Angela Rayner

I like Angela Rayner. As some who started life in a council house, who pulled myself up by my bootstraps, with a wife from Manchester, I identify with Angela’s straight talk on many things. I was therefore even more dismayed to hear her spinning myths and lies on LBC this week about Brexit. Angela came up with many of the Brexiteer arguments in this interview. Here are some of her ‘whoppers’.

The will of the people must be respected

Horseshit. We are fast approaching the point where 70% of people in Britain believe that Brexit has failed. Angela does not understand that democracy is NOT a project. It is a process. She would not even be an MP if democracy were a project as women would not have a vote or be able to participate in society. We would be more like Saudi Arabia under Angela’s view of democracy.

We can’t just rejoin

Bollocks. Whilst it’s true that all takes time, the only thing preventing us from starting the process is a backbone in politics. Read our article on the matter at Byline Times.

I met with four Labour Councillors campaigning in my area on Sunday. All said they fundamentally disagreed with the exec. Are they prepared to do anything about it? Of course not. We need ‘different’ and not more of the same. In contrast, Gina Miller leads the only party in Britain who unequivocally favour rejoining the EU. It is possible and need take no longer than 3 years.

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We can’t rejoin on the same terms

This was perhaps Angela’s cleverest deception. By not being specific, she allowed people to fill in the dots by themselves … for example “oh we’ll lose the pound, Shengen, pints”, and many other myths put forward by the Brexiteers. These feed the Labour project fear narrative and Angela should really know better.

It is true that Old Albion will need to learn some appropriate humility as part of the joining process, instead of the English exceptionalism which characterised the Brexit vote. However, it is unwise to place more constraints in the way of success than is necessary before negotiations begin. When I reflect on the conversation I observed with Barnier, I know that rejoining is possible. Yes, it will be difficult and everything will be on the table. If Britain decided that it must keep the pound for example, I’m sure it would be considered. Since all is a trade, the EU may come with some other things we may have to move on to keep the pound, perhaps in the finance domain. For example, we have just seen concessions on Northern Ireland traded with changes to the Erasmus scheme. Nonetheless, what we must do is establish the principle of rejoining and political will to do so. Once that is secured, we must then leave the negotiators to do the work, as we did in the Brexit negotiations.