Starmer’s Brexit bombshell is a clear warning

Adamning new book lays the blame for Labour’s collapse at the 2019 general Election firmly at the door of Sir Keir Starmer, the party’s thenshadow Brexit secretary.

The Starmer Project: a Journey To The Right by Oliver Eagleton claims the two-faced Starmer told then-leader Jeremy Corbyn a second referendum was ‘totally stupid’ and ‘not a realistic position’.

But unbeknown to Corbyn, Eagleton says Starmer was, in fact, holding secret talks with Lord mandelson and figures from the People’s Vote campaign.

at the 2018 Labour conference, Starmer — egged on by mandelson — put a line in his speech saying that Labour ‘must include campaigning for a [second] public vote and no one is ruling out Remain as an option’.

But Starmer was instructed by Corbyn’s office to remove the phrase ‘remain as an option’. He agreed but then reinstated it without consulting the then-party leader, according to Eagleton, who writes for new Left Review.

as a result, the word ‘Remain’, which — until then — had been deliberately withheld from frontbench speeches, ‘ became the headline for the entire Labour conference’.

The Tories duly pounced, accusing Labour of betraying the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit in 2016.

Eagleton says Starmer had ‘tied Labour and Corbyn to mandelson, sealing Labour’s electoral oblivion’. if Starmer becomes Prime minister, can we trust him not to try to unpick Brexit all over again?