The Labour Party's position on Brexit: enabling harm

The current Labour position on Brexit is more than incoherent, it is suicidal.

Only a perishingly small majority chose Brexit. Think about it, if 2% of the people voting had voted in the opposite direction Remain would have won, if that 2% had stayed at home it would have been a tie. Furthermore, the referendum was advisory, it did not give this government or any government a mandate to do what it is actually doing. I must 'accept democracy' Jeremy Corbyn says (why is suddenly, everybody so keen on this verb "accept", it is an evangelical, repressive term, is it not?), that wasn't democracy at least not in the healthy functioning meaning of the word. It was a skewed result from a cracked system. It is a bit like saying that if my computer broke down I should just accept that it broken and not attempt to mend it. Because currently the Labour Party aren't attempting to mend the system, they are running with it and in fact supporting its brokenness.

Labour are accepting this result and accepting that the system was broken without questioning what happened and why it happened. This is not a little sick and a little dangerous, it is propping up the sickness and the extreme right wankery which is Brexit. Scratch every reason behind Brexit and you will find exceptionalism and racism. You will not be able to wean people away from it while you profess to support it in this way. If a friend attempted to commit suicide by cutting their wrist would you offer them a knife and suggest they should learn how to slice themselves up better? Or would you call an ambulance and try to convince them that doing away with themselves is a bad idea? Because currently the Labour Party is doing the former rather than the latter.

I approach this from the direction of morality and right because I am pointing out that one narrowly won advisory referendum is not grounds to do away with 40 years of relationship building with our closest and most influential neighbours, especially in these times with the reactionary ogre that is Trump in the White House.

I do not believe that it is possible to put an "alternative programme" in place without pulling out Brexit by the root. Anything else and you will be building that brave new world on shifting sands. It saddens me that so many good people are currently engaged in attempting to win UKIP supporters over to the Labour Party, and by extension, supporting a system that will only harm our country and its people. I really do think Labour needs to take a step back and take a good look at what it’s doing, because, at the moment, it's going nowhere.

I am very clear that what Labour needed to do a week ago, is stand up and be counted in the House of Commons. A handful of private citizens actually took the step and made the effort to go to court to give Parliament this opportunity. Some Labour MPs to their eternal credit actually did this, people like David Lammie, Heidi Alexander, Owen Smith, Tulip Siddique and, ultimately, Clive Lewis. They are the future of our party. The rest, the cowards the friends of convenience, who made little speeches about how bad Brexit would be for the UK and then helped this Conservative government vote it through, they are weeds and will shrivel away like Brexit itself.

At the very least the Labour Party should be supporting having another referendum on the ultimate course to be taken, and one of the options available should be to remain in the EU. Had you asked me a few weeks ago, and I would have said that I would have been happy for Parliament to have a vote on the option, but given the cowardice of Labour's representatives, and of most of the Tory dissidents, I have lost any confidence in the value and integrity of our lower chamber. The Lords are definitely setting the right example here, and that is another thing that should make all of us think.

Unfortunately, although I agree I voted for him in the first round, I think Corbyn is seeking to use Brexit for his own ends. In the same way as the Conservatives, he thinks that getting out of the EU will allow him a freer rein in government. Obviously, he seeks to do this for a different purpose, or, at least, that is what he tells us.

His supporters say he wants to implement an inclusive and fair programme, but that is something that cannot be done on the back of Brexit. Brexit has been tainted from the very beginning by excluding half of the population that voted against it. And, in fact, the Labour Party's current posture supports and reaffirms this marginalisation. There is no way the 48% and climbing can feel included and fairly treated when our rights and our voices and our views have simply been side-lined and ignored and when the Labour Party is actively collaborating with the Conservative government to delegitimise and denigrate us. And furthermore I would predict there is no way, that Brexit, even if we were to assume that it was beneficial, which is isn’t, will ever prosper without the support of half of the active population. The most educated segment of the population, in fact.

Current Labour party supporters should be asking themselves what the point of Brexit is. I have asked Brexit supporters numerous times to give me one example of a specific, tangible benefit that it will produce for the man or the woman in the street… To date no one has been able to provide me with a straightforward answer to this question. Can you? And yet we know Brexit will be expensive, it will be time consuming, and it will alienate those who should be our natural allies…

Even carrying out a cursory cost effective analysis of Brexit shows that it is no good for anything. That being the case this is another reason why it should not be supported but resisted and, as I said above, there can be no way that it would be the foundation stone of a fair and inclusive system.

The EU currently gives me the right to work, live start a family and access healthcare in 27 other countries. I happen to value this right, what can Brexit ever give me to make up for its loss?

And there you have your answer, nothing, so, I'm afraid, that is the amount of support Brexit will get from me, whoever is touting the cause of that twisted ideology.