Boris Johnson will put his “do or die”
Brexit deal before parliament on Saturday. With safeguards around worker’s
rights, food standards and environmental protections, present in Theresa May’s
deal, now scrapped, any help from the Labour benches to get this hard right
Tory Brexit through, would be unconscionable.
According to analysis carried out by the FT, Johnson’s
deal would make the UK significantly worse off than May’s deal, with an
estimated loss per person of £2,000 a year and a hit to public finances of up to around
£49 billion a year.
Rami Cassis, chief executive of hedge fund Parabellum
Investments, recently warned that the Brexit deal that Johnson covets, offers
little benefit for millions of ordinary people who voted Leave . “The real
prize is to create an environment with fewer protections for workers, no
controls on banker bonuses, lower corporation taxes and, most likely, further
privatisation of public services”. The UK may be trading one master - the EU,
for another – the US.
Despite this, 19 Labour MPs
could help Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, man of the [rich] people, get his asset
grabbing deal through.
Here’s the codswallop they will
invoke as justification. “My constituents voted to leave, anything else is a
betrayal,” and this old chestnut, “It’s the will of the people”.
But, those of us who
hold privileged positions, in which our guidance holds sway over sometimes,
vulnerable people’s lives, we have a duty of care to tell the truth.
I’ve spent three years listening and talking to people
about Brexit, many of whom have come to me for help with Brexit induced crises.
When Leave voters regurgitate the lies they’ve been told as justification, I
don’t passively nod in agreement. Apart from being patronising, it would make me
complicit in the lie. I tell them the truth. The only hostile reaction I’ve had
was when a racist shouted at me in my local Spar, protesting their right to lie,
loudly, about my Turkish neighbours being illegal immigrants.
So, when all the forecasts indicate that Brexit will make
your constituents poorer, impacting the poorest and women (who are already
bearing 86% of the burden of austerity) the hardest, the defence that your constituents voted to self-harm 3 years ago and you’re
holding them to it, won’t wash. It’s akin to me, as a therapist, responding to
a suicidal patient by handing them a gun.
For Labour MPs struggling to combat common Brexit
lies, here are some truths by way of conversation starters on the doorstep. When
your constituents say they voted Leave for the £350 million a week for the NHS.
Tell them that Brexit has exacerbated the NHS crisis. That 5,000 nurses and midwives from EU27
countries have left the NHS since 2016, most of whom identifying Brexit as the trigger.
On immigration, tell them what I told Caroline Flint,
MP (also one of the Labour 19) at conference in 2018, when she said her constituents
had “genuine concerns about immigrants taking their jobs”,
“Your constituents concerns might be
genuine, but they’re not true. It isn’t immigrants who are depressing wages and
imposing zero hours contracts and job insecurity. It is unscrupulous businesses
(like Weatherspoons) exploiting cheap labour.
Tell them, immigrants are not
responsible for plunging 14 million people into poverty, the 169% rise
in homelessness and 700% rise in food banks. It was 10 years of Tory austerity
that saw the richest 5% increased their wealth by 40%.
When your constituents parrot Dominic (smash
and grab) Cumming’s meaningless sound bite, “Let’s get Brexit done”.
Tell them that, even if Johnson does get his deal through, businesses will face
ongoing uncertainty and erratic upheaval in trading arrangements for years to
come.
Stephen Kinnock, one of the Labour 19 and MP for Aberavon,
this one’s for you. Gifting the Tories a win ahead of a general election, will
make your constituents wonder where your loyalties lie. Especially in light of
recent analysis that predicts Wales will lose 2.3 billion as a result of
Brexit, a loss per head of the population of £743.11, between 2021 and 2027.
For some, it's easier to fool people than convince them that they have been fooled. When it comes to this dog's dinner of a deal, any Labour MP that backs it, must lose the whip. They will do so knowingly causing harm to
their constituents, their country and their party. There’s no coming back from
that.
