I might have profoundly disagreed with the 52% who voted to take Britain out of the EU but I am not stupid enough – honest! – to suggest that somehow they were wrong and that we should have a re-run until they vote the “right” way. And even though we have no idea what Brexit will look like, Brexit is coming. And it’s absolutely crucial that everyone is properly engaged in the debates and negotiations that are to come. This will shape our entire future. So, what does the Labour Party decide to do at its annual conference in Liverpool? It decides not to talk about it at all.
I read that it is the delegates who have decided that the most critical national debate of the decade is not worthy of their time. I am sure there are other vital topics to command their attention, but to ignore the vote to leave the EU and not even discuss it suggests a monumental dereliction of duty.
This, surely, gives a free run to the Conservatives to do whatever they like on the subject. This is how I see things panning out.
In early 2017, Theresa May will trigger article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which is effectively the starting pistol to negotiate both our exit from the EU and our future relations with it. She will have two years to complete the deal, so by 2019 we will know what life outside the EU will look like. I suspect the future will not look too good. May and her advisors will know better than anyone that they could be heading into the 2020 general election a year after Brexit, quite possibly with the economy tanking, trade tariffs imposed by the EU, the end of free movement with the introduction of visas to travel abroad and huge insecurity across the land. May will surely not allow this to happen.
If article 50 is triggered in, say, March 2017, I suspect May and her government will have set out a shopping list of demands in her negotiations which she hopes will explain, for the first time, what Brexit means. She has repeatedly said Brexit means Brexit without actually saying what it means, because she can’t. No one can. So she will call a general election and win with a landslide majority.
As we have said before, May will call an election for two main reasons. One will be to buy time – an extra two years – to enable the electorate to get used to a post-EU world and the other will be the current state of the official opposition. Today’s opinion polls show the Tories 15% ahead Labour and that’s before the boundary changes which will hurt Labour still further. It would be madness for May not to strike with the polls looking so good for her and so bad for Labour and one thing May isn’t is mad. She is not the imagined “safe pair of hands” either which is another reason she will surely go to the country next year.
Britain really does need the best deal possible from the negotiations because we will be massively affected in terms of almost every aspect of our lives. But the Labour Party has decided not to bother to debate it.
I doubt that this unbelievably stupid decision has anything to do with the hapless and hopeless re-elected Labour ‘leader’ Corbyn, who is probably still basking in his success, being cheered to the rafters after making speeches to people who already agree with him. Some half-witted conference arrangements committee will have made a recommendation to delegates, before they went out for an evening of the far more important business of partying and boozing (why else does anyone go to a conference?). “All in favour say aye,” said the chairperson. “That’s carried. We won’t even talk about Britain leaving the EU with all the implications that will have for working people. We’ll now adjourn for lunch. Mine’s a few pints of Boston’s Old Thumper.”
“How can we even take the Labour Party seriously?” May will ask on a party political broadcast early next May. “Your Conservative government has been working hard since you voted to leave the EU. Our manifesto tells you openly and honestly what we hope to gain from leaving the EU, things that will benefit working people up and down the country. You can vote for me to fight for your interests, or you can vote for the opposition who couldn’t even spare the time to talk about it at their conference last September. We gave you the referendum. Now give us the chance to finish the job. You can trust us.”
I couldn’t trust any Tory government, least of all this one, to do anything that was in the interests of working people and I do not believe, for one moment, that Theresa May’s priority will be the “ordinary working people” she keeps banging on about. She will seek assurances and deals for those who do best under a Tory government, like the bankers who wrecked the world economy in 2008, not protections for those who still suffer the effects.
It is absolutely vital that May and the Conservatives are held to account by a forensic opposition. However, it seems this opposition doesn’t even want to talk about it. Another step towards irrelevance for the people’s party. Shame on Labour.
