Michael Foot Speech on Europe!

[josie andrews]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/K3N9Myh9Fog[/youtube]

[SJ]

Pity Labour have no one like him now

[DaveO]

History proves him wrong.

Since that referendum back in the 1970's the EU did not dictate any of the following:

The deregulation of the financial markets (big bang and later leading to the 2008 crash).
Closing of coal mines.
Going to war in the Falklands and Iraq.
Switch from manufacturing to a service economy.
Privatisation of railways, power, water and the post office.
Austerity since the 2008 crash.
Steady privatisation and undermining of the NHS.
Education being ruined by Michael Gove and his "Free schools".
Bedroom tax.
Cutting benefits for the disabled.

I could go on and on. You may agree or disagree with any of the above policies and actions but the fact is just about everything that affects us all today in our daily lives originated in Westminster.

So his concerns over sovereignty are demonstrably wrong.

Furthermore Section 18 of the European Union Act 2011 declares that EU law forms part of the UK only by virtue of an Act of Parliament. In other words, Parliament is still sovereign and could still take back its law making powers from the EU if it wished to do so. That obviously wasn't in effect when Foot made that speech but it has been since then and what it means is that EU law as it affects the UK has been agreed to by parliament. Voluntarily.

So the fact the UK chose to enact the working time directive which protects us all or to agree to all the rules and regulations that apply to the single market was at the will of parliament.

Foot was just as deluded as Frank Field and Kate Hoey, the modern day left wing Brexit torch bearers.

His and their argument is simplistic. They seem to think if parliament wills it, then things we agreed to that can't happen now, will be possible after we leave. From the left wing side of politics this means things like re-nationalising utilities for example. Apart from the fact you can do these things while in the EU it ignores the constraints the wider world will seek to put on the UK once we leave. Want a free trade agreement with the USA? Open the NHS up to full privatisation and our market to crap genetically modified food. Want one with India? Open up the working visa regime. And so on.

The argument from those obsessed with sovereignty is that if we do this, then it will be the will of parliament totally ignoring the fact it was the will of parliament to adopt the EU laws we did.

The other argument is if we are stupid enough to elect a government that agrees a free trade deal with the US that privatised the NHS or floods our food market with genetically modified food all we have to do to undo this is vote the government out. That is absolute simplistic nonsense.

And all this is just the spurious argument about sovereignty. Foot's doomsday predictions are wide of the mark economically as well. We have prospered in the EU and that includes those on the median income with it rising faster then in the USA over the same period (so not just the "elite" being better off).

So thanks for posting that Josie because as I said at the very start, History has proved him wrong and that is a pertinent reminder of the deluded Brexiteer arguments.

[Wiganer Ted]

Labour is quite brilliant at one thing. Electing leaders who haven't a hope of winning a General Election.
Foot lost the GE with one of the largest landslides to the Conservatives ever. His own MP Gerald Kaufman called Foot's manifesto as "the longest suicide note in history".
They then lost with Kinnock and won with Blair.
Since Blair two Labour leaders, Brown and Milliband have lost GE's.
Corbyn is just awful.
He has spent a lifetime being anti EU. He now leads a party who's majority of voters voted Remain. Labour membership is at a massive high at over 500,000 and 72% want a 2nd referendum. Corbyn doesn't. His PLP is 95% Remain and his anti EU stance means he's representing only himself and like minded isolationists.

We have a very good and strong Labour opposition being let down totally by an incompetent still running with his policies from the 1960's and 70's.
Labour need a top quality leader and Corbyn most certainly isn't it. Where they go from here is up to them but if Corbyn continues as he is doing he might out do Foot in the size of defeat he inflicts on Labour at the next GE whenever it is.

[DaveO]

Labour is quite brilliant at one thing. Electing leaders who haven't a hope of winning a General Election.
Foot lost the GE with one of the largest landslides to the Conservatives ever. His own MP Gerald Kaufman called Foot's manifesto as "the longest suicide note in history".
They then lost with Kinnock and won with Blair.
Since Blair two Labour leaders, Brown and Milliband have lost GE's.
Corbyn is just awful.
He has spent a lifetime being anti EU. He now leads a party who's majority of voters voted Remain. Labour membership is at a massive high at over 500,000 and 72% want a 2nd referendum. Corbyn doesn't. His PLP is 95% Remain and his anti EU stance means he's representing only himself and like minded isolationists.

