After the anticipated defeat this evening of Labour’s amendment to push through the party’s Brexit plan – which was greeted as ‘heavenly’ by EU leaders – the media have attempted to portray confusion about Labour’s next steps on Brexit.
But the steps are quite clear – and map out as follows:
- Labour will table further amendments to push their Brexit deal – the only one under discussion that the EU would accept and would defend the UK’s interests
- Labour will continue to seek out every opportunity for the new general election the country so desperately needs
- the party will back Commons votes for a ‘confirmation referendum’ (CR)
The party’s position on any CR would be straightforward. In any vote on May’s desperate deal – which against all odds manages to be worse than no deal – Labour would back remain, to save the country from the disaster of her incompetence.
In a vote for Labour’s deal vs remain, Labour would campaign for Labour’s Brexit deal, to honour the referendum result.
SKWAWKBOX comment:
Ignore media claims of confusion or a lack of a plan. Labour’s position is as cogent as it’s always been.
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Why so quiet on Chris Williamson and Tom Watson today, Skwawky?
CW will be vindicated, I hope, but TW needs cutting off at the knees NOW! Such open disloyalty must NOT be tolerated any longer!
“CW will be vindicated”
Do you think so? Like Marc Wadsworth?
Sorry to be cynical.
Wadsworth may yet be. Isn’t he taking legal action?
The Guardian’s coverage of Chris Williamson was particularly sickening. His statement attacking anti-Semitism was omitted being just one example of how awful it is.
I’ve been in contact with 50-100 Labour Party members this evening and nobody is talking is talking about Brexit: people are unanimously focused on and outraged by the injustice being dealt out to Chris Williamson, a good friend of Skwawkbox.
Or to quote Jonathan Cook
“Antisemitism refers to the hatred of Jews. It is bigotry, plain and simple.
Anti-Zionism, on the other hand, is opposition to the political ideology of Zionism, a movement that has insisted in all its political guises on prioritising the rights of Jews to a homeland over those, the Palestinians, who were already living there.
Anti-Zionism is not racism against Jews; it is opposition to racism by Zionist Jews.“
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2019-02-27/france-macron-zionism-antisemitism/
Petition: Reinstate Chris Williamson. Please sign and share (there’s an option for your name not to be shown on the website if you prefer):
https://www.change.org/p/labour-party-we-support-chris-williamson-mp-and-call-for-the-removal-as-deputy-leader-of-tom-watson-mp?signed=true
NB Yes, it is of course doubtful it will make any difference, but it will show Chris that there are many of us who support him.
Thanks a million for including a link to the petition to reinstate Chris Williamson. The Labour Party desperately needs more MPs like him with the courage to speak the truth. It does not need gobshites like Watson, who should be given the bum’s rush, pronto! What the hell is stopping him from joining his friends in the so-called ‘Independent Group’ (plc)? Maybe he is not so brain-dead as we think, and does not want to share the almost certain political erasure facing them all at the next GE. What a slimy opportunist! He was one of the unspeakables who complained about Chris in the first place. Ruth Smeeth was another.
Chris Williamson has been condemned because he pointed out the elephant in the Labour Party’s room, namely that it has indeed been “too apologetic” to the wrong people over alleged antisemitism. If you want to see real antisemitism in the Labour Party, look at how a disproportionate number of members on anti-semitism charges ( or charges of ‘bringing the LP into disrepute’ are themselves Jewish. Their “crime” is that they are so whilst being anti-Zionist – that is unforgivable to the Israel lobby inside and outside the Labour Party. We all know which individuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are part of this, and their connections to the Israeli embassy. We also know which organisations inside and outside the Labour Party are pushing the largely bogus antisemitism agenda.
The upshot of this is that Jeremy Corbyn, after some resistance has again shot himself in the foot by suspending one of his most steadfast allies. His chances of becoming PM diminish every time this happens. Appeasing bullies never works. It only encourages their ravenously destructive appetites.
Come on Jezza, the hopes of millions are carried on your shoulders. Stay the course and don’t give up. Honour and protect your friends and know your enemies. We need you in 10 Downing Street to end the Tory nightmare. Reinstate Chris Williamson. He is there for you. Be there for him and for the many millions desperately in need of a socialist Labour Government.
JC is not part of the complaints and disciplinary process, so calling on him to do this or that is as bad as TW doing the same for opposite reasons. Corbyn did not suspend Chris. The party rules and process did that. Let’s make it clear that Corbyn and Williamson have the majority support in the party, then perhaps his political hand behind the scenes will be strengthened. Meanwhile lets be careful not to be dragged into the pernicious tit-for-tat of the TInGe and Watson fraternities
Allan
Thanks for the link to the petition.
Signed!
Alan , brill , thanks for link to petition, now signed , circulatingvto my CLP friends to do rhe same .
SUGESTION TO SKWAWKBOX
STEVE
ADVERTISE THE PETITION MATE PLEASE….
Oh my, so after days of saying that Labours position hadn’t shifted, you now nod that it has but say that everything is fine. Everything is not fine, Labour is now an anti-Brexit result party, and that fact will destroy us in working class areas like mine. Corbyn has either lost the plot or lost all his authority, or both.
