Is it too much to ask for a strong and coherent Labour voice?
IN some six weeks’ time, the UK Government will implement the final stage of the most disastrous policy decision it has made since Suez, the year before I was born.
Suez signalled the end of Empire, leaving the European Union signals our final diminishment as a nation, withdrawing to the false security of our supposed island fortress, comforted by this joke slogan of “Global Britain”.
Possibly, it will mean the end of the United Kingdom itself, as Scotland prepares for an overwhelming Scottish Nationalist victory in its Parliamentary elections next year, Wales increasingly asserts its identity and Northern Ireland lags behind the rest of the country and moves inevitably closer to the Republic.
England, which is all that may ultimately be left, will look a very friendless and isolated place by the time this is all finished.
Yes, I am aware that as a “sad” Remoaner I am banging a drum which many people wished would stay quiet, but if one genuinely believes in a principle, in a set of values that underpin it and fundamentally that we are better together than thrust apart, it is still necessary to shout about it.
We have a Government which is currently blowing so many dog whistles that it is difficult to hear anything clearly. The Immigration Bill, which has just become an Act, being a case in point. Priti Patel crows that it has ended “free movement”, which indeed it has, for those of us who are UK citizens.
It will not end our reliance on migrant labour and, indeed, even this Government has acknowledged that by lowering the income threshold for entry from £35,000 to £20,000 and still failing to reveal what its “points-based” entry system will actually consist of.
We are told trade will remain seamless, while at the same time huge lorry parks are built in Kent for the miles-long queues expected as customs checks are reintroduced and tariffs reimposed. We may end up with no deal at all when we leave, hanging from the cross of fishing rights, when most British-caught fish is sold on the Continent and the right of a Tory Government, which has always decried baling out “failing” industries demanding that very ability.
In all this, the Labour Party and its new leader has a dilemma. The party membership are fundamentally Remainers, they very likely now represent the majority of voters and yet do we hear a siren call from Labour that this is all a tragic mistake and must be reversed? We hear no such thing.
Will Labour vote for some thin deal cobbled together, thus allying itself with the mess the Tories have made of this, or will it stand on its principles and vote one down, risking having no deal at all? Will it simply step aside, abstain and abdicate responsible opposition?
As a country, we seem about to leap off the proverbial cliff, led by an “emperor” who has no clothes. Is it too much to ask for Labour to shout a little louder to “turn around and put some clothes on”?!
I am occasionally asked if I will rejoin the party I left two years ago, and of which I was a member for 44 years, and the answer is, until they find a strong and coherent voice on this prime issue of our times, no.