Corbyn
to the rescue in Tories’ Brexit storm
Cameron
needs the Labour leader to speak convincingly in favor of the EU,
despite his Euroskeptic past.
By TOM MCTAGUE
4/8/16, 5:35 AM CET
LONDON — Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn will make a long-awaited intervention in the
campaign to keep Britain in the EU next week, amid growing concern in
Westminster that angry working-class voters may hand the Leave
campaign an unlikely victory following a series of political
controversies which have rocked the government.
Corbyn, a lifelong
Euroskeptic who voted against British membership in the last
referendum in 1975 and rejected both the Maastricht and Lisbon
treaties, will deliver his first major speech on Europe on Thursday,
senior party sources told POLITICO.
It follows a series
of outspoken attacks on the controversial 66-year-old leader from
within the Labour Party over his less-than-full-throated support for
Britain’s continued membership, despite officially siding with the
overwhelming majority of MPs in his party who are campaigning against
Brexit.
Pro-European
Conservative ministers and Labour MPs are increasingly concerned that
a “perfect storm” of events undermining trust in the government
threatens to send the U.K. crashing out of the EU.
The government was
left reeling last month by the Cabinet resignation of leading Out
campaigner Iain Duncan Smith over cuts to disability welfare.
Ministers were then caught out during the Easter holidays by Indian
company Tata Steel’s decision to close its U.K. operations —
sparking accusations that the government had been asleep at the wheel
while jobs were lost.
Prime Minister David
Cameron’s shock admission on Thursday — after four days of
increasing pressure — that he made a £19,000 profit on shares held
in his father’s offshore trust have only added further fuel to the
fire.
The scandals have
left the government scrambling to regain the initiative less than
three months before the June 23 referendum, which polls suggest
remains on a knife-edge and highly dependent on turnout.
A poll of polls this
week found the Remain campaign narrowly in the lead — two points
clear on 43 percent — but with one in six voters undecided.
Insiders in both the Remain and Leave campaigns acknowledge
traditional Labour voters could hold the key.
Core Labour
Speculation is
mounting among increasingly concerned Conservative ministers that the
government will make a major offer in the run-up to the vote,
designed to echo the impact of the controversial “vow” signed by
all three Westminster party leaders before the Scottish independence
referendum in 2014.
The front-page
newspaper pledge guaranteeed sweeping new powers for Edinburgh and
protections for its budget, and was credited with being decisive by
the then-First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond.
But Tom Blenkinsop,
the Labour MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland in England’s
industrial northeast, said the seeds for working-class Euroskepticism
were already sown by the perceived economic abandonment of former
industrial areas of Scotland, Wales and the north of England.
Blenkinsop, a former
organizer of the Community trade union which represents steelworkers,
accused the government of promoting the City of London’s interests
above all else and warned those with the least to lose were most
likely to vote Out.
“We warned them
and warned them and warned them, but they’ve still been caught on
the hop,” he said. “While I don’t agree with it, you can
understand how people come to the conclusion to vote Out. Core Labour
members are very much pro-EU. But Labour voters on [low-income
housing] estates think they don’t have anything to lose. If you
haven’t got much to lose you can always afford to roll the dice.
That was exactly what we saw in the Scottish referendum.”
Blenkinsop said it
was now a test of leadership for Corbyn to convince Labour voters to
turn out for Remain. “But does he care? That’s open to question,”
Blenkinsop said. “It’s all caveat, caveat, caveat. I don’t
think he really cares one way or the other.”
‘None of this TTIP
rubbish’
It is a common
criticism among Labour MPs, but Corbyn’s camp insist there are no
votes in being slavishly pro-European. A source close to the leader
said next week’s speech could be characterized as “yes, and.”
“If you speak to
Labour voters, they are not happy with everything about the EU,”
the source said. “It’s right we reflect that.”
Corbyn wants to see
more of “social Europe” and is leading the charge against the
increasingly controversial free-trade deal between the EU and U.S.
known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Corbyn’s reticence
to praise the EU has infuriated Labour MPs.
“I’m no fan of
Jeremy’s, but the fact is he is the leader of the Labour party and
that is important in all of this,” said one Labour MP. “When he
finally gives this speech he has to be unequivocal — none of this
TTIP rubbish, because it’s really starting to take hold in the
debates I’m listening to among Labour members.”
To support the
point, a poll carried out for the Fabian Society last week found
Corbyn is easily the most trusted figure in the EU debate for Labour
voters. He has a net approval rating of plus 17, well ahead of
Labour’s official campaign leader Alan Johnson, who is on minus 10.
