The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party is one of the most significant political events in decades. At the time of his nomination for Leader, I was afraid that, as with a lot of Left politics, it could turn into just another round of people attaching their wagon to the most recent best hope, as has been seen with the mindless support given in the past to demagogues like Chavez, or Galloway, Guevara, and is the same kind of idiocy that leads some to throw in their lot with vicious, reactionaries like Putin, Saddam, The Iranian Mullahs, PIRA, Hezbollah or Hamas, on the spurious grounds that they are "anti-imperialist". Indeed, Corbyn himself has been guilty of some of that, and it has provided a pretext for his opponents to attack him. In fact, what transpired, with the movement to get Corbyn elected, was much more than just the development of some new cult of personality. Corbyn himself should remember that in continuing to set his face against the vast majority of party members that got him elected, over the question of Brexit.
The argument that has been put forward by Corbyn, and his backers over the last year or so, is that they had to continue to a commitment to implement Brexit, because that is what people had voted for in the referendum. That argument was always rubbish. People vote for things all the time, and yet those who lose the vote never stop arguing their own point of view, and trying to convince people that the way they voted was wrong. Its called democracy, and it is regularly implemented via elections. When Labour loses an election to the Tories, Labour does not roll over and play dead, but continues to argue its case, not being afraid to tell voters that they made a mistake in voting in the Tories, and thereby trying to get voters to change their minds at the earliest opportunity. After all, if you get a cooling off period after you have taken out credit, to buy a washing machine, why on Earth would you not want people to have the right to change their mind over more important decisions.
For a time, the argument that people had voted, and so a Labour government would have to implement Brexit could be given a sugar-coating of credibility by claiming that a majority of constituencies across the country support Brexit. But, the opinion polls show that has not been true for some time. In Northern Ireland, which voted heavily for Remain, the proportion supporting Remain today, has increased even further, and that appears to be the case in Scotland, whilst polls now show that there is a majority for Remain, in the majority of constituencies in Britain. So, if the argument was that a Labour government had to implement Brexit, because it is the will of the people, that argument no longer holds.
It was a bad and false argument to begin with, and the fact that Corbyn has continued to set his face against opposing Brexit, even now that a majority of constituencies support Remain, shows that it was a fig leaf to begin with. It is a fig leaf that has provided scant covering for the reality that the real reason for continuing to promote Brexit is the reactionary national socialist mentality that has infected the labour movement like a syphilitic disease for decades, and whose roots stem in the reactionary dogma of socialism in one country developed by Stalin, and promoted by his followers.
Ironically, Corbyn was campaigning to win back support for Labour in Scotland earlier in the week when the ridiculous and tortured nature of his arguments over Brexit was again revealed. Labour has absolutely no chance of forming the next government unless it can turn over a large number of SNP seats in Scotland. But, likewise, it has absolutely no chance of doing that with its current stance on Brexit. The Scots, like the Northern Irish, having seen the catastrophe that is heading their way as a result of Brexit, are turning even more firmly against it. There is no chance that Corbyn can win the Scots over to Labour, by appearing as simply a pale pink version of the Tories once again when it comes to nationalism, but this time, promoting Little Englander nationalism in relation to the EU. The SNP, the Greens, the Liberals are once again being let off the hook, by Labour allowing them to appear as a more radical, more progressive, more internationalist alternative.
But, its not just in Northern Ireland and Scotland. The polls now consistently show that across England too, a majority even of those who voted Leave recognise that Brexit will be harmful! The support for the idea of "Well just get on with it," stems purely from the fact that both main parties appear to be acting like lemmings continuing to reel forward prepared to jump off the cliff, on the basis of a vote taken two years ago, on a false prospectus based on lies, which a majority of people no longer support. It would only take Corbyn and Labour to say, "It's time to stop this madness, and Labour will scrap Brexit", for that public mood to change, and to get behind a Labour Party giving a clear bit of leadership. But, unfortunately, Corbyn is giving no such leadership.
In Scotland, earlier in the week, he was asked this simple question of whether he thought that Britain would be worse off as a result of Brexit. He could not give a straight answer, despite the fact that everyone knows the answer. The answer is that Brexit will cause a catastrophe in the short-term, followed by disaster in the longer-term. But, instead of saying that, Corbyn could only mumble and waffle a load of bollocks about Labour wanting to implement a Brexit that would be good for jobs and services. That is not a policy or a strategy. It is simply wishful thinking, and diversion. I'd like to win the lottery, but it doesn't mean I will. Labour might want a Brexit that delivers for jobs, trade and so on, but it has absolutely no means of achieving it, because the truth is that Brexit will mean the exact opposite of those things! It is as much a deceit by Corbyn and Labour to suggest that they could provide these things alongside Brexit, as it was for Bojo to promise effectively the same kind of have cake and eat it, scenario, with billions going to the NHS.
The truth is that it does not matter to the EU whether they are negotiating with Keir Starmer or Dominic Rabb. Their position is clear, and the idea that Starmer can obtain cake at the same time as having eaten it, where Rabb cannot is a fantasy. Labour has no difficulty in telling us that the Tories objectives are unachievable, but the reality is that Labour's objectives are not substantially different to those of the Tories, and are equally unachievable. The only difference is that Labour present the policy of have cake and eat it in slightly different terms. The Tories to deal with internal politics committed themselves from the start to pulling out of the Customs Union and Single Market, but then wanted the EU to give them all of the same rights and privileges of still being in those institutions. Labour too initially adopted that strategy, but has step by step been forced into the reality that it could not make its arguments about trade, jobs, and particularly Ireland, stack up without being inside the Customs Union, and Single Market, that it huffed and puffed and obfuscated about whether it was proposing being in "the" Customs Union and Single Market, as opposed to "a" Customs Union and Single Market.
Now Labour has dropped that obfuscation, at least, and more or less talks about just being inside the Customs Union and Single Market, but now, it faces the problem that I highlighted a few years ago, and which Barry Gardiner has also described of such membership turning Britain into a vassal state unless it is also allowed to participate in the rule making of those institutions. But, the fact is that then demanding the right to have a seat at those tables, without being a member of the EU itself, is no different, de facto, than what the Tories are demanding. Its like someone leaving a trade union, because they didn't like some of the way it operated, and then saying, but we want to still get the pay rises and other benefits we had as a member, but without paying the subs, and by the way, we want as an individual to make our own decisions, and for those to have an equal weight as those of the members of the union! There is no way the EU is going to agree to that, and it is dishonest for Corbyn and Labour to suggest that they would.
If Labour wants to win back support in Scotland, and to not see its vote in England fragment to the Greens, and Liberals, its time to take a clear stand against Brexit. The vast majority of party members and supporters already know that, but Corbyn and the party leadership are ignoring them. But, the half million members that have flooded into the party are more than Corbyn now. The party must not only impose its own voice and its own democracy by kicking out all of those Blair-rights who would turn the party backwards, it must assert its voice against Corbyn and the handful of Stalinists and Morning Star acolytes that are influencing him, and driving his policy back into the reactionary nationalist abyss the left fell into during the 1970's. Ultimately, the party's mass membership that got Corbyn elected Leader, must show that it is not just a mindless cult of personality, and be prepared to remove Corbyn himself if he continues to stand against the party on this issue.
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