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Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE Profile picture
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3 Dec, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Starmer signals Labour may vote for the trade deal.

He risks tying Labour's fortunes to a lousy deal whose effects will further erode the shrinking pro-Brexit minority.

And how can he credibly criticise a deal he has voted for? Labour should abstain.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
My big worry is that after many months of silence on Brexit, voting for a deal will be a signal that Starmer intends to turn a blind eye to Brexit after January 1st, no matter how severe the consequences. Everything will be subordinated to winning back the red wall.
Once Brexit is in the bag the enthusiasm behind it will deflate very fast Support for Brexit was always about being against something. Many people will lose enthusiasm, a smaller number will cease to support it altogether. Meanwhile anger against Brexit may well increase.
It would therefore be very risky for Starmer to tie his and Labour's future to a deal that will command almost no enthusiasm, and to a cause which will rapidly deflate, having achieved its goal and being faced with the messy consequences of that victory.

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More from @nickreeves9876

Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE Profile picture
4 Dec
Brexit was built on the politics of fear. Fear destroys rational thinking, & elicits primitive emotions which drive people to identify an enemy, and seek safety in a tribe behind strong defences. The tax-dodging Brexit billionaire press then told people that the EU was the enemy. ImageImageImageImage
Having said that, a fear-inciting propaganda only works when people already feel insecure and uneasy. Many of the main Brexit backing areas are suffering from post-industrial decline and the crumbling of communities and social structures. People feel neglected.
Those, white native folk feel that in our rush to end discrimination against minorities they have been ignored, while the economic and social world their families inhabited for generations disintegrates leaving them adrift in a new alien reality.
Read 8 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE Profile picture
2 Dec
If @Keir_Starmer makes Labour vote for a deal he will tie himself and Labour to the deal and all its adverse consequences, and Labour will once again be treating loyal Labour voting Remainers as doormats while sucking up to Tory voting red wall Brexiters.
theguardian.com/politics/2020/…
Given that Starmer is engaged in a battle with Corbynist die-hards, it seems an act of tactical idiocy to act in a way which will disillusion or enrage many of Labour's Remainers most of whom are his natural allies against the Corbynists.
Starmer should let the Tories sort out their Brexit among themselves. Let then own it and let them be accountable for the consequences. That's the line Starmer has been following so far, so why wreck it at the last moment by tying his and Labour's future to a crap Tory deal?
Read 5 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE Profile picture
2 Dec
The core element of democracy is the right to oppose. But for around 2 years after the referendum nearly all politicians and journalists were intimidated into treating Remain as political blasphemy. During that period Brexit politics was profoundly undemocratic. It was a coup.
That 2 years or so of populist intimidation hugely slowed the advance of the Remain campaign and shut out its message from much of the public. That Brexit happened at all is a direct result of that period of fascistic intimidation. Brexit was a coup.
We continue to see the effects of that intimidation in Starmer and Davey's extraordinary caution with regard to Brexit. It is only in a climate of political intimidation that opposition politicians would tread so warily. But we've become used to it. Intimidation is the norm.
Read 6 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE Profile picture
28 Nov
1/ If you are sick of Labour's pandering to red wall Brexiters and its ignoring of the substantial majority who believe Brexit to be a mistake, here's what to do.
2/ To beat the Tories in the next General Election will almost certainly require electoral cooperation among opposition parties to overcome the toxic effect of FPTP. So we must campaign for an electoral alliance in key seats.
3/ The need for an electoral alliance means that Labour cannot play the game of saying vote for us or you get the Tories, because by so doing they would be serving as Tory enablers. And we should call them out on that if they try to block cooperation.
Read 5 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE Profile picture
12 Oct
1/ We should be pressing as hard as possible to get opposition parties to accept electoral cooperation and to immediately start work on the basic arrangements. Cooperation is vital for defeating the Tories under FPTP. Without it all our efforts will be in vain.
2/ We need a hashtag for an electoral cooperation campaign. Ideas would be welcome. One requirement is that the hashtag be short.
3/ Electoral cooperation does not demand monolithic unity. We in the opposition will continue to disagree among ourselves about all sorts of issues. But these should be treated as disagreements among allies and friends. Disagreement must not mean enmity.
Read 4 tweets
Nick Reeves 3.5% #FBPE Profile picture
11 Oct
1/ We should take back the UK and English flags from the hard and far-right. They show no care for our country and its people, so they have no right to own our national symbols. But to do that we need a positive narrative about what the UK & England stand for.
2/ Many people will, understandably say - a pox on national identity. But there are two big problems with that stance. One is that if we don't forge a national identity others will. But there's a larger issue here, namely the interweaving of national identity and democracy.
3/ We are very familiar with anti-democratic aspect of nationalism. But there's another side of nationality that recent events have eclipsed. Democracy requires a sense of our belonging to a shared community, giving us a sense of solidarity with other members of the community.
Read 8 tweets

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