Labour civil war breaks out
Defeated MP Flint accuses Thornberry of calling Leave voters ‘stupid’
LABOUR’S post-election meltdown continued unabated yesterday as one of the party’s defeated MPs accused Emily Thornberry of branding northern English Leave-supporters ‘stupid’.
Caroline Flint, who lost her seat in the party’s former stronghold of Don Valley, claimed the Shadow Foreign Secretary had told a colleague: ‘I’m glad my constituents aren’t as stupid as yours.’
Last night, Miss Thornberry – seen by some as a potential leadership candidate – angrily denied the claim as a ‘total and utter lie’, and was said to be instructing lawyers.
The claim had echoes of an incident which forced Miss Thornberry to resign from Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet in 2014 after being accused of snobbery.
The Islington South and Finsbury MP was accused of looking down on the working class after tweeting a photo of a house in Strood, Kent, bedecked with England flags with the caption: ‘Image from Rochester’.
Miss Flint, who lost Don Valley by 13,630 votes on the back of a huge swing to the Tories, lashed out at Miss Thornberry and fellow Remainer Sir Keir Starmer, the Shadow Brexit Secretary.
She told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday: ‘I don’t believe anybody who have been the architects of our European policy in the last few years is credible to be leader – I don’t think they can win back these seats. Keir Starmer led us to a policy that did not listen to Labour Leave voices who urged caution, he led us down the path of a second referendum, and I’m afraid Emily Thornberry did as well.
‘She said to one of my colleagues: “I’m glad my constituents aren’t as stupid as yours”.
‘I’m sorry, it’s not acceptable. And therefore we’re going to have to really look at what might make a candidate for leader who can at least steer us to a better place over the next few years.’
Later, Miss Thornberry said in a statement: ‘This is a total and utter lie. I have never said this to anyone, nor anything like it, and I hope, needless to say, it is not something I would ever think.’ She later added on Twitter: ‘I once told Michael Fallon: ‘‘You can’t just go round making things up.’’ Whatever our differences, let’s not sink into that gutter.’
Former Labour MP Lord John Mann, a Brexit supporter who stood down at the election to become the government’s antiSemitism tsar, tweeted: ‘Difficult one this: who do you believe, Emily or Caroline? Known them both for decades. And the honest politician is... Caroline.’
Miss Flint, a Tony Blair loyalist and MP since 1997 who served on the frontbench under three Labour leaders, has a long history of clashes with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. She was one of 19 Labour MPs who voted through the first stage of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal in October. Asked whether she believed Mr Corbyn was taking enough personal responsibility for the party’s defeat, Miss Flint replied: ‘No.’
She said: ‘I don’t think it should be anybody who has had a hand in our Brexit strategy over the last few years. I don’t think it can be Corbyn without a beard, I think that would be the wrong move as well.’
The former MP said she was ‘emotional’ and ‘trying to stem my anger’. She told Sky: ‘This has been brewing for some time. And I think in many respects our party – the balance in terms of the voices that are heard – has gone too much towards the metropolitan cities and university towns and away from these core areas.
‘In the pursuit of Remain, a number of people who have been ardent Remainers in our party on our front bench, people like Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry, but many others – Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper – have contributed to sacrificing 59 seats.
‘But “don’t worry, we’ve got Putney and we’ve got Canterbury”. With all due respect to the Labour MPs for those constituencies, I don’t believe that was worth it.’
‘This is a total and utter lie’