Labour is plumbing lowest depths of cynical behaviour
THERE has been a broadcast media drumbeat going on all week. It would have you believe that Boris Johnson is on course to be the shortest-lived prime minister since George Canning in the early 19th century (119 days) and that a resurgent Labour opposition has him and Brexit on the ropes.
But anyone watching shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry’s showing on Question Time, the BBC’s flagship political debate programme, on Thursday night will surely beg to differ.
Not only was she full of empty bluster, repeatedly rude and disrespectful to other guests, lacking any of the qualities one might hope for in a putative senior Cabinet minister and casually abusive about the Prime Minister of our country, but she also had the misfortune to be questioned in some detail about Labour’s actual policy.
And that is where everything fell apart. Question Time presenter Fiona Bruce seemed genuinely nonplussed to hear Ms Thornberry confirm that if Labour wins the impending election it will send her to Brussels to negotiate a better Brexit deal and then swiftly put that deal to the British public in a second referendum against the alternative choice of Remaining in the EU. Bear with me, this gets better.
IN SUCH a referendum Labour and Ms Thornberry would campaign in favour of Remain – against the very deal they would have just shaken on with the EU.
Political commentator Iain Dale, another panellist on the show, surely spoke for an incredulous television audience and a studio audience that had dissolved into giggles when he asked her: “Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? You think people are going to vote for you on that basis? Have you no shame?”
Shameless is certainly the word that comes to mind. For
Labour’s policy on the overwhelmingly dominant issue of the day is not actually designed to be credible or even, for that matter, real but merely to help the party try to square the circle of how to appeal to metropolitan Remainers while still having a line to peddle to its traditional working-class, pro-Leave base.
It wishes to say that it supports a second referendum and will back Remain, but also to claim it is holding true to Brexit and will get better terms from Brussels.
But that is to play the British public for fools. Both propositions cannot be true at the same time.
Imagine the conversation the merciless technocrats of the European Commission would be having with Ms Thornberry: “Ah, Emily, come in. So you are looking for a deal so bad that it will ensure the British public vote to stay in the EU after all? It’s certainly an unusual request but we think we can help.”
We have already seen what Brussels did to one British negotiating team whose heart was transparently not in the Brexit process. To be presented with a new one whose very goal was to defeat any agreement reached, stay in the EU and continue paying £1billion net a month of British taxpayers’ money would inexorably lead to a new “worst deal in history” far inferior even to the one agreed by Mrs May. This policy will not survive contact with the electorate for so much as a single day once an election campaign is underway. And once Labour’s policy on the central issue falls apart, who is going to trust them on anything else?
This is why Tony Blair has called on Jeremy Corbyn to do all that he can to dodge the verdict of the British public by blocking Boris Johnson’s efforts to force an early contest – and why Mr Corbyn has obliged despite having called for such an election almost every day for two years.
ACONFIDENT or competent opposition would regard the prospect of an immediate general election as an opportunity to rid the country of a government it alleges is a walking disaster. But this Labour opposition regards it as a trap. So it is drawing out the agony for Mr Johnson and many millions of Leave voters by proposing not to replace him but to legally oblige him to enact a policy he was explicitly installed to prevent – a further pointless extension to our EU membership.
By doing this in connivance with Commons Speaker John Bercow and assisted by a phalanx of Tory fifth columnists, Labour hopes to turn voters against Mr Johnson to the point that they decide that he has betrayed his mandate and must be replaced come what may.
It is the most cowardly and dishonest political ruse pursued by any major political party in modern times. It deserves to fail. And with Ms Thornberry as its leading public advocate, it most definitely will.
‘She was full of empty bluster, repeatedly rude and disrespectful’