Following the wide-spread coverage of Ian Austin and John Woodcock calling on the public to back Boris and block Corbyn, a third former Labour MP – Tom Harris – has used a column in today’s Scottish Mail to back Boris for PM. Just about counteracts David Gauke’s u-turn this morning to stand as an independent against the Tories…
Harris – who served as a transport minister under Blair and Brown – has invoked the words of Theresa May (of all people), in writing “I will be voting Tory… to save the country that I love”, and goes on to say:
“Jeremy Corbyn, the present leader of UK Labour, cannot and must not be trusted with the security of our nation. Nor, frankly, can he be trusted with safeguarding the Union”
Harris – who also served in Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet and backed leaving the EU in 2016 – wrote a similar column in 2017 warning of the dangers of Corbyn, but stopped well short of overtly calling on people to vote Tory. Austin, Woodcock and he really are Mainstream…
Labour MP Graham Jones is optimistic Corbyn will come out and condemn Maduro:
“Jeremy in his own time will come out and condemn Venezuela, I am sure he will. Nobody can accept the human rights abuses that are going on in Venezuela.”
The more hawkish Labour types are demanding Corbyn answer a very simple question: Does Jeremy Corbyn still support Venezuela’s regime?
“We have a right to know whether he now regrets what he said” – Labour MP Tom Harris on Corbyn’s position on Venezuela #newsnight pic.twitter.com/JUmTo3gPWL
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) August 2, 2017
Progress’s Conor Pope says “I do happen to believe what Corbyn thinks about Venezuela now is relevant and important, but not because of votes. Judgement and morals. Corbyn held up Chavismo as a model. Fair to ask where went wrong.” Socialism comrade, socialism went wrong as it always does…
CCHQ is piling in on the issue too:
Corbyn won’t condemn what is happening in Venezuela. Why? Because he supports the Socialist policies that have caused the economic chaos. pic.twitter.com/38DZN9rfGY
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) August 3, 2017
Will this attack line work? Would need to see polling on it on its efficacy. Clearly in the general election swing voters didn’t care about Jezza and the IRA or Jezzbollah™ enough to matter. Venezuela might be more salient for millenials. Or it might not…
Tom Harris nails the Corbynistas on foreign affairs…
“Jeremy Corbyn and the hard left have never met a banana republic they didn’t like.”
Former Labour minister Tom Harris has been weighing up back Leave for the last few weeks – today we have his decision. The Telegraph’s newly-appointed resident Corbyn-basher has announced he will be running the Scottish Vote Leave campaign, firing off some tartan truth bullets this morning:
“Every week the UK sends £350 million to the EU. Scotland’s share is roughly a tenth of that – more than £1.5 billion per year. Just think what that money could buy here in Scotland – on schools, on our health service, repairing our roads – if it wasn’t being sent into the black hole that is EU spending”
They can take your money, will they take your freedom?
Former Labour minister Tom Harris writes:
“Labour does indeed have a problem with Jews. It can acknowledge that problem’s existence, confront it and deal with it. Or it can shrug, mutter something about UN Security Council resolutions and continue to court the support of those on the far Left who are the source of the problem. Jewish members of the party have scant reason for optimism about which course will be pursued.”
Former Labour minister Tom Harris has come out. Writing in the Telegraph Harris professes his “relief” at being able to admit he’s an EU referendum “outer”, and his happiness at not having to explain his decisions to constituents now he’s no longer an MP.
“I was never a fully paid-up member of the Euro team. Early signs of unsoundness manifested themselves in my outright opposition to British membership of the euro when it was first launched. The whips’ office had its eye on me after I added my signature to a letter, back in 2002, warning the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to resist committing to abolishing the pound. And once you’ve decided to oppose that central mechanism for the creation of a European superstate, it’s a fairly short step to being painted as “anti-EU”.
To add to the charge sheet: I never bought the piffle about the EU securing peace in Europe. Peace would have broken out after the end of the war anyway; democracies tend not to fight each other, with or without international political alliances. And, on my occasional trips to the European Parliament – either the original one in Strasbourg, or the replacement one a few hundred feet away, or the one in Brussels where it should be based permanently if they had an ounce of sense – I was always a tad suspicious and resentful of the smug certainty of officials and party apparatchiks that Europe was the future and national parliaments were just so last century.”
At last, Harris is on the same page as Jez and John (historically at least)…
