Calls for Brexit extension show Labour centre has learned absolutely nothing from GE19 losses
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves has essentially confirmed what many working-class Labour supporters feared – that Keir Starmer’s team is essentially uninterested in winning back the more than 50 leave-voting seats Labour lost in the 2019 general election.
It seems the rewriting of history to pin the blame on Labour’s policies and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership are so essentially to the Labour right that the thought of conceding that Labour’s disastrous pivot to calling for a new referendum cannot be entertained even for a moment.
Reeves told Sky that if no deal has been reached with the EU by the end of the year, the transition deal should be extended – gifting the Tories a gilt-edged narrative in north, Midlands and elsewhere whenever the next general election takes place.
Labour has so far failed to seriously oppose the Tories on their murderous handling of the coronavirus crisis, which has put the UK into the shameful position of the most deaths per head of population of any nation in the world and a clear second-highest in total deaths behind only the US, which has six times more people.
Now it seems the party has also taken on a side-job of helping the Tories’ campaign team.
There is no route back to Downing Street for Labour that does not go through those leave towns. With the architect of the second-referendum policy at the helm, it was always going to be an uphill battle, but if Labour’s front bench persists with this kind of idiocy it appears that Starmer is writing off even the hope of winning them back. Starmer had signalled that lack of interest in the sacking of Barry Gardiner when he became leader, but he has now confirmed it.
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All well and good as long as one totally ignores that we’ve already left the EU and that all Labour are calling for is an extension of the interim deal so as to avoid the ultimate capitulation of the left, a fuckwit Tory no deal Brexit.
The idea that Labour should aid Johnson and the capitalist vultures to crash out of the EU without a deal is just ludicrous and beyond comprehension. Besides anything else do you really trust BoJo and (America First) Trump with the NHS.
“Reeves told Sky that if no deal has been reached with the EU by the end of the year, the transition deal should be extended”
MP Reeves doesn’t seem to be very well informed.
According to the rules, the PM has to ask for an extension before the end of June.He has so far stated he won’t. No June request = no extension and end of transition on 31st Dec, with or without a Trade Agreement.
As SteveH said, the UK is already out of the EU
benmadigan – I noticed Reeve’s slip of the tongue as well, We may have to hope that the EU decides to change the rules but I accept that this is looking increasingly doubtful.
On “trust BloJob” – I wonder how many of the jolly new Tories in the ‘Labour heartlands’ – who like him coz he’s good for a laugh – would have voted for him if they’d known they were betting their lives on his ability to understand “the science.”
Dummy couldn’t even see the obviously fatal flaws in his ideas for bridges across the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
I’d bet when he saw Trunt talking about injecting bleach into people and putting them under sunlamps to cure them of CV he had to be held down to stop him broadcasting his support.
Talks about relying on “the best science” – as if he could tell any kind of science from homeopathy, or homeopathy from scientology.
On wear mask/don’t wear mask – a fucking professor of something just said on TV he wasn’t convinced – because wearing one protected others more than it protected the wearer.
Stupid, stupid cunt.
That fact doesn’t mitigate against the wearing of masks – on the contrary it means EVERYONE needs to wear a mask for them to be as effective as they can be.
Testing people to see if they’re infected doesn’t help those who test positive one little bit – it helps everybody else.
This isn’t fucking rocket surgery.
just another day in establishment land of the knight and confirmation that the official opposition isnt working as the OPPOSITION,Labour party.just Johnson’s “little helpers” .
Joseph – It looks to me that Johnson’s little helpers are in fact the self appointed minority Lexiteer guardians of ‘the left’.
Labour must not support a no deal Brexit so an extension is necessary to get a reasonable deal. It is Boris that wants no deal.
Completely misleading headline. We have left the EU already. And no one voted on a specific time-frame in which to finalise the trade deal – even the most rabid Brexiter must surely agree that it’s in no one’s interest to try to rush anything through while the world is consumed by the pandemic. Now if Starmer had said he wanted to rejoin the EU, then you might have a point. But these misleading and sensationalist headlines are what we expect of Murdoch not Skwawkbox.
“There is no route back to Downing Street for Labour that does not go through those leave towns.”
They voted Tory so those are Tory towns.
If Labour supports enough Tory policies it could probably win ALL the Tory towns.
