Report compiled after talks with thousand of working-class voters will be launched in Facebook/Zoom call tonight
Three leading figures of the working-class left will publicly demand an apology tonight from Labour leader Keir Starmer to the public – regardless how they voted on Brexit – for the conduct of the Labour right and soft left that cost Labour last year’s general election.
In a report compiled after meetings over a ten-month period with voters in thirty towns Ian Lavery, Laura Smith and Jon Trickett call no fewer than three times for Starmer to apologise – and say that he owe that apology to leavers and remainers alike, because the push for a second Brexit referendum showed contempt to leave voters and misled remainers when a new referendum was never realistic.
The trio’s meetings with thousands of working class voters have shown that leave voters felt Labour had turned its back on them in a show of contempt for their votes – and as a result they punished Labour by casting those votes elsewhere in the general election, as Lavery told the BBC this morning:
There is no question that this was the key factor in losing Labour more than fifty working-class, leave voting seats.
Remainers, in turn, were misled by the promise of a new referendum that was never going to happen – as the working-class left constantly warned. By pushing incessantly for one, the Labour right and soft left guaranteed the hardest of Tory Brexits to the detriment of the whole country.
Keir Starmer was one of the leading figures in that push for a new referendum, even ignoring party policy and the Labour leadership as far back as his 2018 conference speech to put a ‘remain’ option in a new referendum on the table:
Lavery is absolutely right that Starmer is the right person to make that apology.
The full No Holding Back report and its conclusions will be launched this evening with a Zoom rally streamed live to the group’s Facebook page and the SKWAWKBOX Facebook page, starting at 7.30pm.
With the demand for a ‘full-throated’ apology by a Labour leadership eager to forget what so-called ‘centrists’ inflicted on the country last year, it promises to be an explosive event.
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