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The Labour Party doubles down on its sick, openly anti-democratic case for Britain remaining in the European Union
That slobbering, Marxist, assassination-approving, lynching-advocating IRA-supporter John McDonnell continues to show his contempt for democracy by loudly opposing Brexit on the grounds that freedom from the European Union might make it easier for a democratically elected British government to actually, y’know, govern.
Of course this would be terrible and cannot possibly be allowed to happen – when the incumbent government is a Tory one, that is.
Labour’s unspeakable shadow chancellor is now taking to the pages of the New Statesman to promote his pie-in-the-sky, fantasy land “Another Europe”, whereby an explicitly integrationist and federalist club can be magically transformed by McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Yanis Varoufakis and other assorted left-wingers into some kind of Utopian, socialist paradise.
McDonnell, trialling his “Tory Brexit” catchphrase again, writes:
The undeniable truth about the referendum is that what is on offer is a Tory Brexit. On 24 June, we will still have a Tory government, because under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act the Conservatives could change leader from David Cameron to Boris Johnson and still try to cling on until 2020.
This would be a disgraceful betrayal of democracy. But what over the past six years has suggested to you that anything would be beneath the Tories? And, regardless of who would be leader of their party, the initial trade negotiations following a Tory Brexit could resemble TTIP on steroids.
We know what they think of the Working Time Directive; can you imagine what other workplace rights they would trade away and try to blame on someone else? With global economic uncertainties combined with George Osborne’s economic incompetence, the UK is uniquely exposed to the risk of an immediate economic fallout from a Tory Brexit.
Odd, you might think, that Labour’s shadow chancellor is so happy to associate the movement to restore democracy and independence to Britain with his lifelong enemies in the Conservative Party. But then these are not ordinary times.
McDonnell continues:
I want to see a reformed EU in which we make many of its institutions more transparent and democratic. For the first time in a generation, there is a growing coalition of socialists across the EU who can help us achieve this together. By choosing Labour’s “Another Europe” agenda, our country can stand with others across Europe to make a positive case to end austerity, offer a more humane response to the migrant crisis and protect and expand workplace rights.
And the evidence that this Magical Candyland Europe spoken of so warmly by leftists from Jeremy Corbyn to Owen Jones is actually achievable? Zip. Zilch. Nada. Tumbleweeds. The very purpose of the European Union is to facilitate a process of integration towards a common European state. Don’t take my word for it – see what the EU’s own leading voices openly say about their creation. In this grand endeavour, democracy is the mortal enemy. And John McDonnell seriously thinks that he can make EU institutions deliberately designed to shut out popular opinion more democratic?
Whether or not there is indeed a growing coalition of socialists, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that they currently form – or could conceivably form in the future – a bloc powerful enough to wrest control of the key European Union institutions. Even if the parties of the far-left somehow manage to defeat the parties of the centre, centre-right and far right and become a force in the European Parliament (itself an impossibly tall order), so what? The European Parliament is a rubber stamp, the least important and least powerful of all the EU institutions. How does that alter the makeup or direction of the Commission or the ECJ? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t.
The very best scenario that McDonnell and friends could conceivably hope for is to jam the European Parliament with a bunch more angry leftists. But any anti-establishment wave which helps the left is generally likely to help the right, too. In fact, the radical right have been running rings around the socialists for some time. McDonnell’s dream scenario, therefore, is one where parties like Podemos and Syriza scream at parties like UKIP and others much further to the right, and bring the European Parliament to a cacophonous deadlock, while the other EU institutions – the ones which actually matter – glide on, unchecked.
Here is a political party – and an approximation of a man – who have let their blind, seething, inchoate rage against the Evil Tories snuff out what little dedication they ever had to democracy or respect for the will of the people. Here is a shadow chancellor and broader left-wing movement who are so wedded to their policy of unthinking, virtue-signalling pseudo-internationalism that they would sooner doom Britain to remain trapped in an antidemocratic, dysfunctional, failing political union than admit the terminal flaws in the European Union and fight for left-wing policies in a newly independent Britain.
But more than all of that, this is a left wing movement which cares about democracy only when it advances their own particular narrow agenda. John McDonnell isn’t willing to energetically make the case for the things he claims are under threat in case of Brexit. He simply wants those things to be undemocratically imposed on the British people by a higher, supranational authority. He wants to win without trying, to impose his beliefs on others without doing the hard work of winning them over. McDonnell literally doesn’t care how his policies are implemented, or who is steamrollered in the process – just as long as those clapped-out old left-wing policies somehow see the light of day.
You can call that “passionate” and “principled” if you want, if you are still enthralled by the Corbynite glow. But the rest of us should call it what it is – narrow minded, bigoted authoritarianism.
Meet your friendly Labour Party of 2016 – happy to throw democracy and British independence under the bus in pursuit of the fevered hallucination of a united, socialist Europe.