“If Labour supports enough Tory policies it could probably win ALL the Tory towns.”
No David, that has been tried, and tried and tried, but it doesn’t work. It just imposes Tory MPs on Labour towns. That is the story of the PLP really.
David – The Tory’s drop in the polls if it continues will see the Tories being forced to pretend to adopt a few more Labour policies to ensure victory at the next GE.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/16/revolt-over-easing-lockdown-spreads-as-poll-slump-hits-prime-minister
Correct – for once! Well done!
But don’t bother giving yerself too many callouses by slapping yourself on the back.
…The pretence will only be that starmer’s labour policies are barely just shy of out-and-out toerag policies anyway.
A Blair/Starmer landslide ypu mean?
That’s exactly what the labourRight centrists are hoping for. But the working class would be shafted
A price worth paying thinks Sir Erik Armrest.
STAY. ORGANISE. FIGHT.
A rallying call from the self appointed guardian’s of ‘the left’ 🤨.
qwertboi 18/05/2020 at 1:29 am
“A Blair/Starmer landslide you mean?
Whilst you continue to fantasise about your pure socialist Utopian dream, I’m just hoping for a Labour government come the next GE.
@SteveH
Enjoy your false hope.
2017 was Labours time. And we all know what happened.
Are there enough Eddie Marsans to make up the numbers? Because I’m sure there are many more like me who feel a kicking is due in reciprocation to Kier Starmer Donkey Farmer and his band of Viz buddies…
It’s going to be more cathartic than the original Brexit vote, arguably the most satisfying dump I’ll ever make. And best of all, I won’t even have to leave the house (I _ain’t_ voting Tory…)
So, next time you’re thinking about Stoma rising to the top like cream, remember that shit floats.
It’s unlikely that there will be much of an EU left by the end of this virus crisis which has completely exposed the neo-liberal EU for what it really is. Now watch as Italy is punished for its extravagant expenditures on saving the lives of old proles.
bevin, my previous comment was just sarcasm.
By “completely exposed” do you mean exposed to the whole EU electorate or just to the individual national governments?
Will it be electorates or governments which cause the breakup of the EU?
Has this virus crisis also completely exposed the neoliberal Tories for what they really are and made it unlikely that there will be much of them left by the end of this virus – and if the same argument doesn’t apply to both the EU and the Tories – why not?
I want neoliberalism dead, cremated and its dust blown to the four winds – but killing the EU doesn’t achieve that while the US lives. It doesn’t even come close.
We save the host by killing the virus. Killing the host makes no sense.
Leave Labour party membership. Demand full refund of membership fees from May 2015 to March 2020 inclusive.
Demand Tory Boris fully run away and call a snap early general election.
All vote National Health Action party that would give NHS doctors and nurses MPs and Prime Minister to run government, during this worst airborne plague for a century.
Demand your trade union cease funding Labour altogether, and put union funds solely towards NHA party alone, as NHA party had ending the Tory trade union bill in their manifestos. As well as Statutory Living Wage and Maternity pay at that same rate. A more humane benefit system will also help all those losing jobs to the necessary lockdown shutdown for public health.
Jeremy Corbyn and his tiny band of socialists could run as Independents, under the agreement of confidence and supply voting support for NHA party in government.
Grey Swans – I don’t agree with your nonsense about leaving the Labour Party and setting up a new party because the policies you outline are already closely aligned with current Labour policies. Why would you (or anyone) abandon the only party that has any realistic chance of ousting the Tories for political obscurity.
Have you asked Jeremy Corbyn if he is interested in joining you.
As for Boris doing a runner, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see him ‘step down’ on the grounds of ill health (Covid-19 can have all sorts of nasty effects, incl loss of cognitive ability) but is you think the Tories will be going anywhere when they have an 80 seat majority then you are living in La-La Land.
The answer is obvious.
The Labour party is full of people like you Steve. People who have actively sabotaged millions. People who don’t care about socialism, they make the noises sure, but the reality is they just want the Tories jobs.
It’s an organisation with corruption so endemic, that it would be taken out back and shot if it was a farm animal.
I feel we have a much better chance with an unknown new starter than the creators of the NHS when it comes to saving it…
Remind me, which one of Labour whined about doing PFC jobs on hospitals because everyone else was doing it?
You put your faith in that?!?!
