\n<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/ELrYC0GXUAAzm3h.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n- That the promise of a second referendum was, undoubtedly, one of the things that dragged the Liberal Democrats down from their 20% plus poll rating they held for most of 2019 and contributed to Labour\u2019s recovery from low\/mid 20s to the giddy heights of 32% in the general election<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/1280px-Uk2022polling15average-1024x385.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n- That Corbyn has spent four years turning Labour into a middle class, metropolitan party \u2013 its voters and members are overwhelmingly remain \u2013 and any reduction in the seats lost in the towns of the north, midlands and Wales by being unambiguously pro-Brexit would have been, at least partly, offset by losses in the cities.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
But even if we take it at face value the claim that Labour would have gained more votes if it had taken an unashamedly Leave position, it would still have been the wrong thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leave is wrong economically. <\/em>Leave will make the people\nof the United Kingdom poorer than they would otherwise be, and all the evidence\nshows that it will do the greatest damage to the poorest communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leave is wrong socially.<\/em> The Brexit agenda is\ndesigned to divide people, to break up links between nations but also to break\nup communities. It seeks to turn back the clock \u2013 there is no Brexit that doesn\u2019t\nundermine the rights and freedoms that underpin the (for all its flaws) more\nopen and equal society we now live in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Leave is wrong morally.<\/em> It\u2019s designed build walls and exclude and if, today, its targets are immigrants and foreigners make no mistake, when the shit hits the fan (and it will), the Brexiters will find other minorities and vulnerable groups to scapegoat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Leave is wrong \u2013 even if it is popular<\/strong>. And arguing now that we should have supported it in the election because it was electorally expedient is wrong too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m a believer in parties building broad-based alliances, but a party also has to lead sometimes. Whether it was abolishing the death penalty, legalising homosexuality, making racial discrimination illegal or legalising abortion (all enabled by that most centrist melt of centrist Labour melts \u2013 Roy Jenkins \u2013 in just three extraordinary, brave years), Labour has done best when it has lead the public not surrendered to a desire to appease narrow (sometimes narrow-minded) majorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And let\u2019s be absolutely<\/strong> clear \u2013 there\u2019s nothing \u201ccentrist\u201d about backing Remain. Remain is the defence of trades unions hard won rights, it\u2019s the maintenance of the human right to equality of treatment across all of society and for every minority, it\u2019s internationalist in bringing people together and spreading understanding and common rights across borders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there\u2019s nothing radical about Leave\u2019s pretence that we can go back to the 1950s \u2013 whether your imagined 1950s is a Tory idyll of village greens and no foreigners or Lexit\u2019s \u201csocialism in one nation\u201d nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Corbynites are wrong about Brexit\u2019s effect on the\nelection. They don\u2019t believe it. They are using it as a crude distraction from\ntheir own failures. But even if they were right, even if unequivocally backing\nBrexit had been the only way to win the election, it would still have been the\nwrong thing to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The way in which Corbyn and his mates have been using the issue of Brexit as a weapon in their desperate attempts to retain control of the Labour Party is, I think, revealing. The most common criticism of the Labour Party they inherited was that it wasn\u2019t ideologically pure enough. That it was too concerned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[20,25],"tags":[161,142,133],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-MR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3029"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3042,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029\/revisions\/3042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- That Corbyn has spent four years turning Labour into a middle class, metropolitan party \u2013 its voters and members are overwhelmingly remain \u2013 and any reduction in the seats lost in the towns of the north, midlands and Wales by being unambiguously pro-Brexit would have been, at least partly, offset by losses in the cities.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n