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Top Image: Telegraph
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Semi-Partisan Politics 
Thank God for this article and its author. This speaks volumes about the journey of the debate thus far, largely sabotaged by an IN group before acknowledging – or knowing – what the issues were. A few weeks down the line and it is Leave that has more unity, more diversity, more reason and more vision. I’m sickened by the leftist panting for power that blinds to contradiction and self-awareness alike. The last debate I attended heard eloquent speakers from the 3 key UK political parties in this Referendum, old Labour, UKIP, Conservative – all on the Leave side. The 3 remainers collectively advocating dual reform of EU and UK parliament, the former for the latter…as easier, quicker & better value than independence, were mired in self-contradictory brainwash soundbytes (for peace), fairyland no borders rhetoric (for budding journalists) and the foolish libdem calling Britain a bastard race, think of yesterday: vote for tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. I know this article will be appreciated by many many of the UK electorate.
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Maeve, whisper who dares! BUT, my gut feeling is that things are turning around and that we Leavers are actually in with a chance……
M E Synon agrees with me!
Mind you…… there could still be a lot of shenanigens to come: no exit poll. Postal votes to EU citizens who have no right to vote. etc.
There is no doubt in my mind that the ‘elite’ will try to rig this vote. Sigh…. plus ca change, eh?
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…’Odd, you might think, that Labour’s shadow chancellor is so happy to associate the movement to restore democracy and independence to Britain with his lifelong enemies in the Conservative Party. But then these are not ordinary times.’…
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/01/channel-4-leads-the-way-on-tory-election-claims
Not ordinary times indeed. However White still steers away from what was predictable from a viewpoint of many months ago. Labour dares not publically weaken Cameron prior to the Referendum due to the propensity of his downfall linking to the Referendum vote itself. It’s one of many reams of ammunition that could be used against Cameron, and could have been used many times over across many months. But Labour can’t even be paid to pick up this ball and charge it against the evil, hard-right extreme Tory NHS-murdering, austerity-riding scum.
Labour colluding with Cameron to keep his headlines sweet. In the future this will be the gift that keeps on giving.
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If John McDonnell was arguing for a Brexit you would be quoting him approvingly, regardless of his past statements and beliefs, just as you do with Tony Benn, a hard-left man who supported Sinn Féin in the 1980s, and whose funeral was attended by Adams & McGuinness.
Leaving aside McDonnell, what really infuriates you – it’s clear because you keep on blogging about it – is left-wing voters who won’t vote out because they fear a “Tory Brexit”. As an undecided, left-wing voter, who is trying to contemplate all sides of the argument, I want to attempt and explain this position to you in terms you might, just might, relate to a little more sympathetically. You say – and I have no reason to doubt it – that you value democracy. Well so do I. It is not unreasonable to assume that a vote for Brexit will finish off Cameron & Osborne. They will be replaced by politicians very different from themselves: a Boris Johnson or Michael Gove-led Conservative Party will be very different from a Cameron/Osborne one (as you yourself frequently point out, it could be argued that these latter two are not “proper” Conservatives). No one will have voted for Johnson or Gove as PM, nor for the government that they make in their image. This situation is permissible constitutionally, but for many people, such as myself, it would go – four years out from a general election – wholly against the democratic grain. You and your coterie of pro-Brexit bloggers, such as Pete North, never tire of pointing out how useless Johnson is as a champion of your cause. And there have been many other accusations levelled against him, which I won’t repeat here, but with which I am sure you are familiar. What reason is there to assume he would be any more competent as PM? The left also perceive either a Johnson or Gove premiership to be a far more right-wing prospect. And I repeat: no one will have voted for it. The country elected, just about, a “centrist” Tory government. I don’t like that government, and nor do you – but that is who was elected. Johnson & Gove, you must admit, are hugely divisive figures and whether they could be win a general election and a mandate to govern is wholly unknown. But what comes to mind is the sorry spectacle of Gordon Brown, generally popular as Chancellor, hopeless as PM (and, yes, I do think, just as many Tories did, that Brown should have called a general election after becoming Labour leader).
I am hugely frustrated to have to think this way. I don’t want to think about the Tory leadership when deciding how to vote. But there is life beyond the 23rd of June, and who negotiates our exit from the EU matters, as do ensuing domestic politics. This referendum is not just an EU referendum, it is a referendum on David Cameron’s leadership: it is not the left that is to blame for that, it’s the ever-embittered, ever-plotting Tories.
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Mark, it seems to me that you are saying we should vote Remain, so as not to have a new Prime minister that no one elected, for the next 4 years.
Yet if we Remain in the EU we will have an unelected supranational government for ever!
Lets get out of the EU, and then we can squabble about who should run the country. (and I do believe that a Leave result will force a general election)
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