Party and its supporters are anti-semites.
It has hardly ever been about genuine anti-semitism, but almost always about the opportunists, careerists and outright reprobates (I could have used stronger language) of the Right.
I’ll neither rescind nor withdraw the comment.
The syndicate consists of those shrieking antisemitism while not getting their way over brexit.
Coincidence or conspiracy, I don’t know. I don’t see why I should be browbeaten for noticing there’s a pattern.
Far too many threats which are never followed up. What makes this one any more real?
Don’t think of them as threats, think of them as promises. Probably the first party to break promises numerous times before they even (officially) exist.
Go Chuka!
No, I mean it. Go. Now. Just GO!!!
The sooner they go the better- it will give us more time to find select genuine Labour candidates to represent us at the next election. However I won’t get my hopes up – these MPs are not going to risk their salaries, expenses and sundries by leaving us to form a new party. I think we will be stuck with them until we deselect them come the next election.
Correct, they are in the Party to cause maximum harm to Corbyn and can do more harm within than without.
They might leave the party, but £111.11 (to charity) says not one of them will resign their seat and trigger a bye election.
Thankfully, this time they are going. They have nothing else to lose. The cue is in Umunna’s twitter on 6th Feb.:
‘This is not Opposition, it is the facilitation of a deal which will make this country poorer.
A strong, coherent Labour alternative to this shabby, Tory Brexit is absent – it has been since this Parliament began.’
i care not for who does it, but the idiocy of brexit must be stopped.
The “centrists” can’t; never could, and never will.
They don’t care about Brexit, they only want to see Labour go down in flames so they can try to seize control of the pieces, but as ever they underestimate the members who are fed up to the back teeth of so-called “centrist” game-playing.
Corbyn has been proven right time and again, and has been proven right in his handling of Brexit as well, much to the annoyance of the children in the party who just want to watch it burn.
The “centrists” couldn’t stop a bus at a request stop with both arms out.
I wonder if they’ve been taking advice from David Owen and Shirley Williams…? 😀
Once they make the announcement, I assume that they will immediately be ejected from the party. So the announcement would be the point of no return. Many of them are in danger of being deselected so they might feel like they have nothing to lose.
It needs bringing to a head, in my view, or it could fester for decades.
Given that the new Brexit Party announced today will inevitably split the Tory vote and make a Labour win at the next GE more likely, I wonder whether the Blairites might resist breaking away now, feeling that they would have more leverage with Labour in government…? Thoughts?
They said that about UKIP, but it never happened. So I doubt it’ll make much difference.
But surely Cameron’s cunning plan behind announcing the referendum was to prevent any defections to UKIP? Isn’t that the reason why it didn’t happen with UKIP? I think things will be different when Brexit hasn’t turned out the way many far right ideologues had hoped…
Dan, I hope you’re right … but I’m not holding my breath. One thing the tories are good at is sticking together – see how they had confidence in May’s government just a few days after many of them confessed to no confidence in her!
As long as we don’t have to comply with Neo-Liberal rules then we will be fine.
Labours idea of job offers needed for migrants is left wing democratic socialist planning (and we can take workers we need from any country – internationalism) so we democratically control labour supply plus control capital supply too!
The poorly read and theoretically weak Labour Right are up the creek tonight without a paddle!
Unfortunately , a reading of Labour’s new more detailed outline of what “a permanent customs union” and “alignment with the standards AND INSTITUTIONS of the EU” means, suggests the UK would be fully within the neoliberal straightjacket still – on Free Movement, State Aids and Competition Policy, and more It would of course be up to a Corbyn-led Labour government to implement a radical Left Keynsian economic policy programme , and just confront the EU neoliberal rules – as the populist Right Italian government is doing. They would only be able to do this with far fewer fifth columnist PLPers sitting behind Jeremy than now though.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Dunderbirds are go… or not, again… yawn.
“Dunderbirds” – Perfect name for a new “centrist” party!
I prefer “Torylight Party” myself. What more is there to say?
Skwarkbox is advancing an absurd thesis. Ever anxious for orthodox respectability, he is making out that it’s a good thing that Corbyn has impressed these right wing neoliberal unaccountable bigwigs.
Adhesion to the customs union and close alignment to the single market will indeed place the next Labour government in a neoliberal straitjacket including the CETA (which Jeremy surely marched against!), the state aids regime and the marketization-privatisation regime which prevents us taking back our utilities. Labour would have no alternative but to carry out a Blair-Brown economic policy. (And so the point of Corbyn was .. what?)
Instead of condemning this lame acceptance of extreme capitalism, Skwarkbox celebrates it, as one in the eye for the Blairites. Yet Labour has delighted these continental uber-Blairites. Wow the Labour “Left” is sooooooo intelligent!
All things are relative in politics, and we are where we are, not necessarily where we’d like to be.
You don’t need to be particularly bright to see that Labour’s proposal is much much better than No Deal or Mrs Mays Deal.
You, of course, live in a perfect world, but us Lefties live in the real one.
Finally, you seen to have missed the point of the article… It was the popularity of the proposal that so alarmed the “centrists”.
And you.
Note how I resisted the temptation to be as rude and childish as you. I thank you.
You are right that Labour’s model is much better than the alternatives. Except one – staying in the EU and retaining existing concessions as a starting point. Which is where the logic of the proposal points in reality when the cake is cut.
There is nothing radical about airy-fairy Brexit.Unless self-inflicted poverty and powerlessness is ‘radical’.
I don’t disagree with you, but ‘Not Leaving’ simply isn’t an option while we have a Tory government, and no way to shift them. Personally, I don’t think achieving the Labour alternative is likely either, but offering an alternative to May Madness had to be attempted.
Fair point, Andrew. But I come to different conclusion – that adopting an anti-Brexit position and ditching the crap rhetoric about ‘honouring’ a crap referendum with an indecisive result – would have benefited Labour more in trying to oppose Brexit.
It would have also cut the legs off the right of the PLP.
We are never leaving the European Union. If voting could change anything, they would make it illegal………..or just ignore it!
I trust you are aware that you’ve just quoted the title of Ken Livingstone’s autobiography?
As for not leaving the EU, I’d love to hear how you hope to persuade the Tories….. Who have an absolute majority AND the blind loyalty of the DUP.