If Labour is now an anti Brexit Party, excellent, it’s about time the sensible half of the electorate had someone to represent them.
And who do you want to represent working class people, the majority of who voted out of the neo-liberal EU? Farage perhaps, or someone or something even worse? The middle class liberal supporters of the EU in Labour are spitting in the face of working class people and it won’t easily be forgotten.
Skwarkbox’s ridiculous over-optimism is clearly a character trait and an irritating one.
The Party has reneged on its commitment to respect the referendum result – needlessly. Nothing in the conference decision mandates a Remain option in any second poll. In fact the wording of the composite resolution lightly suggests otherwise. The manifesto certainly mandates otherwise, and the conference decision could have and should have been interpreted in conformity with the manifesto.
Our contempt for democracy sets us at loggerheads with the working class voters in the Midlands and the North whose votes Labour needs in order to win the Labour-Tory target seats.
We could now even go backwards in terms of House of Commons representation – and lose Labour held seats with small majorities.
I do not know how Corbyn salvages his reputation as a Left-winger.
So far, I think it’s been obvious that Corbyn and his team have played a Brexit blinder. I remain convinced he knows exactly what is needed to advance our cause. Let’s give him our support now, when it’s needed most to have a steady hand on the tiller? How many times have we been here over the last 2 years?
If any proof was needed that the Israeli Lobby rules the LP, the witch hunt’s latest victim Chris Williamson a true Socialist confirms it.
Yes JT that is so clear. But also the turncoat stance on leaving the EU is also depressingly clear. see https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/26/peoples-vote-corbyn-signs-his-own-death-warrant/ and the BTL comments to wonder why JC has sold his soul! Labour needs a clearout of Blairites.
I agree that the issue of whether or not the UK should leave the EU should not be revisited. However, given that May’s Brexit deal is a walking disaster (and has been voted down by Parliament) and the opposition has been unable to trigger a GE, I cannot see any other option for avoiding a catastrophic “No Deal” outcome than a People’s Vote for the TYPE of Brexit we want.
With both “remain” and “no deal” off the ballot paper this would be a straight contest between May’s “deal” with all its complications and uncertainties over the NI border question, and the Labour Party proposal, which the EU have already stated they would be willing to accept, which protects trade, jobs and industry. There should be no equivocation about this.
Correspondents who have pointed out the dangers of endorsing a People’s Vote that includes the “remain” position are right and the Labour Party should back away from this with all speed. A vote on the substantive issue of staying or withdrawing from the EU has already been taken, and the result was that Britain should leave. This should be honoured and the Brexit project rescued from the consequences of May’s intransigent incompetence. This is a test that Labour will fail at its peril.
Jack
Nailed it!
Nice one.
“the turncoat stance on leaving the EU ”
So – the informed grassroots majority in the Party are ‘turncoats’? That’s almost as Looking Glass as the Party being “institutionally antisemitic”.
very sad day.
In a society so dumbed down by the MSM that “The Lobby” hardly raises a murmur, nobody’s on trial for treason and BBC political editors laugh at accountability –
the 1%’s biggest concern will soon be weighing the cost of their growing private armies against the saving from each tranche of AI redundancies.
It’s getting harder to imagine a future that doesn’t end in violence.
This has been one of the saddest days in recent Labour Party history. Sadly I have lost a lot of respect for Mr Corbyn who I realise was put in an extremely difficult position but has ,I believe,displayed a lack of backbone in not speaking out in support of Mr Williamson. Can I also request that Labour supporters who attend events where Owen Jones is speaking let him know how disgusted we with the comments he made in relation to Mr Williamson,i
God, what has Owen Jones been saying now? ( I’m not on social media)
Rather a long rant from Jones basically saying Labour right to suspend Mr Williamson and Labour has a big problem with anti Semitism. Bit that annoyed me most was saying “why is he (Williamson) a non Jew right,and Lansman,a Jew wrong about anti Semitism.A question,I feel,suggests Jones had not fully read Mr Williamsons comments or was deliberately misinterpreting them.
Thanks Jim.
And I was just beginning to think we could finally trust him!
” “why is he (Williamson) a non Jew right,and Lansman,a Jew wrong about anti Semitism”
That’d be funny if it wasn’t so overtly prejudiced in giving anyone who pretends to a Jewish identity the unchallenged right to assumed virtue!
Jones begins to remind me of Alan Partridge asking a guest to say what he thinks :
“You’re an arse”. was the answer.
With ‘friends’ like Owen Jones we don’t need enemies. Remember how he sat on his hands for nearly two whole weeks when the 2016 coup attempt against Corbyn started, pretending it had nothing to do with him while having friendly chats with Lisa Nandy? The bloke is pure poison.
Now is not the time to sit on our hands & do nothing. Chris Williamson has raised his head above the parapet again, only this time Zionist Labour will try to destroy him, as they did with Ken Livingstone. There is something truly rotten @ the top of the Labour Party Exec.& the PLP still rejects Socialism. The Blairites still control the reins of power & until the cancer is cauterised, they will continue to so. The question is, what’s to & when? Messages of support for Chris Williamson from all wards & constituencies would be a start.