membership of the single market and customs union from the Tories through semantics is absolutely fúcking hilarious.
All the middle class people I know who voted Labour did so because a) they wanted a soft (i.e. 'no') Brexit and b) they felt Labour's policies were more likely to reduce inequality.
And yet,
1) Labour campaigned on a hard brexit manifesto which they are now committed to supporting, unless they are playing a very dangerous long game which would ultimately lose them much of the working class support they managed to claw back at the election.
2) Labour opposed the means testing of the winter fuel allowance, meaning that wealthy pensioners continue receiving money they have no need for
3) Labour opposed the Tory's social care policy which would have placed the burden of care costs on the very same elderly home owners who Labour supporters have always maintained have had it too good for too long at the expense of the younger generation
2) Labour proposed an abolition of tuition fees that has been shown would overwhelmingly negatively impact the poor and benefit the middle class
When are these middle class Labour voters gonna realise they voted for a party whose core policies they inherently disagree with?
I don't yet think it's dawned on the political establishment that what we saw two weeks ago was not so much a shift in the political landscape as a mass protest vote. Like most protest votes, it was ill-thought-out and incoherent. Labour may currently feel emboldened by it, but they would be well-advised not to treat those votes as any kind of endorsement of them or their policies.
Of course it could. That doesn't invalidate it, though. Any more than the seats Labour gained by the election are invalid because of it. My only point is that the febrile nature of politics at the moment makes any grand claims of vindication from the Labour party dubious in the extreme.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
To be fair to Berni, literally the entire country was of pretty much the same view. Even the pollsters who had Lab and Con neck and neck on election day were highly dubious about their own stats.
Saying that, I started worrying months and months ago when Corbyn started talking about harnessing social media. So as with football, it turns out I am Awimb's true political sage.
This is a interesting point imo. Over 80% of the turnout voted for party manifestos committed to a full Brexit, but the PLP, like all the main parties' MPs, are overwhelmingly pro-EU. With the labour vote comprising both anti-EU and pro-EU components they are something of a coalition within themselves.
Another thing that doesn't get much mention is that many of the influential voices who spent the referendum campaign telling people that they must not vote leave were also spending the last couple of years insisting that JC should not be leader of the Labour Party. Yet in both cases voters in large numbers have defied them.