Jeremy Corbyn, I
no longer want to be a member of your Labour party
Alastair Campbell
Though I would
win my appeal against expulsion, your losing mentality and lack of Brexit
leadership mean I won’t return
Alastair Campbell
says he no longer wishes to be a Labour member
Mon 29 Jul 2019 22.30 BST Last modified on Mon 29 Jul 2019
22.36 BST
Dear Jeremy
,Britain is in a moment of peril, the UK facing an
existential crisis, a combination of Brexit and Boris Johnson reducing our
country to a global laughing stock. I see no sign that you and your office have
grasped the seriousness of what is happening, let alone devised or begun to
execute a strategy to respond and defeat it. Whatever the denials, Johnson has
embarked on a crash and burn strategy deliberately aimed at creating the
circumstances for a general election – setting up the EU, parliament and the
civil service, in a grotesque perversion of the truth, as the reasons he has no
option but to call one.
He rightly fears that if the people were given a straight
choice in a referendum, “no deal v no Brexit”, no Brexit would win comfortably.
But Johnson is confident that in an election choice between him and you he
would win, and so get the mandate for the hardest form of Brexit he would
otherwise not legitimately be able to claim. It means we could be weeks from an
election in which, on any current analysis, you are unlikely to be in a position
to win a majority.
The future of the country is a million times more important
than my membership of the Labour party. But the above situation has developed
at a time this has been the subject of some public debate, as well as intense
personal reflection.
The future of the
country is a million times more important than my membership of the Labour
party
Having spent several weeks trying without success to have
explained to me the process under which I was expelled for voting Liberal
Democrat in the European elections, I finally informed the party I felt I had
no option but to start proceedings.
I was recently told that my case had been discussed with
senior members of your team and that they saw two ways it might be addressed:
1. By a suspension of my auto-exclusion under cover of the broader possible
review of the whole auto-exclusion system in relation to antisemitism and other
offences. 2. That I make some kind of public commitment to voting Labour at the
next election.
On the first, I was not asking for a suspension of my
exclusion, but a reversal. On the second, while with the one exception that led
to my expulsion I have voted Labour in every election in my life and would
prefer to do so for the rest of my days, I did not feel comfortable about
making a blanket commitment when politics is in such flux, and my concern about
your stance on Brexit still acute.
With the distance provided by my being away from the UK in
Australia, I have reflected deeply on all of the above. And, with some sadness
but absolute certainty, I have reached the conclusion that I no longer wish to
stay in the party, even if I should be successful in my appeal or legal
challenge.
The culture you have helped to create has made the party one
that I feel no longer truly represents my values, or the hopes I have for Britain.
I see no strategy in place that remotely meets the electoral or policy
challenges ahead. On the contrary, in so far as I ascertain a strategy at all,
it is one that looks more designed to lose.
‘Johnson has embarked on a crash and burn strategy
deliberately aimed at creating the circumstances for a general election.’ Boris
Johnson delivers a speech on his domestic priorities in Manchester. Photograph WPA
Pool/Getty Images:
I fear the country may already have decided that it does not
intend to make you prime minister. I do not blame you for Brexit and the mess
the UK is in. David Cameron and Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove,
Nigel Farage, and the UK media, they are all ahead of you in the queue on that
one. But I do believe your half-hearted approach to the referendum campaign
three years ago had a role in leave winning. Your failure to provide consistent
leadership on the issue since then has been a huge disappointment.
I do not know at this stage how I will vote at the next
election, and I have made this decision after discussing it with nobody apart
from family and a small number of close personal friends. It is not part of
some bigger plan but a deeply personal decision. What I do know is that this is
indeed a moment of real peril. To have any chance of stopping Johnson and
stopping a hard Brexit, you need to step up now, and signal leadership of the
anti-Brexit, anti-populist cause – though it may be that loss of trust in your
approach to Brexit means it is too late to win back many former supporters.
I have in the past, in various troubled eras for our party,
always argued that it is better to stay and fight from the inside. My fear
right now is that without real change, there will be nothing left to fight for,
and that your place in history will be as the leader who destroyed Labour as a serious
political force capable of winning power. With a government this bad, pursuing
a ruinous form of Brexit that will so damage our economy, society and standing
in the world, Labour should be poised to win an election.
If the public could see that clear, credible and coherent
alternative across the despatch box, ably led, we would be. That the country
does not see it is, I am afraid, very substantially down to you. I hope that
one day I will rejoin a party that genuinely appeals to the many not the few,
that can win again the kind of majority needed to improve the life chances of
those who will be damaged by Brexit. In the meantime, please, for the sake of
the party and especially for the sake of the country, think beyond the
messenger, and think seriously about the message.
Yours sincerely,
Alastair
• Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s director of
communications; this is an edited version of an article written for The New
European
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