Labour has no chance of ousting the Tories for many, many years to come.
SteveH said “I don’t agree with your nonsense about leaving the Labour Party… because the policies you outline are already closely aligned with current Labour policies”
Are you sure? That’s the whole point. Sir Erik has been careful to never diss the Corbyn Project and policies publicly, but he is sneakily denaturing and negating them for his bases at the third-way mark 2 Trilateral Commission. Every single action the Leader’s Office has taken since his appointment, whether on the leaked report, Housing rent strikes, supporting/not opposing the Conservatives’ Coronavirus muddle, or dealing with AS is causing many Labour members severe anxiety, disbelief and, increasingly, anger.
Sir Erik Armrest is the Iain Duncan Smith leader of Labour: He seemed eminently sensible to members, but is showing mendacity, duplicity and deceit where his predecessor showed integrity, respect and principle. Every day his true-nature becomes more apparent. Alarmingly so.
He’ll be gone within two years once the billionaire press start their smears and the PLP sees that he’s a bit of a nobody-man.
qwertboi18/05/2020 AT 11:23 AM
”Sir Erik Armrest is the Iain Duncan Smith leader of Labour: He seemed eminently sensible to members, but is showing mendacity, duplicity and deceit where his predecessor showed integrity, respect and principle. ”
In fairness, even the toerags saw through the utterly useless dummkopf-schmitt after a few weeks, long before the fascist employing his tart to sit on her ‘aristocratic’ ‘arris all day and scrounge a ‘salary’ did for him. (Enabling the exact same ‘something for nothing’ culture he likes to accuse the unemployed of ‘enjoying’; the horridable love child of Alistair Sim & irma grese)
The entire labour left knows what starmer’s about, but because the parasitical right are too ensconced, too entrenched; added to the right-wing MSM being behind him every bit as much as they were bliar as opp. leader, means he’ll be there for the duration – until the next election loss, and possibly beyond.
Remaining in that ‘labour’ party is flogging a dead horse.
Setting up a new party under FPTP while there is already an incumbent second party (LP) is doomed to failure. This is the lesson of history. For any realistic hope for a new party, the LP must fade away first
Spot on Marty! FPTP is THE main reason why a new socialist Labour Party would fail.
Leftmembers and socialists NEED to support electoral reform of our voting method so that socialism and democracy become truly indivisible.
I’m trying to think what the point is of staying in a Labour Party whose Leader, policies, and structure make it impossible for it to win any General Election. Can anyone make any suggestions?
Sir Kier Armrest can say whatever the fuck he likes and same goes for that Tory twat Reeves , it is ALL completely irrelevant , as is Labour , what with a 80 seat majority on the clowns side he can do precisely whatever he wants .
Had Labour not been subverted and corrupted by the shit heads wanting to remain then we would now be in power with a decent Lexit and not facing a catastrophic no deal exit that will fuck over every one of us bar the super rich .
And still we have the dick heads squealing about how bad a Lexit would be , give me a Corbyn lead Lexit ANYDAY over what you lot have now enabled and heaped upon us …
As no other option’s been left open to the backstabbing, snidey, slimy little polygonal-heided shitehawk, then out-toeragging the toerags is all’s he has left.
No right-minded (former) labour leave voter’s gonna trust him, and Corbynists most definitely don’t as it is; and they never will.
Congratulations to all you massive 70%er bellends; you’ve undeniably turned this nation into the one-party state it was for all but 4 years since 1979. You complained about the referendum being ‘undemocratic’ and allowed starmer to rat Corbyn out by undemocratically bulldozing through a repudiation of a sensible policy with NO vote taken by the membership.
And now look what we have to choose from…A toerag with a barnet like a massive explosion in a barn full of straw…or a toerag with a unfeasibly greasy barnet, looking like it’s kept oiled by a million hagfish doing anal in a bucket of wallpaper.
Because that’s the only difference betwixt them. That’s the legacy of your persistent whingeing about ‘democracy’ that we’ve all got to suffer for a very long time.
Never was so much fucked up for so many by just 70%. Nice one.
I’d call you all morons, but that’s be grossly unfair on morons to class you as remotely intelligent as them.
