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T.R.O.Y. wrote:Natasha Whittam wrote:
Ask that question again in 5 years and the answer will be relevant.
Fair point, but so far I can’t see any positives - and nothing really on the horizon either.
Bit of a pity then that Labour didn't have a leader calling for its members to vote Remain, wasn't it?
Corbyn’s changing Brexit stance
Backbench Eurosceptic
It’s fair to say that for the majority of his political life, Mr Corbyn has been less than enthusiastic about the EU.
In 2015, he told Reuters that he voted against Britain’s membership of the trade bloc’s forerunner, the European Economic Community, when Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson put the question to a public ballot in 1975.
And his scepticism continued as a backbench MP.
In 1993, he described the “great danger to the cause of socialism in this country or any other country of the imposition of a bankers’ Europe on the people of this country”.
Three years later, he railed against “a European bureaucracy totally unaccountable to anybody,” lamenting that “powers have gone from national parliaments”.
Ahead of Ireland’s 2009 referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Mr Corbyn said of the EU’s ties with NATO: “We are creating for ourselves here one massive great Frankenstein that will damage all of us in the long run.”
‘Lukewarm’ referendum campaign?
The Labour leader was criticised by some in the party for what they considered his “lukewarm” campaigning during the 2016 referendum.
The Labour leader was criticised* by some in the party for what they considered his “lukewarm” campaigning during the 2016 referendum.
Just weeks before the vote, he famously told Channel 4’s The Last Leg that his enthusiasm for EU membership was about “seven, or seven and a half out of 10”.
But in a separate speech at the time, he maintained that despite its deficiencies, there was still an “overwhelming case” for remaining in the trade bloc.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-corbyns-changing-brexit-stance
- * The head of the official remain campaign, former Labour election candidate Will Straw, said in an interview with the BBC for a programme on the referendum to be aired on Monday, that he felt “let down” by Corbyn’s “lukewarm” support in the referendum. Straw complained that it had taken him six months to secure a meeting with one of the leader’s advisers.
Former European commissioner Lord Mandelson also told the BBC that remain campaigners were left puzzling over whether Corbyn, who told a chat show during the campaign that he would only rate the EU seven out of 10, really wanted Britain to stay in the 28-nation bloc.
The Labour peer told the programme, Brexit – The Battle for Britain: “It was very difficult to know what Jeremy Corbyn’s motives were. Did he just sort of get out of bed the wrong side every day and not feel [in a] very sort of friendly, happy mood and want to help us?
"Or was there something deeper – did he simply not want to find himself on the same side as the prime minister and the government? Or perhaps he just, deep down, actually doesn’t think we should remain in the European Union? Who knows?”
Mandelson added: “We were greatly damaged by Jeremy Corbyn’s stance, no doubt at all about that.
“Not only was he most of the time absent from the battle, but he was holding back the efforts of Alan Johnson and the Labour In campaign. I mean they felt undermined, at times they felt actually their efforts were being sabotaged by Jeremy Corbyn and the people around him.”**
Straw, who was executive director of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, told the BBC programme: “With just a couple of weeks to go there were far too many people who didn’t know Labour’s position on the referendum.
“And I think that was because of a lack of concerted campaigning by the leadership over many months leading up to that point ... I felt let down, yes.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/07/jeremy-corbyn-rules-out-second-referendum-brexit
- **Corbyn sabotaged Labour’s remain campaign. He must resign
[NOTE - The following is from Phil Wilson (who is he you may well ask - well he was the head honcho and Chair of the Labour MP's vote Remain 'war cabinet'].
Corbyn issued a note to all MPs on 17 September 2015 telling them that Labour would campaign to remain in the European Union. And yet he decided to go on holiday in the middle of the campaign. He did not visit the Labour heartlands of the north-east and instead raised esoteric issues such as Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which had no resonance on the doorstep.
This leads to me to the greatest betrayal and the final straw for many MPs. I have been told and shown evidence by an overwhelming number of unimpeachably neutral Labour remain staff that Corbyn’s office, for which he must take full responsibility, consistently attempted to weaken and sabotage the Labour remain campaign, in contravention of the party’s official position. For example, they resisted all polling and focus group evidence on message and tone, raised no campaign finance, failed to engage with the campaign delivery and deliberately weakened and damaged the argument Labour sought to make.
Corbyn made only a smattering of campaign appearances, and they were lacklustre in delivery and critical of the EU in tone resulting in Labour voters not knowing the party’s position or hearing our argument. Corbyn’s infrequent campaign appearances and narrow focus, in turned limited the party’s appeal. He kept saying that the economic shock of Brexit was not real. It is. And it is working people and Labour communities that will pay the price. A price that is being felt right now.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/26/corbyn-must-resign-inadequate-leader-betrayal
