Tuesday, 27 February 2018

Labour Party's Betrayal of Northern Labour Voters.

In the Brexit referendum, scores of Labour-voting people in Labour's Northern Heartlands voted to leave the EU.

Northumberland, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Lancashire.... all voted to leave the EU. All are counties where Labour do well. Former industrial and mining areas.

All betrayed yesterday by Jeremy Corbyn and his policy to stay in the customs union. Pandering to his London-centric Remain Champagne Socialist Labour clique.

Labour will say that even though their heartlands voted leave, it wasn't the Labour voters (the majority) that did that, it was the nasty Tories (the minority) that somehow conjoured a referendum winning vote. So they're actually giving Labour voters what they want. They can believe that Bullshit all they want to excuse their trachery, but it just doesn't wash. Gordon Brown got it wrong when he called Gillian Duffy a bigot for her comments on immigrants. Jeremy Corbyn has just done exactly the same.

This should be as momentous for Labour voters as Maggie Thatcher crushing the miner's strike: this is Labour sticking two fingers up to the working class. Again. And this time you can't say it's Teflon Tony Blair the Tory in disguise, or Gordon Brown trying to be Tony Mk2. This is jeremy Corbyn, self-styled Trotskyite, man of the oppressed workers of the UK. This is inexcusable.

Of course the Chelsea Socialists say it's all about protecting worker's rights. It's nothing of the sort. It's protecting corporate interests and the influx of cheap unskilled Polish and Romanian workers. It's about keeping wages suppressed. With all that cheap labour on tap, wages for the rest of us stay low and working conditions poor. It's keeping profits flowing to low-tax countries with no penalties and avoiding paying tax in the UK.

After all, if we start to mention improvement of wages or working conditions, then all the business can just let us go and employ a foreign worker on high agency rates but getting paid minimum wage.  Huge margins for the corporate fat-cats. That's who your Labour party is actually working for.

If Labour truly wanted to improve the wages and working conditions of the working class of the UK, then the cheap labour tap would be turned off.  Out of the customs union and out of free movement.

Staying in "a", "the" or even "New" or any fucking flavour of  customs union automatically means free movement of people  i.e. no control over immigration. The EU provides no alternative on this. you cannot have one without the other. The tap cannot be turned off.

Staying in a customs union also means adherence to EU-negotiated trade deals. The UK would not be free to negfotiate on our own. Non-negotiable according to EU negotiators.

Membership of "a" customs union for anything longer than an interim period is a betrayal of those votes how voted to leave the EU. Permanent membership of a customs union goes against the will of the majority of people who voted to leave the EU and it's control.

Unless.... what Labour are saying they are aligning with Boris Johnson and his "have our cake and eat it" policy, where we choose to be part of a customs union, but are free to negotiate our own trade deals, part of a customs union and free of the ECJ, part of a customs union and not allowing free movement of people. ALL OF WHICH HAVE ALREADY BEEN REJECTED BY EU NEGOTIATORS.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union without the baggage that comes along with it like subservience of UK laws to the Court of European Justice.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union and stop the influx of cheap unskilled Eastern European labour.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union and stop huge corporations from banking profits and declaring corporation tax in other countries. Free movement of people and goods also means free movement of money as well.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union and negotiate trade with other countries at the same time. You are tied to deals done by the EU.

You cannot have membership of "a" or "the" or any customs union without betraying the huge swath of Northern Voters that voted to leave.

The sad thing is that now UKIP have crashed out of UK politics in any meaningful way, there is no alternative party for the Northern working class Labour voter to vote for. That's why Labour have done this now. They know the working class have no alternative to vote for. Bastards.

If ever there was a time for a proper democratic people's party, for the working class and  free from the Westminster bubble and it's corrupt corporate influence, that time is now.

Can we just grow up and accept that Brexit means leaving the EU, the Customs Union, the Single Market, the primacy of UK courts, closure of our borders, the ability to trade freely with other countries and start to talk on those terms. The longer Politicians of all flavours push the customs union model, the bigger the crash at the end of it when the EU refuse our requests.

Spinning otherwise (because that's all it is, spin) is dangerous and devisive. Right now businesses should be planning all future trade with EU countries on a "fully out" model. To do otherwise would court disaster for the company. That's what good governance is all about and should be working towards.

The game politicians are playing is a dangerous one and costly for the UK. That our own politicians are working against us should also prove the need for an alternative party that puts the UK people first. After all there is a historical precedent: every now and then Parliament has needed a nudge from the people to show 'em who's boss.

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