The poll found that among those very likely to vote, Leave has a 2
percent lead.
Brexit campaigners
reacted angrily to the government's massive leaflet drop arguing for
staying in the EU
‘There is a real
risk of a backlash that expresses itself on the 23rd of June’ —
Stephen Kinnock, MP
Douglas Carswell,
the U.K. Independence Party’s sole MP, acknowledged that the steel
and tax scandals were helping the Out campaign because they increased
the level of distrust felt towards the elite.
“I think the
government has been incredibly complacent from the beginning,” he
said. “The tax revelations reveal the truth that there is a
powerful elite that are doing very well, thank you very much. But how
can you trust these people?
“The EU is to
international relations what FIFA is to football. The truth is coming
out,” said Carswell.
Stephen Kinnock, the
MP for Port Talbot, where the threatened steelworks is based, spoke
of mounting concern that Labour’s success criticising the
government over steel and global tax dodging could fuel a vote
against Cameron in favor of Brexit.
“It’s always a
risk with the referendum that it gets hijacked and it becomes a vote
on the popularity of the government, rather than the question on the
ballot paper,” he said. “There is a real risk of a backlash that
expresses itself on the 23rd of June. But Brexit would be a
catastrophe for the whole of our steel industry. An industry that was
already struggling would have to pay tariffs to sell to Europe.”
“The likes of
[Tory London mayor and Out campaigner] Boris Johnson have suddenly
discovered they care about steel but they are just hijacking it for
the referendum,” said Kinnock. “I think it’s deeply
regrettable.
Exposing the scale
of anger among some sections of the country over the Panama Papers
scandal, Labour MP Jess Philips wrote an excoriating article accusing
the prime minister’s father Ian Cameron of being “utterly
disgusting” for running an offshore investment fund. The prime
minister and his family had the “best of everything” growing up,
while ordinary workers “paid the tab,” she said.
MP Phil Wilson, who
chairs Labour’s pro-EU campaign, said he was concerned the level of
public anger could spur voters into punishing the government.
“There is always a
worry in referendums that people will see it as a chance to kick the
government,” Wilson said. “But this is bigger than the Tory
government: 50 percent of the steel that’s produced in this country
goes to Europe.”
He echoed widespread
concern that the most passionate people in the debate were the
Outers. “For most people the only thing they can think about in
June is the European [football] Championships,” said Wilson.
‘Residual danger’
Conservative
minister Robert Buckland admitted the concern was real in government
too. “Of course there are worries, but I’m more nervous about the
fundamentals like turnout. I’m really concerned that a proportion
of Remainers will not vote. What we have to do is to find ways to
galvanize people.”
But another Tory
minister played down the concern: “The prime minister is our
principle voice in the Remain campaign so the last thing we want is
for him to be tarnished. But with the PM, he has always had the
problem of being the well-heeled child from the Shires…. There is a
residual danger that it could affect the Remain campaign, yes. But I
don’t think it’s major.”
A source in the
Remain campaign also played down the threat, saying it shouldn’t
make a big difference despite understandable annoyance at the tax
revelations.
“It’s
interesting that in focus groups, unprompted, people say they just
want the facts. They are not as bothered about the political
knockabout in Westminster. Obviously it’s not helpful, but it’s
not a game changer.”
One skeptical
Westminster insider pointed out that the last time pundits thought
the Tories were in trouble over tax dodging and links to the rich was
just before the last election, when Labour’s then-leader Ed
Miliband made a surprise announcement that he would abolish “non-dom”
status, which allows wealthy individuals to pay less tax if they are
domiciled elsewhere.
It was a popular
pledge and the Tories struggled to find an answer. The speculation is
that Cameron’s election supremo Lynton Crosby responded with a
“dead cat” strategy, when a senior figure says something
outrageous to monopolize headlines. It was Defense Secretary Michael
Fallon who did the honors by saying Miliband could not be trusted
because he had stabbed his own brother in the back. In the event, it
made no difference because the Tories won their first majority since
1992.
Downing Street hopes
history will repeat itself this year, with the U.K.’s conservative
instincts preserving the status quo. This time, however, Cameron
needs 50.1 percent of the vote to win, not the 37 percent which
secured him the last election. He also needs to win over parts of the
country which have, so far, proved resistant to his charms.
The irony is that to
save his own skin, he may need the help of the leader of the
opposition — Corbyn, the lifelong Euroskeptic.
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