Keir Starmer And An Elephant Trap

Raising hopes of a successful conclusion to UK-EU trade deal negotiations, Michel Barnier arrived at St Pancras International yesterday evening. He had previously demurred at the idea of travelling, suggesting that there was no point, given the state of the talks. But despite the Brussels-blaming rhetoric from alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Barnier’s arrival means an agreement may be close.

The BBC’s Katya Adler noted that there may be some movement on the EU side on fish quotas, but “whatever happens on the fish front - and Brussels knows it has some big compromises to make - as much as the EU wants a deal with the UK, it's unlikely to let go of its insistence on two other issues: common competition regulations and a tough means of policing them”. The UK will probably have to yield on those.

But for Her Majesty’s Opposition, that is not where they are looking right now: Bozo will be calling for a vote on his deal. This from Zoe Williams at the Guardian: “The prime minister, last January, removed from the Withdrawal Agreement the section on parliament’s role in the negotiations, so he has the option to press ahead without a vote. However, the potential to embarrass the opposition by soliciting its view may be too good to pass up”.

Many ardent Brexiteers on the Tory back benches don’t want one of those namby-pamby deals. They want a constant state of hostility between US and THEM. They have consumed too much Kool-Aid to still be connected to the real world. They want that vote, and they want the world to see that they refused to surrender to the Rotten Foreigners™.

So what do Keir Starmer and his team do? It seems he “is preparing to risk a party rift by throwing Labour’s weight behind a Brexit deal if last-minute negotiations succeed in the coming days … In what he hopes will be a signal to red wall voters that the party has heard them”. But why should Labour still be fighting last year’s General Election?

Ms Williams, who concludes that Labour should oppose Bozo’s deal, explains the looming elephant trap directly: “if Labour MPs vote in favour of a deal, they make a mockery of the years spent opposing its flaws, and become complicit in any given negative outcome, which should be be laid squarely at the Tories’ door”. She is not alone.

Jon Worth warned “Just imagine PMQs mid Jan if there was a Brexit Deal and Starmer had got Labour to back it. You’ll have Johnson crowing that Labour ought to get behind the government. Starmer can’t then say to Johnson: you own this mess” and that “Starmer’s Labour is trying to be too tactically clever for its own good. Britain left the EU in Jan 2020. The Q now is *how* to do Brexit, not *if* it’s done. Labour’s position ought to hence be what’s ethically correct, not some twisted media framed rationale for the red wall”.

And his conclusion? “Abstaining on a vote on a Brexit Deal carries *no* danger for Labour. None.The vote is not binding. And there are not enough No Deal hardliners in the Tory Party anyway. Abstain makes the Tories own the mess”. On which I concur.

There is a significantly sized shitshow coming down the tracks. When that hits, Labour needs to be well away from it. Leave Bozo to own the fallout - for once in his life.

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