We have a very good and strong Labour opposition being let down totally by an incompetent still running with his policies from the 1960's and 70's.
Labour need a top quality leader and Corbyn most certainly isn't it. Where they go from here is up to them but if Corbyn continues as he is doing he might out do Foot in the size of defeat he inflicts on Labour at the next GE whenever it is.

The flaw in your argument is many of those 500,000 members only joined because Corbyn became leader and articulated the policies he does despite his insistence the result of the referendum must stand.

The argument from the left for Brexit is you can only enact policies like nationalisation if you are outside of the EU. It's not true. When the East Coast mainline went bust the first time the government took back control and ran it (better than the private companies) without the EU batting an eye.

Given the result of the last general election where he robbed the Tories of their majority it doesn't follow he will lose like Foot did.

What would guarantee that is a return to Labour being "Tory lite" which is what went a long way to costing Milliband his chance. The sight of Labour MP's trying to outdo Tories on being tough on things like immigration is obscene.

That is exactly what happened in 2014 when Yvette Copper as shadow home sec backed May's change to the law that repealed the Labour one of 1999 that protected the citizenship of Commonwealth migrants who came here before 1971. This change has ended up robbing the Windrush migrants of their UK citizenship if they could not prove it.

Corbyn, Abbott and McDonald were amoung 18 MP's who voted against and Corbyn is on record as doing so because he knew it gave power to the home secretary to arbitrarily rob UK citizens of their citizenship. This is exactly what has happened.

He's not the polished parliamentary performer by any means but he is a lot cleverer than people give him credit for. He saw this Windrush scandal coming in 1999. The Blairites in their rush to be as tough as the Tories are complicit in it.

[Wiganer Ted]

Agreed the 500k joined because of Corbyn.
When it comes to turnout at a GE those are small numbers.
Corbyn is getting it wrong on everything. Brexit, Salisbury, Syria and the UN then Anti Semitism. If he doesn't resign then he will lead them to a GE defeat.
Labour are 65 seats short of a majority and around 1.5m votes short.
Corbyn won't make up that deficit.
The EU rules on Nationalisation didn't apply to the East Coast Main Line as the Govy didn't invest any money in the Direct Rail Co or whatever it was called.
By the way the CEO of the Nationalised ECML Michael Holden said Nationalising the whole rail network would be a financial disaster. He should know!
I still reckon May will outwit him and beat him over Brexit and the next GE. There are far better people to lead Labour than Corbyn. If they want to win the next GE then they must replace Corbyn.

[DaveO]

Agreed the 500k joined because of Corbyn.
When it comes to turnout at a GE those are small numbers.
Corbyn is getting it wrong on everything. Brexit, Salisbury, Syria and the UN then Anti Semitism. If he doesn't resign then he will lead them to a GE defeat.
Labour are 65 seats short of a majority and around 1.5m votes short.
Corbyn won't make up that deficit.
The EU rules on Nationalisation didn't apply to the East Coast Main Line as the Govy didn't invest any money in the Direct Rail Co or whatever it was called.
By the way the CEO of the Nationalised ECML Michael Holden said Nationalising the whole rail network would be a financial disaster. He should know!
I still reckon May will outwit him and beat him over Brexit and the next GE. There are far better people to lead Labour than Corbyn. If they want to win the next GE then they must replace Corbyn.

They are not 65 seats short of a majority. It's 34. If Labour wins one, then the Tories lose one! I just looked it up and that would require a tiny swing to Labour of just 1.63%. You need more for a working majority but a small swing of 3.3% would gain them 58 seats. It's all about the distribution of the marginal seats as to how much of a swing you need to win enough seats in our FPTP system. Such swings won't require anything like that many voters to switch to Labour.

As to him getting it wrong on everything that is simply not true. He's got it spot on on Windrush and the anti-semitism issue is in my view being deliberately exaggerated for political reasons. The Tories have an MP who used the "N" word sat in parliament. A Cornish Tory local council candidate shared and re-shared sick Nazi themed memes and anti-immigrant jokes . They have a similar character up in Scotland and in 2014 had an MP throw an SS themed stag party.

Here is another:

Evolve Politics can exclusively reveal that a Conservative Councillor in Hertfordshire lists Nazi lawyer and holocaust denier Hajo Herrman as his inspiration on Facebook, and has also shared articles from the neo-Nazi organisation Generation identity and labelled UK immigrants as the ‘dregs of every nation’.

