Saturday 26 August 2017

Not Going Soft

And so, Keir Starmer expresses the view of between 60 and 100 Conservative MPs as a bare minimum (those are just the ones who are opposed root and branch to Brexit), including the Prime Minister, most of her Cabinet, and the whole of her entourage.

The view, moreover, of Peter Hitchens in his column last week.

But most certainly not the view of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Seumas Milne, Andrew Fisher, the Morning Star, Counterfire, and so on.

There is a reason why Leave won in, and was won by, Wales and the North, with Conservative-voting areas mostly voting Remain in 2016, and with Remain-voting areas mostly voting Conservative in 2017.

If Laura Pidcock wants an opportunity to differentiate herself from "the enemy" on the benches opposite, then here it is.

As for "You should have voted Tory for a Hard Brexit", even had that party been offering such a thing, then this issue has been irrelevant to General Elections since the result in 1983.

Hence the referendum, for all the difference that it looks like making.

General Elections, by definition, are about other things. If that were not so, then there would never have been a referendum.

2 comments:

  1. Every word of this is spot on. The idea that Hartlepool or the Rhondda voted for Brexit because the people there wanted more Thatcherism is as ridiculous as the idea that they might then have voted Tory to deliver Brexit or Thatcherism or anything else. The likes of the Mail and the Telegraph have to face the fact their own readers voted Remain and the people they think are scum voted Leave, but Leave won. The Mail on Sunday and most Tory MPs do get that even if most Tory MPs haven't said so yet. But they will. Keep up your invaluable work

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    Replies
    1. Oh, depend upon it.

      33 years late, the referendum result was the Labour victory of 1983. That is the key to understanding both who voted for it, which is clear from a mere parousal of the map, and why they did so, which is scarcely less obvious, but which they will readily tell you if asked.

      Far from being the victory of those who have been allowed to monopolise the anti-EU microphone for the last 25 years, the referendum result was a repudiation of everything that, at any profound level, they stood for.

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