Jeremy Corbyn's Momentum group repackages betrayal as a nationwide campaign to 'Take Back Control' of Brexit and push it through despite only 37 per cent of the electorate voting Leave.
Around 70 per cent of Labour voters chose Remain in the EU referendum but Remainers are unrepresented by the main parties. Instead of robustly challenging the Brexit narrative and the referendum result which was always advisory only, Labour plans to help the Conservatives slip it through with a few tweaks if we're lucky.
Far from saving £350 million per week to give to the NHS, the politically neutral Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates that Brexit will cost an EXTRA £250 million per week or a weekly total of £600 million, and forecasts a £220 billion increase in national debt by end of parliament to a shocking £1.945 trillion. If this happens, you can forget state pensions, saving the NHS or having anything like a stable economy.
If it hadn't been for Bank of England chief Mark Carney pumping another £60 billion pounds into the economy by buying up gilts (government debt) after the EU vote, extending the existing quantitative easing (QE) programme to £435bn and keeping the stock markets artificially inflated, it would have been even worse.
How many of us knew that we were voting to make ourselves poorer?
Philip Hammond's Autumn Statement on Wednesday confirmed that there's already a £100bn hole in the treasury, £58bn of which is a direct result of the Brexit vote.
So the worst off who suffered most under Bullingdon brat George Osborne's "austerity" measures when he should have been spending to stimulate the economy at rock bottom interest rates have even more to lose in the years ahead. Will the richest who tripled their wealth during the same period take their turn to recapitalise the banks? I wouldn't bet on that.
EU immigrants may be a net gain to the public purse but they are anathemised with barely a whisper from Labour. If their numbers fall, public finances will take an even bigger hit. Theresa May knows this. Jeremy Corbyn et al know this. The economy is reeling, the pound plummeting way below the level necessary to be advantageous to our exports. Britain's population is getting older and needs immigrants to do the work but Labour still panders to the right's obsession.
In response to a catastrophic future, Corbyn's Momentum leaders squeal breathlessly about a series of events whose objective appears to be to bamboozle their audiences that Brexit is an inevitability and the result of an "overwhelming majority". Only a quarter of the population voted for this permanent wrench and yet only the terms of Brexit are to be debated, not the legitimacy of it happening at all.
Momentum's Emma Rees gushed:
“After the success of The World Transformed in Liverpool, ‘Take Back Control’ is a series of exciting events that will bring together leave and remain voters to debate the terms of Brexit, the future of Britain and give a platform to voices too often left out of political conversations.”
Momentum's "exciting" sounds more like the ancient Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".
It's like asking how you would like the poo in your dinner. Hard or soft? The answer, "I'd rather not have any, thank you," is not up for grabs at all.
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GUARDIAN: State pension under threat as pension age may be about to rise again, says former minister. Not what most people would describe as "exciting" prospects.
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Andrew Coates thinks the Momentum membership might not have been consulted.
2 comments:
Do you want to risk 'betraying' the 52% of the people who voted "Leave"? A majority is a majority is a majority. Those in favour of Brexit should not to be treated with disdain. The grievances that led them to vote that way are authentic. We ignore that fact at our peril. Our anger should be directed towards Cameron who was arrogant enough to believe that he would pull off yet another voting triumph - and has left us with this mess. Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn are working with the reality we have been left with as a result of this referendum and laying the responsibility for the alienation that has produced this political turn exactly where it should lie - within the nasty soul-sucking clutches of Tory neo-liberalism. See the account in 'The Road to Corbyn' by Rob Donovan - yours truly.
Rob, 52 per cent was the figure for those who voted, not the entire electorate or the people. The Leave vote was 37 per cent of the electorate, or a quarter of the population, with that number shrinking all the time — please check out the LSE link that looks at the young people turning 18 onwards. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/10/24/brexit-is-not-the-will-of-the-british-people-it-never-has-been/
A simple majority works when you can vote someone out again in 4 years, but not in what MPs were specifically informed was an advisory referendum and not legally binding (see the extract above at the end of the piece). Something as fundamental as this break should require clear terms and a figure of at least half of the electorate. And the young people affected most should have been allowed to vote as it is their future that is being smashed up.
You are absolutely right that there are legitimate grievances that the establishment would be foolish not to heed: the top per cent tripling their wealth since the bankers' crash while we all get poorer; the selling off of the NHS; "austerity" that punished the poorest with no economic saving, such as the spiteful bedroom tax. But wrecking the conomy and putting into the hands of an even nastier band of profiteers than the EU rich men's club is an act of national self-harm. Workers' rights, clean beaches, extra university funding, the net tax revenues contributed by EU migrants — these are all things that are endangered by the unelected incumbents in charge of Brexit. All these things will most likely get worse outside the EU.
However ... I have an unpleasant feeling that the Brexit vote shock might have already done the damage. If Italy defaults ... Hanging on may very well end up up like being tethered to the Titanic as it goes down. But the alternative is to swim through fire to the shore alongside some viciously feral breadheads who'll recreate Lord of the Flies rather than some replay of Victorian empire nostalgia.
Meanwhile, Theresa May has already sent UK planes to the South China Sea to poke the Chinese hornets' nest with a sharp stick in order to curry favour with Trump now that we no longer have a globalised economy to trade in. How was that for bad timing? Bow down to our Orange Overlord and be prepared to do his bidding.
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