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@OwenJones84 Hi Owen - many thanks for this thoughtful piece. For me, the elephant in the room was Corbyn's devout euroscepticism, at odds with Labour voters and membership at the time who voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU. Here are my thoughts. https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1335948554930622465
The referendum was advisory and the result was a close call indeed. It is inconceivable to think demonstrable lies like £350m for the NHS, Turkey joining the EU and the "Breaking Point" poster, not to mention Vote Leave's lawbreaking, did not swing the result.
It is good to see you acknowledge some of these "impossible promises" in the piece, but little was made of them after the referendum result. Surely with this much at stake, this is where the advisory nature of the referendum should have been hammered home?
Farage himself had called for a second referendum if Remain had won with this specific margin, saying: "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it.” https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nigel-farage-wants-second-referendum-7985017
Instead, Labour rolled over and said "that's that". MPs should have told constituents "Labour does not stand for racism in any form. The NHS is under existential threat and it is not the fault of the EU, it's years of Tory austerity."
Instead, constituents' moans about Polish shops were heralded as "legitimate concerns". Rather than telling people they had been lied to, Labour tied itself in knots trying to appease those people who had fallen for the lies. Did the Remain-supporting membership no longer count?
Whatever the result, though, the Brexit project itself was and is robustly supported by those on the far right, driven by a hatred of foreigners and with the enrichment of extremely wealthy people as its endgame. This alone is at odds with Labour values.
Numerous manifesto pledges at the time would become immediately endangered under any Brexit, as funds and resources assigned to marginalised communities become diverted towards the financial sinkhole of unpicking EU logistics and shredding workers' rights and protections.
What if the referendum question had been "Should the UK make it harder for people to obtain food?" If the result of that vote had been a close win for "Yes", would Labour have said "It's the will of the people that nobody should eat"?
Would those who voted against that be decried today as "Continuity Feeders" the way you've described "Hard Remainers"? Of course not. So why were these Labour principles thrown out of the window to wave through the close result of an advisory referendum?
Anything Starmer has since done in an attempt to win over Tory voters after last year's disastrous election has been greeted with cries of "Starmer Out!" and Instagram pics of chopped-up Labour membership cards. Some of his manoeuvres have indeed felt a bit Tory-lite!
Frankly nobody wants the two main UK parties to be right-wing. So why was it OK for Corbyn to whip MPs to trigger Article 50 - and sack frontbenchers opposed to this extreme right-wing project? https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/jeremy-corbyn-sacks-frontbench-rebels-after-49-labour-mps-defy-him-over-brexit
There is a curious stigma about being a Remainer among young Corbyn stans. A generation of people who have had the opportunity to live and work in 27 countries taken away, on the brink of potential widespread food insecurity, have been gaslit into thinking Brexit is no big deal.
Remainers are seen as being uncool or - worse - "centrist" for attempting to stop people like Farage and Banks steering UK policy. And now we are on the brink of a no-deal Brexit despite Corbyn claiming it was off the table.
It is telling that the main people who think he "played a blinder" are those on the far right, with some saying it couldn't have happened without him.
