“MPs have a responsibility. I would lock you in a room with limited food and water until this decision was arrived at” City AM’s @ChristianJMay to MPs @EmmaReynoldsMP @DamianHinds on their Article 50, customs union and single market votes#politicslive https://t.co/e8n3YEXQKh pic.twitter.com/k0aZv0Oypi
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) January 24, 2019
Education Secretary Damian Hinds and Labour MP Emma Reynolds and were skewered this afternoon on Politics Live by CityAM’s Christian May over their support (tacit or otherwise) for Yvette Cooper’s anti-no deal amendment. They admitted that they both stood on manifestos pledging to take the United Kingdom out of the EU’s Single Market and Customs Union, and both voted to trigger Article 50, thereby starting the clock and setting no deal as the legal default. It is logically impossible for MPs take no deal off the table now unless they are prepared to cancel Brexit altogether.
It’s not good enough for MPs who voted to hold the referendum, agreed to implement the result, voted for Article 50, and then stood on manifestos pledging again to implement the result in full, to now start engaging in Parliamentary shenanigans with the effect of blocking Brexit indefinitely because they haven’t thought through the consequences of their actions. It’s increasingly apparent as time goes on that it wasn’t Leave voters but in fact smug Remainer politicians who didn’t understand what they were voting for…
The Labour frontbench nodded with agreement during Cameron’s statement on Paris, then former Shadow Cabinet members openly attacked their leader from the backbenches. Chris Leslie, who is increasingly a standard-bearer for Labour moderates, praised the PM and slammed Corbyn over shoot-to-kill:
“The Prime Minister is right that the police and security services need our full support at this time, but shouldn’t it be immediately to everyone – to everyone – that the police need the full and necessary powers, including the proportionate use of lethal force if need be, to keep our communities safe.”
Before Emma Reynolds attacked Corbyn’s Stop the War campaign:
“Does the Prime Minister agree that full responsibility for the attacks in Paris lies solely with the terrorists, and that any attempt by any organisation to somehow blame the west or France’s military intervention in Syria is not only wrong, disgraceful but also should be condemned.”
Corbyn appeared to be texting on his phone, making clear he wasn’t listening…
Earlier John Woodcock warned the deleted Stop the War blog post was “akin to blaming the Jewish people for their deaths under the Nazis. It is that serious”.
Meanwhile a Shadow minister has told the BBC: “I am trying to respect the mandate he has but I felt physically sick, I just couldn’t stand it. He is not fit to be our leader or in any senior position in this country”. So why doesn’t he resign?
Poor Emma Reynolds has been well and truly stitched up by the Labour leadership. Just four weeks ago the Shadow Housing Minister promised that Labour ‘don’t want to introduce rent controls, so please don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers’.
Guido is guessing it was an awkward phone call, when Miliband told her he was launching his back of a fag packet plan today…