Yes indeed, The Toffee, the really saddening thing about the Labour Party’s pretty much majority membership’s universal still uncritically , unanalytical, pro EU stance , is that not only the to be expected careerist right wing neoliberals of the Labour Right like Starmer and co, hold to it (including all our paid trolls of course on Skwawkbox) , but most of what passes for the ‘Labour Left’ too ! And this is true not only of the avowedly ‘reformist’ Corbynista ‘Left’ (Liberals) , but even the entrist grouplets of the supposedly ‘revolutionary Marxist’ Left too – from the CPGB’s cronies of ‘Labour Marxists’ to the AWL and onwards (total actual numbers – about 300 people !) . And what is the unifying connection between ALL the self-described ‘radical Left’ grouplets , with their continuing belief that the neoliberal EU has something to do with genuine ‘Internationalism – even ‘workers’ internationalism, ? They are ALL totally professional middle class in personal background and occupations – all hopelessly divorced from the lives and neoliberal pressures of our now permanently lost millions of old Labour heartland voters. and that is as true of the arrogant old careerist cronies around Lansman in Momentum, as it is for the equally middle class pro EU/pro unlimited Freedom of Movement, but supposedly more radical, pro democracy, faction seeking, hopelessly, to reform Momentum – to be a vehicle for Left advance.
The Labour party is now totally and permanently kaput as both a mass party with government-winning potential for even the careerist, corrupt, Labour Right, with their stale old Blairite Tory-lite politics, AND as a party with any chance of being re-won to Left control. That route was surely tested to destruction under the, as per usual, pathetically cowardly and inept Corbynista experiment. And it failed utterly, as it always has for the periodic Left advance phases in Labour’s collaborationist disgraceful history. Unfortunately the only route to building an effective socialist party is outside of the Labour Party – but the profound political bankruptcy of the totally middle class UK ‘radical’ Left , saturated with inward-looking Left Liberal obsessive identity politics, makes it therefore incapable of reaching out to the millions of ordinary working class people currently being crushed by the forces of neoliberalism and its permanent Austerity programme. So, no, the failed projects of Respect and Left Unity do NOT show the way forward. But unless a political party with solid socialist politics can be based on a majority working class membership such a project is doomed to fail yet again . Though better to try , rather than wasting more years in the fruitless effort of turning the utterly corrupt , and now electorally dead, Labour Party into a ‘Left Party’. And I DON’T mean via that old Let-faking rogue, George Galloway’s, latest ego trip of the so-called ‘Workers Party’ , with its tired old unapologetic Stalino/Maoists in the background doing the leg work for George !
Oh dear, oh dear. Skwawkbox political analysis continues on the same wish-fulfilment course as does its analysis of Covid-19 data : on the coat-tails of the Sun/Mail.
Socialism doesn’t work, MSM tells us so……..so to paraphrase Tony Blair (loosely), ‘we need to become more like the Tories if we are to beat the Tories’. Direction of travel?
You’ve been repeating yourself for months RH.
Is it still worth it?
yawn
It’s interesting that the Progress, Labour First, Blairites, “ centrists plus moderates” are dogmatically against socialism and socialist policies plus their brethren in theTory Party, yet Corporate welfare is now in the region of £93,000,000,000 which goes of course is state funding for the banks, financial oligarchs and the aristocracy. Not forgetting of course the unbelievable sums that these Banks etc received in Government bailouts because of their avarice and incompetence. Yet, I have scarcely seen any criticism from them for these socialist policies by both the Tories and New Labour, which was consigned to the dust in of history. However, ii is trying to be resurrected by the persecutor of political prisoners( Julian Assange), a member of a right wing anti democratic American organisation. Step forward the knight of the realm one Keir Starmer!
Well said Brian Botox – Everything you said is true and yet there is so much more to distrust about Sir Erik
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=medium.com+keir+starmer&t=fpas&ia=web
PAH!! Autocorrect- Brianbotou becomes Brian Botox. Sorry
I voted Labour leave to protect jobs and standards and manifesto
Covid19 + No Deal Brexit = Bankruptcy
With any luck there will be a perfect storm of financial pandemic and No Deal Brexit meltdown should wipe out Tories for a generation , no more than they deserve, let them own it, dont give the fuckers the lickings of a dog
Absolutely 100% critical condition is to make it crystal clear the Labour party will not apply to rejoin the EU in the foreseeable future, stay out and reform
Agree Keir needs to hold up his hands but then again so does John McDonnell