Michael Hearn, who was first elected as a Tory Councillor for Shepall in Stevenage in May 2017, is due to stand for re-election again tomorrow in another round of Council Elections.

If Corbyn had done that or had councillors doing these things it would be front page news with Labour being accused of being rife with anti-semitism. As it's the Tories it gets barely a mention. If you can't see you are being fed a propaganda line on this one you aren't looking.

He is right on Syria as well. We aren't going to go head to head with the Russians and that missle attack was a pathetic non-event.

[ian b]

the 500k that joined were probably students because he promised to scrap tuition fees, something that will never happen no matter who's in power

[Wiganer Ted]

The 65 seats and 1.5m votes short was the figure given to me by my local Labour MP. She also agreed that they need around another 15 seats for a workable overall majority.

Corbyn got it wrong over Windrush by completely missing the point as they all did. Those children who walked off the boats with their parents were on their parents British passports when people of the Empire/Commonwealth back then all had British passports together with free movement. Of Corbyn had remembered or knew his stuff he could have slaughtered the Govt over it. His approach seemed as useless as everything else he does.

He also got it wrong over Syria. We went in and bombed the Syrian chemical plants with the USA as did France. What is obvious now is that the USA, Israel and Saudi are going to take on Syria. It is strange that since Israel started the Russians have remained silent. Syria already has part of its land occupied by Israel and they will be very afraid of what is coming next. Neither Syria or Iran are any military match for Israel and the USA. The Russians are now between a rock and a hard place.
Corbyn got it wrong because there's no way he could have know what was coming next. Our Govt, the French, USA etc did know. We and the French are now out of it.
Corbyn is completely out of his depth as Leader of Labour.
He has been elected leader but cannot lead.
For the sake of us all we need a credible opposition, there's plenty talent in Labour who could lead them far better than Corbyn and provide that credible opposition.

[DaveO]

The 65 seats and 1.5m votes short was the figure given to me by my local Labour MP. She also agreed that they need around another 15 seats for a workable overall majority.

You are right I was thinking of number to overtake the Tories.

Corbyn got it wrong over Windrush by completely missing the point as they all did. Those children who walked off the boats with their parents were on their parents British passports when people of the Empire/Commonwealth back then all had British passports together with free movement. Of Corbyn had remembered or knew his stuff he could have slaughtered the Govt over it. His approach seemed as useless as everything else he does.

What has any of that got to do with it? We know what the status of these people was when they arrived.

What Corbyn and Abbott plus 16 other MP's got right in 2014 was that they said that status would be undermined by the changes made in 2014 act that removed the recognition of that status formally recognised in the Labour act of 1999. They predicted exactly what has happened would happen because of the 2014 changes. He has been proved 100% correct. If you are going to deny this absolute concrete fact then there is no point discussing this any further because you won't acknowledge when he is 100% spot on.

He also got it wrong over Syria. We went in and bombed the Syrian chemical plants with the USA as did France. What is obvious now is that the USA, Israel and Saudi are going to take on Syria. It is strange that since Israel started the Russians have remained silent. Syria already has part of its land occupied by Israel and they will be very afraid of what is coming next. Neither Syria or Iran are any military match for Israel and the USA. The Russians are now between a rock and a hard place.

If ever there was a damp squib of a military operation targeting those "chemical plants" was it. What do you mean "the USA, Israel and Saudi are going to take on Syria"? How exactly are they going to do this? Commit ground troops? No they are not. Corbyn recognises you will not get anywhere by lobbing missiles at anyone. Unless you commit to full scale military intervention lobbing missiles gets you nowhere. He knows we aren't going to do that so rightly called it out as a waste of time setting back any diplomatic efforts. And if you think the USA is going to invade Syria or the Russian's will sit by while Isreal does acting a US proxy you are mistaken. I don't know what you are wishing for here but escalation that involves Israel and Iran is not leading to lead to anything other than a major conflict.

Corbyn got it wrong because there's no way he could have know what was coming next. Our Govt, the French, USA etc did know. We and the French are now out of it.

You are saying Corbyn can't have predicted the future but others knew exactly what would happen next? Really? It does not take a genius to work out what lobbing a few missiles achieves given its been done so often and achieved nothing would achieve again. Or that the scope for military intervention is limited unless you want an all out war pulling in countries like Israel and Iran.