Brexit

Gang of Seven, Brexit and antisemitism

Seven right-wing Labour MPs quit on Monday 18 February. They did not join another party or form a new one. They did not call on their rank-and-file supporters within Labour to quit. Two Tory MPs sceptical about Brexit, Nick Boles and Sarah Wollaston, face deselection by their local Tory parties in coming weeks, and a Government minister has openly said that the hard-right Tory MPs “are not Conservatives” and should join the new “Brexit party” being launched by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage. The seven have chosen the bland name “Independent Group” for themselves, surely to maximise their...

Why not a United Ireland?

The Six Counties of Northern Ireland will leave the European Union on 29 March if the UK does. Yet a 56%-44% majority in Northern Ireland voted against Brexit. Those who had been brought up Protestant voted 60%-40% for Brexit, those brought up Catholic 85%-15% against. There is a clear democratic majority in both Irelands for the whole island remaining in the EU. Brexit, with the Northern Ireland electorate a political prisoner of the UK, is likely to do serious damage to Northern Ireland and to Ireland as a whole. It will be yet another brutally anti-democratic imposition on Ireland by...

For Labour! Against Brexit!

Labour right-wingers have chosen this moment to help out the hard-pressed Tory government. They have turned up the volume on the murmured speculations about a right-wing split from Labour just as the Tory impasse worsens. Labour and trade union activists want unity to maximise the chances of using the Tories’ thrashing-round to oust them from office, to force an early general election, and to get a new public vote to stop Brexit. To get a solid political basis on which to build that unity, we need to shift the Labour leadership, as well as rebuffing the right-wing Labour split-talkers. Labour...

Unite should call its leader to account

Four union leaders, including Len McCluskey of Unite, had one-on-one talks with the Prime Minister in Downing Street late in January. According to usually well-informed sources like Robert Peston and the Financial Times, McCluskey played a key role. McCluskey sought commitments from May that would give some Labour MPs an excuse to back the government in the next “meaningful vote” on Brexit. That could allow Brexit to proceed without Jeremy Corbyn being held responsible by Labour’s overwhelmingly anti-Brexit rank and file. “The unions are at war given Unite’s attempt at a side deal,” an unnamed...

Momentum, Tribune and Brexit

This is in some ways the biggest crisis of parliamentary politics ever in British history. Brexit dominates politics in a way no issue has done since, perhaps, the miners’ strike of 1984- 5. Yet the biggest Labour left grouping, Momentum, has remained silent on Brexit. In October-November 2018, after some pressure from activists, Momentum ran a consultation of its members on Brexit. The consultation was not a conference with debate, motions, amendments, votes. That’s not Momentum’s way. It was an e-polling exercise. It showed 82% of Momentum members thinking Brexit a bad thing, and 81% saying...

Millions more in Brexit payout to bosses

We now know that the Tory government offered Nissan bosses £80 million not to complain about Brexit, though at the time Business Secretary Greg Clark vowed that he “had no chequebook”. The Guardian of 6 February revealed that other car bosses were also offered millions. Toyota was promised £21 million, Ford £15 million, BMW £6 million, JLR £6 million, Aston Martin Lagonda £7 million, McLaren £9 million. The Guardian says PSA (owner of Vauxhall) “received promises of support” but has had no payments yet. That is how things work between capitalist governments and capitalist bosses. It is the...

Lexiteers go on tour

Who thinks Brexit looks good? Not most of the people who voted Leave in June 2016. They tend to say: well, it can’t be worse, and anyway, we’ve got to go through with it now. About the only people who think that Brexit will improve economic conditions for the majority are the Tory ultra-free-marketers, who say that Brexit will allow Britain to thrive as a low regulation, low social overheads offshore site of operations for global capital. They’re about the only ones — except a few people on the left. “Trade Unionists Against the EU” is organising a speaking tour to claim that that “Brexit [can...

Brexit can still be stopped

Brexit can still stopped. The first step, though, is to halt an emerging mood of retreat among anti-Brexit people. “People switch off from responding to every depressing political twist and turn of Brexit”, one activist wrote to us this week. Another: “people in my local [anti-Brexit] group feel down after Jeremy Corbyn’s responses on 28 and 29 January”. Yet others have said: “Face facts. Brexit is going to go through. No amount of agitation now will make much difference. The task now is to prepare the left for after Brexit”. Versions of the same sentiment appear among the not-politically...

Brexit and unreason

Steve Richards is a routine political pundit, probably (in his 2017 book The Rise of the Outsiders, for example) a bit less hostile to Jeremy Corbyn than most of his type. In the Financial Times on 1 February, however, he was acid about Corbyn, and with some justice. “Like Mrs May, [Jeremy Corbyn] asserts rather than explains, repeatedly declaring that he supports ‘a customs union’, ‘a close alignment with the single market’ and ‘workers’ rights’. Why is this his position? What does he mean by these terms?” In some media interviews Corbyn may have no choice but to limit himself to summary...

The curious incident of the Stalinists who didn’t bark

In possibly his most famous Sherlock Holmes short story, Silver Blaze, Conan Doyle introduced the idea of the “negative fact”: Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Holmes: “That was the curious incident.” Holmes drew a conclusion from an expected fact (the dog barking) that did not occur. On Tuesday 29 January, the Commons held a series of big votes on Brexit. Probably the most important was Yvette Cooper’s...

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