Comrade Corbyn’s shameful silence on Europe

WHEN he stood for election as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn promised to make a complete break from its Blairite past. For this reason, he won overwhelming support from the mass of party members who had felt estranged since New Labour’s move towards the right.

It is certainly true that Mr Corbyn has represented a sharp change in style from Mr Blair. However, with regard to policy, he has failed in his promise and diverged much less than expected from the Blairites.

Mr Corbyn has chosen a strategy of compromise rather than confrontation and allowed the Right wing of his party to influence him on a number of crucial issues.

The most important victory by Blairite MPs — who include Liz Kendall, Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt — concerns Europe.

It is well known that Mr Corbyn is personally opposed to Britain’s membership of the EU. He voted against the then Common Market in the 1975 referendum and was a disciple of Tony Benn, who viewed the EU as a capitalist conspiracy and a threat to British national sovereignty.

But Mr Corbyn has since made a U-turn and is campaigning for a Remain vote.

Even though he has been accused of betraying his core principles, I can understand his position. There are only a limited number of battles that any leader can fight at once. Allies say he is conserving his resources for a battle he cares about much more passionately — the debate over Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent.

But I believe that Mr Corbyn’s decision to keep a low profile during the EU referendum campaign (and hope to watch the Tories implode into civil war) is a catastrophic mistake that will wreck his leadership and, in due course, tear the Labour party apart.

This is because Mr Corbyn is letting down the huge number of Labour voters, especially working-class families in the Midlands and the North of England, who adamantly oppose our continued membership of the EU.

This antipathy is partly down to oldfashioned patriotism. They are proud of their communities and often have ancestors who fought for King and Country. But it is also based on economic self-interest.

THIs week’s staggering official figures showing net migration into the UK last year was 330,000 are merely statistics — but they reflect the profound effect that immigration is having in numerous Labour constituencies.

Mass migration brings hundreds of thousands of foreign workers happy to take a job at much lower wages than indigenous Britons, who are often, therefore, forced on the dole. It also means more pressure on schools, housing and the NHs.

Of course, in addition, in countless areas people feel their local communities have been changed beyond recognition.

How typical of bien pensant Leftwingers, cocooned in their metro- politan enclaves, to treat these justified views with contempt.

But the fact is that they don’t suffer from the effects of mass immigration. All they see is the opportunity to hire a cheap Polish plumber (who they inevitably pay in cash) and buy exotic ingredients from a 24-hour corner shop for their fancy Yotam Ottolenghi recipes.

similarly, the business classes (who are mostly pro-EU) benefit from mass immigration because cheap foreign labour means big company profits.

In former decades, it was the Labour Party that stood up for vulnerable and hard- working working people.

But Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party seems reluctant to do so. When it comes to immigration, Corbyn’s Labour — like Blair’s — is on the side of the boss class.

Only a tiny number of Labour MPs — certainly not stretching beyond single figures — want Britain to quit the EU. This means that millions of Labour supporters are unrepresented.

Typical is the constituency of stoke Central, represented by Tristram Hunt, a keen pro-European and close ally of the former Euro Commissioner Peter Mandelson. Recent academic research by Durham University and the University of East Anglia shows 56 per cent of Mr Hunt’s constituents favour Brexit.

similarly, there are the Labour folk in the Yorkshire fiefdom of Yvette Cooper MP, another cheerleader for the EU. The research shows that 62 per cent of voters in her constituency are fed up with the EU.

For her part, Ms Cooper arrogantly seems to believe that their best interests are to stay in the EU.

Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson is another betraying the people he represents in Parliament. The universities’ surveys show that 65 per cent of his constituents in West Bromwich East want us to pull out of the EU. Yet with disdainful bluster, Mr Watson declares: ‘To me, being European and in the EU is part of our national fabric.’ The list of Labour Judases continues.

OUT of the 25 most Eurosceptic Labour constituencies in England, my calculations suggest only one is represented by an MP who shares their voters’ wish for Britain to leave the EU.

This is Luton North, whose MP, Kelvin Hopkins, nobly says: ‘There should be no doubt that the EU is anti-working class, anti- socialist and anti-democratic. This has been the case since its first incarnation as the European Common Market in 1957, and the evidence is now overwhelming.’

sadly, there are few MPs like Mr Hopkins. Most of his colleagues on the Opposition benches clearly believe any of their constituents who support Brexit are delusional.

This is shabby and undemocratic politics. It is also a betrayal of Labour’s duty to its support base — and Mr Corbyn is to blame for letting his party, which has secured huge advances over the years for working- class people, break the trust with its supporters.

That is why it is so shocking Labour has sided with bosses’ organisation the CBI, the big banks, the IMF and with corporate giants such as Goldman sachs against the interests of its voters.

How can it want Britain to be part of a sclerotic body that has been responsible for the destruction of the Greek and Italian economies, and created youth unemployment of up to 50 per cent in parts of southern Europe?

This is by any standards an historic betrayal, and I wonder whether Labour can survive it.

What’s more, it is perverse how Jeremy Corbyn has failed to learn the lessons of what happened to Labour when it sold its supporters in scotland down the river.

For 13 years under New Labour, it took its traditional voters North of the border for granted and treated them with contempt. The result was the obliteration of scottish Labour, left with just one MP.

Unless Mr Corbyn is very careful, the fate could happen south of the border. If that occurred, we would say goodbye for ever to Labour as a party of government — not only in scotland — but across Britain, too.