Hopefully I won’t be expelled for saying this, but after 60 years of being a member of the Labour Party I’m beginning to wonder whether I should ask for my money back
Hopefully I won’t be expelled for saying this, but after 60 years of being a member of the Labour Party I’m beginning to wonder whether I should ask for my money back.
My party is so busy trying to shed its working-class supporters and become a metropolitan team of amateur Liberal Democrats that it’s no longer recognisable.
I joined a party dedicated to the betterment of the people, a party which my predecessor as MP for Grimsby, Tony Crosland, told me was about equality.
Today, it has become a mob of cosmopolitan meritocrats who love the European Union more than those at the bottom of society’s top-heavy heap. Jean-Claude Juncker’s federalism now means more to Labour than socialism.
Nothing demonstrates this better than its clamour for a second referendum. As made clear in Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement yesterday that he will support a referendum on a Conservative deal and back Remain, Labour seems intent on prioritising the champagne-drinking population of chi-chi Islington above those it should be helping.
Today, Labour has become a mob of cosmopolitan meritocrats who love the European Union more than those at the bottom of society’s top-heavy heap. As made clear in Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement yesterday that he will support a referendum on a Conservative deal and back Remain
That our once-great trade unions cheered him on makes Labour’s betrayal of working-class Leave voters all the more depressing.
At the last general election, every Labour MP stood on a manifesto which promised to ‘accept the referendum result’.
It seemed a logical step. Studies have shown that Brexit voters tended to be those in social housing, those with no formal education and those earning below £1,200 a month. They were traditional Labour voters in traditional Labour areas.
Yet the metropolitan clique leading my party think they know better. From the moment the referendum result was announced, it became clear that they had no intention of keeping their promise, and set out deliberately to undermine it.
From deputy leader Tom Watson to shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, almost everyone in Corbyn’s top team has suggested that the referendum should be rerun.
As for Corbyn, his attempts to sit on the fence have finally come undone. And his previous line of defence, that we should have a general election first, now looks suicidal as the party plummets in the polls.
From deputy leader Tom Watson (pictured) to shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, almost everyone in Corbyn’s top team has suggested that the referendum should be rerun
The long and tortured history of Labour’s gradual slide into its love affair with the European Union demonstrates the truth of the old political nostrum – when you’re in a hole stop digging.
Back in 1961, the then leader Hugh Gaitskell firmly committed the party against joining the Common Market. His successor, Harold Wilson, flirted with the idea, only to have consummation nullified by General De Gaulle.
When Ted Heath managed to get us in on humiliating terms, he got the necessary legislation through Parliament only on the votes of Labour’s Right-wing rebels.
His trickery was soon mimicked by Wilson, whose 1975 referendum backed the existing status quo of membership, as referenda usually do. By the early Eighties, these deceits had cost our membership dearly.
My own town of Grimsby’s fishing industry was ruined when the Europeans cunningly declared the seas around Britain were common waters and gave other members, even landlocked Luxembourg, equal access. As a result, we got only a small proportion of our own fish.
What had been a surplus in our trade with Europe before we went in became a steadily growing deficit. Britain’s membership contributions – in effect, our payments to the EU for being damaged by them – went up year by year, siphoning off money to Europe, particularly to the powerful German economy, which generated ever-bigger surpluses by keeping its exchange rate down.
Major Labour figures from Roy Jenkins to Peter Mandelson went off to Brussels and found a bigger and better stage to strut on
To cap all this, Europe’s fast growth, which was supposed to boost our own, slowed substantially. Choosing to ignore this, our political class fell in love with Brussels. Trade unions looked to the bureaucrats to protect them from the lasting effects of Thatcher, while Blairites hoped it would stop what they saw as the far-Left extremism exemplified by Corbyn. Major Labour figures from Roy Jenkins to Peter Mandelson went off to Brussels and found a bigger and better stage to strut on. Tony Blair also fell hook, line and sinker for it.
Meanwhile, Labour’s working-class roots were withering and my party became more middle-class and metropolitan, allowing its Northern heartlands to fall behind.
Labour eventually tried to rebuild itself by becoming a coalition of causes; feminism, LGBTism, environmentalism, localism, ethnic politics. You name a boutique issue, we were for it – with the exception of regenerating growth and advancing equality.
Soon a gulf emerged and those separated from the political stratosphere expressed themselves in a howl of protest.
Being British, this emerged not in hurling paving stones and chopping down speed cameras like the yellow jackets in France. The protest was less violent – opting for Brexit when the opportunity arose. The Brexit vote horrified our party’s middle-class leaders, who condemned it as the product of ignorant, uneducated and racist plebs. In short, everything Labour’s ‘enlightened’ folk abhorred.
These ‘plebs’ are now seen by Labour’s elite as an untrendy embarrassment, a nuisance, hostile to all the cosmopolitan causes that the party is now about.
Labour’s responsibility is to see that the will of these people is implemented.
Yet Labour leaders like Yvette Cooper, Tony Blair and Hilary Benn think they know better, using every tactic in the book to weaken our negotiating position, create fear and bind us to the EU.
They have attempted to avoid the issue of the referendum vote by denouncing a Tory Brexit (an easy job since Theresa May was making such a mess of it) and pretending Labour would get a better deal.
Yet Labour leaders like Yvette Cooper, Tony Blair and Hilary Benn think they know better, using every tactic in the book to weaken our negotiating position, create fear and bind us to the EU
Sadly the European elections, where the newly formed Brexit Party stormed to victory, showed that this fooled no one.
Labour lost massive support on both sides of the Brexit divide. Blairites outed themselves as born-again Liberal Democrats. Larger numbers of Brexiteers went for Farage.
Caught in limbo, Corbyn has now been driven into practically declaring us a Remain party in support of a second referendum.
Not that one is particularly likely. A second vote is impossible unless Parliament agrees some settlement for the people to vote on, a process which Labour has done everything to scupper.
But even if a second referendum doesn’t happen, Labour’s new position could severely damage Britain’s future.
Blindly declaring its support for a second ‘People’s Vote’ would also push Britain into a trap and encourage the EU to refuse to improve on the derisory deal they’ve offered Theresa, thus prolonging the agony that Labour deplores.
And if we commit to another referendum and Parliament rules out No Deal, all the EU has to do is sit, wait and watch us flounder.
Meanwhile, supporting Remain will do nothing to bring back Labour’s lost regions, rebuild its working-class base, or focus its attention on the growing problems of real people.
It will only further enthrone the middle-class, metropolitan clique who now dominate the party.
Labour’s head has become as soft as its heart. If its love of Brussels and all its works becomes more important than its residual feelings for Grimethorpe or Grimsby, we’ve had it.