I really shouldn’t. On Thursday the UK voted that we should
leave the EU. 1 million people more voted to leave than remain. Whether you
agree with that decision or not it is a fact. The people who voted most
strongly for Leave were, based on the official polling data, from working class
towns who have been let down and left behind over the past 30 plus years. This
was a chance for them to scream out their anger and rage at the state of their
lives and the fact that they don’t feel listened to. Since the results the far
right, the racists and the xenophobes have used that as an excuse to peddle
their hatred, believing (I think wrongly) that the vote has shown more people
agree with them than they previously knew. The Prime Minister has resigned. The
EU want us to start negotiations. The Vote Leave campaign have come out already
and said their big claims (more NHS money and lower immigration) were never
actually true. People who voted leave are about to find out that when the
campaign said “Take Back Control” they added a silent “and give it to Etonians
in London”. We are about to go into one of the angriest phases in this country’s
history.
We should all be sitting down,
and working out what we do to get from this point to one where we can act as a
country again. Hell, we need to decide what sort of country we really want
first. Not what sort of country are we being offered by career politicians in
London. I should be setting out, as a socialist, my view for what that could
look like and how we could achieve it. We need cool heads, reconciliation and
calm debate to answer all of those people who voted in anger. We must not fail
to hear that voice – they are the majority in this country. That is what I
should be doing.
But no. Instead I am writing a
blog about another attempted coup in the fucking Parliamentary Labour Party
(PLP). A party which now appears to be so full of career politicians from the
Blair years that it is incapable of seeing outside the Westminster bubble they
live in. Who think it is more important to get the “right” result from the
leadership election they were on the wrong side of than look to their
constituents and address their concerns.
Now, in an attempt to upset every
Labour party member in one go, I am going to admit to something which people will
see as an act of treason itself. I no longer believe that Labour would get the best
possible results in a general election with Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. I
voted for JC, and I strongly believe that we need a left leaning leader in
order to win back not only votes, but those people who have roared at the
government in this referendum. We must not allow them to fall down the route of
listening to the racist demagogues of UKIP. So I think we need a left-wing
leader who can get those people back. I believe there may be better candidates
than JC. I do not believe his performance in the referendum was strong enough.
There were enough instances of poor performance and behaviour that we should
all be able to see it. I do believe that a move towards a left wing leader who
is a more natural vote winner is the direction we should go in.
But this is not the way to do
that. At a point when we need a strong, united and responsive Labour Party we
are turning our backs on the country to fight internally. What a hideous joke.
I am still waiting for the punchline. Let’s be clear on this – dear politicians
of pretty much every party YOU ARE NOT DELIVERING WHAT THE PEOPLE OF THIS
COUNTRY WANT. Many feel they no longer have a voice and government is a long
way away and not listening. Well done to the PLP for showing those people that
is exactly what politicians do. Particularly when you consider the reason for
this timing – so that this coup can happen before changes to the NEC lead to
rule changes that might make it more difficult to get rid of the party leader.
The problem is one entirely of
your own making PLP. The party in parliament is so far further right than the
party members that when the leadership election comes up there is only ever
going to be one left wing candidate – the fact that they take turns putting
themselves forward proves that. But what happened last year (after the tories
won an outright victory) is that people said “enough is enough, we want left
wing policies and a left wing leader”. We gave you those instructions. By an
absolute landslide. There is no questioning the view of the party members in
this. The fact that people signed up to join the party in their thousands to
make sure that happened should have given you some idea. This, I believe, is
the route to taking our country back from those who no longer care about the
working class.
Instead of working with those
instructions and that leadership you have used every opportunity to undermine
and challenge it. You have shown no loyalty to your party members. I do now
hope you understand that those party members should feel no loyalty back to
you. Neither should the electorate of the country as a whole. You have put your
own self-interest ahead of the national one. For that you should be appalled at
your behaviour. If you do not like the views of the membership of the Labour
party feel free to leave and join another party. Get elected on the back of
their membership fees, their hard work and activism, their policies. You truly
should be ashamed of your behaviour. We certainly are.
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