Analysis

Shoddy ‘anti-Brexit’ Swinson pushes Clarke for ‘interim PM’ – who wants to do ‘better Brexit’, not referendum

LibDem leader’s desperation to block Corbyn appears so great she didn’t vet preferred alternatives
Shoddy: Jo Swinson

Hapless LibDem leader Jo Swinson has suffered yet another ‘open mouth insert foot’ moment, hot on the heels of her dire speech this week in which she said she’d do ‘whatever it takes’ to prevent a no-deal Brexit – in the same speech as she said she wouldn’t work with Jeremy Corbyn.

Swinson said she would want to work with a senior so-called centrist MP such as Labour’s Harriet Harman or Tory ‘father of the House’ Ken Clarke to stop a no-deal Brexit and call another Brexit referendum.

However, it seems she didn’t do her homework – because the pro-EU Ken Clarke wants to ‘do Brexit’, albeit a better version that the disastrous, cliff-edge ‘Boris Brexit’.

Asked whether he would be prepared to take on the position of interim PM, Clarke responded that he would – but that he did not see the role as doing anything to prevent Brexit, but rather to gain an extension from the EU to agree a better Brexit involving a customs union, regulatory alignment and protecting jobs.

In other words, exactly the type of Brexit Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he would negotiate:

Ken Clarke’s words quoted in the Guardian

Swinson has managed to destroy her credibility in a single week with her contradictory and plainly self-interested comments.

Allowing her desperation to ‘stop Corbyn’ to fool her into naming ‘soft Brexiter’ Ken Clarke as her preferred option – who wants to do exactly what Corbyn has said he’ll do, but without a second referendum option – is the icing on the towering cake of her multi-tiered cake of incompetence and blundering.

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28 comments

  1. No doubt that Swinson is under the influence of a certain shiny head ex Labour, ex Change MP who hates Jeremy Corbyn more than she does if that is possible.

  2. LibDem members must be shocked and disappointed that their shiny new leader has fallen flat on her face at the first hurdle.

    1. Steve most of the libs agree with her!and a good number of the PLP?Swansong reflects the glaring example of modern miss snooty mps of the middle class out of touch ¡mps we have allowed to gain a foothold in all camps…..You bastards are all the same! Comments on the doorstep canvassing is actually quite accurate…..Same private school ,same acents,same interests plus working the new cash for questions earner?Harriot Harman clones spot the difference……I can’t

      1. Why is Swinson suggesting Harriet Harman, the most senior Labour MP is the Beast of Bolsover.

  3. That’s not a staccato handclap you can hear, oh no. That’s the sound of many palms slapping foreheads in utter disbelief.

    swindle making umunna look positively meticulous. Unreal.

  4. Fascinating today to hear the framing of the news by the BBC. The lead on this story is Oliver Letwin’s ramblings around his estate of the mind (‘senior conservative MP’). And the story is ‘Govermnment of National Unity’. Which is a nonsense media description of Corbyn’s initiative – but then, of course, lets in all the incoherent fantasies about ‘moderates’ (a fascinating epithet when applied to incontinent rattle throwing)

    Followed then by an ‘Any Questions’ well loaded towards chattering metros (which is what John Mann is, despite his origins) and sweet f.a in terms of original or logical thought, apart from one middle of the road Labour participant.

  5. Who would have thought it possible to disappear up your own arse on multiple occasions
    I thought it was a life changing one off event,
    Hey ho you live and learn

  6. My advise to JC is to sit back and not participate in this so-called Government of National Unity which is destined to be a disaster. This will enable us to keep our powder dry for the inevitable GE that is going to follow, which we can fight on democratic socialist manifesto with democratic socialist candidates untainted by participation in the disastrous GNU and whatever Brexit outcome will have been achieved.

    1. Well thank goodness he won’t be listening to you. Suggesting that JC should desert his duty to represent the views of members and voters at this pivotal moment in our nation’s history is sheer lunacy and contrary to your assertions would be political suicide.

      1. Anyone who thinks that that the electoral threat lies in rejecting ‘Leave’ is living in La La Land.

        As a litmus test – I had a typical conversation with a lifelong Labour member and voter a few days ago which got quite vehement. Like many others, he was seriously contemplating *not* voting Labour because of its weakness on Brexit. This sentiment amongst supporters will easily be enough to hand the Tories a win – it doesn’t have to manifest itself as a 100% defection of Remainers.

        Meanwhile the minority Leave conservative voters have already gone – flaky by definition, they aren’t a constituency in waiting.

        I hold out no great hope for Corbyn’s initiative, given the number of pseudo-Labour members in the PLP. But it was absolutely the right move to make.

    1. Corbyn’s not a socialist, he’s a left-liberal with a scattergun leftishness.

      He has given no support to replacing our capitalist system with a democratic socialist one: he has not promoted economic planning in any substantial way nor has he backed any general socialisation of the economy by means of public ownership, not even with the open goal of the banking crisis.

      Nonetheless it suits most readers of Skwarkbox to categorise him as a socialist since the contemporary Labour Left does not really want to change British society very much.

      1. Our resident dodgy “Zionism” obsessive, Jack T, making a only thinly, and entirely irrelevant to the issue on this thread, lightly veiled anti-Semitic playground finger-pointing sneer at a Jewish poster. Add this to that other dodgy poster, “Doug’s” recent similarly beside the point crude jibe at Danny about “circumcision by chainsaw” , and we have crystal clear evidence that the Labour Party does indeed have a problem with anti-Semitism amongst some members (if indeed these two clowns really ARE members rather than shit-stirring trolls).

        Surely time now , Skwawkbox, for a ban on Jack T at least for often repeated , only lightly veiled, anti-Semitic posting posing as “anti-Zionism”.

      2. jpenney 17/08/2019 at 7:16 pm

        There you go again, conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

        ps: Is Danny Jewish and does it really matter one way or t’other.

      3. As is normal for Zionists, jpenney calls for the banning of anyone who draws attention to the corrosive damage they have done and are doing to the Labour Party.

        Nothing, absolutely nothing I have said could be construed as anti-Semitic except in the twisted mind of a Zionist who uses the old trick to conflate Zionism with Judaism so that they can scream anti-Semitism.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Latuff#/media/File:Cry-wolf.png

      4. It does make one wonder why anti-Corbyn people like jpenney and his ‘Citizen Smith’ cohorts rejoined the Labour party after Corbyn was elected leader.

      5. So in the next crash what should we do with banks and interest rates,
        Need a quick answer it’s not that far away

      6. I love these adherents of ‘true’ ‘socialism’ who envisage the future as a bunch of Citizen Smiths talking to each other in a little darkened room. Still – I guess its a shelter from the actualities of politics.

        On the other bone of contention : for anyone who remains illiterate and ahistorical enough to think that ‘Judaism’ and ‘Zionism’ are exchangeable terms, I suggest a read of (another) good re-post on the JVL website, which focuses on Christian Zionism – and it’s political significance.

        https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/exploringing-the-political-role-of-christian-zionism/

      7. Danny, I don’t know how you can back up your claims until you have read the Labour Party Manifesto 2016.All the issues you mention and more are set out, which is why the middle and right are doing everything they can to keep him out. I wonder how you would go about changing a country which has not had a socialist party since Kier Hardie and Attlee? A bloody revolution perhaps?

  7. Even the Groan/Obsurder nexus has got the message. Se today’s editorial :

    ” Corbyn’s offer deserves the most constructive response possible from MPs”

    Pity about all that time and effort spent constructing a propaganda frame to undermine the objective.

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