Thread by @MerryMichaelW

Why Labour’s “Red Wall” Finally Crumbled. A thread(1/17).

From the writing of:

*** Chris McGlade *** in THE FULL BREXIT

To defend the value of our votes, working-class communities had no choice but to vote Conservative, thanks to their betrayal by the Labour Party.

It's called DEMOCRACY. Here follows a powerful story of ALIENATION, in Jimmy Reid's word.

The Tories didn’t win this election. Labour lost it. The Labour Party could have won if they’d stuck with their 2017 manifesto commitment to honour the result of the EU referendum. If Labour hadn’t tried to stop Brexit, they would have walked it. (2/17)

#Redcar, an old industrial town on Teesside. Never had a Tory MP, but even though the Tories decimated our steel industry, closed our coke oven, and shut down the biggest & oldest blast furnace in Europe, Redcar still voted Conservative this week, a whopping 15.5 % swing. (3/17)

I’ve been a member of the Labour Party. I flirted with Militant when I was 18. I was in three trades unions. All my family are working-class, Irish immigrant stock and Labour supporters for decades. We’re not brainwashed, but we all voted Conservative. (4/17)

Why? We expect to be ignored by the Tories, but we don’t expect to be ignored by our own party and that’s what happened. The Labour Party is dominated and controlled by middle-class progressive liberals who don’t think , speak or act like us, who haven’t suffered like us. (5/17)

They look down their noses, like they’d stepped in shit. They despise us. They care about us as little as the Tories do, but we expect that from the Tories. We don’t expect it from Labour, set up to defend us, not to ignore us because we voted to leave the European Union. (6/17)

Working-class people aren’t intolerant. I don’t care what race, colour, creed, religion, or sexuality you are. But "progressives" are convinced we’re all knuckle-draggers. They’ve come onto Fb and called us ignorant, stupid & racist, saying we’ve made our own lives worse. (7/17)

The protestors on the streets of London and Leeds, screaming about the outcome of a democratic election, are singing “oh, Jeremy Corbyn”. But Jeremy Corbyn hates the EU as much as we do. You might be pro-EU, but he isn’t. He was forced at knifepoint to support Remain. (8/17)

Working-class people have always had it hard. We don’t have hand-outs from mummy and daddy. When the south was prospering, our communities were being decimated. Our mines were closing. Our steel mills were shut. We’ve always had adversity up here. )9/17)

We’re bracing ourselves now for more adversity. As public education and health services decline, it’s our children that will suffer. But we took all into consideration and, still, the worth of our vote, Democracy, meant more. Because if we lose that, we’ve got nothing. (10/17)

My uncle said: “How can I vote for an MP who’s ignored her own constituents?” And the answer was, we couldn’t. She didn’t deserve to be re-elected, just because she wore a red rosette. The Labour Party no longer represents working-class people in the northeast. (11/17)

The Labour Party no longer speaks TO us. It doesn’t think like us. It’s not us anymore. We have no voice. And, so, we voted for the only party who were offering to respect what we voted for in 2016.
Yesterday, we voted in Redcar for Democracy, and the worth of our vote. (12/17)

The relationship between northern working-class people and Labour is like being in an abusive relationship, where you’re with a horrible person who treats you badly, they keep lying to you. But because you love them, you keep taking them back time and time again. (13/17)

Because, it’s all that you know, because you’re frightened to leave them. Then, all of a sudden, one morning you wake up and think: I don’t need to take this anymore. I don’t need someone to look down their nose at me. I’m going to leave you. And suddenly, you end it. (14/17)

That’s exactly how the relationship has been between northern, working-class people & the Labour Party. They have taken us for granted, they’ve treated us like shit, they go courting the progressive middle-class liberals, and we’ve had enough. We deserve better. (15/17)

There is constant discrimination against the working class – white, black, Muslim, Christian. Every institution and profession in society is dominated by the liberal middle class, who constantly hurl abuse at us, then come online and wish death on us. (16/17)

We’re sick to death of a Labour Party that no longer represents us. We had no choice but to vote for the only party that would uphold the decision that we made in 2016.

The more abuse we receive, the more justified I feel in having voted Conservative. (17/17; Ends)

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