Brexit Party must not become a new Tory Party

As Brendan Chilton of Labour Leave said so eloquently this week, leaving the European Union is not a “hard-right Tory project”. It is just a decision made in a democratic and free referendum in which a majority of people, 17.4 million, voted to leave the EU. This is not an expression of hard-right politics, however convenient it is for left wing Remainers to smear it in this way.

( https://labourlist.org/2019/06/brexit-is-not-an-expression-of-hard-right-politics/ )

This is why it is imperative that the Brexit Party keeps the broad church of supporters it attracted when it was launched. In particular, the more than five million Labour, Green and other left wing supporters who voted Leave at the 2016 referendum and the many more who formerly voted Remain, but now respect the democratic result of the referendum.

As a former leadership candidate for the Green Party, I thought long and hard about supporting the Brexit Party. It seems to me to be the last best hope for getting the will of the people, the decision to leave the EU, enacted in the face of the near hysterical antipathy of the establishment towards Brexit.

Just look at the massive campaign to undermine Boris Johnson as potential leader of the Conservative Party by the main stream media, this week. Look at the supporters of Brexit, both big and small, who have been subject to vilification and in some cases, prosecution, by organs of the establishment such as the Electoral Commission. Look at the bending of the rules by the Speaker of the House of Commons, unprecedented in recent Parliamentary history.

Anyone and I mean anyone, who could potentially deliver the 2016 peoples' vote for Brexit is hunted down by the establishment pack and savagely attacked. Which is why we the believers in democracy need to stick together in the face of this extraordinary denial of our rights.

On June 30th the Brexit Party are having a rally to announce new policies to support their General election campaign. For me, the Brexit Party only needs one policy: to facilitate the UK leaving, permanently, the dictatorship that is the European Union.

Personally, I admire Nigel Farage's tenacity at sticking to his views on the European Union and his leadership skills in helping to create the effective campaigning organisation that is the Brexit Party. Anyone who helped during the Peterborough by-election could not have been more impressed with the efficiency of the organisation put together at such short notice. I fully expect that professionalism to be repeated at the Brecon and Radnor by-election and I expect and hope that the Brexit candidate there wins the seat.

However, I am not a supporter of everything that Nigel Farage has said in the past, particularly on economic issues. As a Green Socialist, I want the freedom to challenge the neo-liberal economic orthodoxy that the unelected Eurogroup have imposed on the EU with such devastating effect in countries like Greece. Brexit can and should give me and other socialists like me the opportunity to argue our case to the British electorate after Brexit.

So it is vitally important that the Brexit Party does not do or say anything now that will alienate their left wing supporters before we leave the EU. To do so will inevitably lead to a damaging split and calls for a new Lexit Party. In my opinion, to create such a party at this time would undermine the solidarity of Leave voters and play into the hands of the Remain establishment.

So far the Brexit Party appears to be favouring members of the business community and their negotiating abilities when picking candidates (although there are exceptions such as left wing MEP Claire Fox). Fair enough, perhaps, when you are picking MEPs to try to negotiate our way out of the EU. But candidates to be Brexit Party MPs should reflect the broad sweep of political opinion across the Leave spectrum. Candidates in former Labour seats need to appeal to left wing voters. The Brexit Party can do that if its focus is on leaving the EU. It cannot if it starts developing new business friendly polices outside of its brief to deliver Brexit and unpopular with left wing voters.

After the mess made of Brexit by the Conservative Government over the last three years, the last thing the UK needs now is another Tory Party. I urge the leadership of the Brexit Party to focus on the main task in hand, which is leaving the EU and creating an independent country that can decide for itself its future path. Whether that be to the Left or to the Right is for future generations of the British people to decide. That is what democracy is about, after all.

Remember the Liberal Democrats?

Remember the Liberal Democrats? The bastards who promised to abolish student fees then more than tripled them when they got a sniff of power? The ones who betrayed the NHS by voting for the NHS Privatisation bill in 2012?

Well suddenly they have come into money. Where from is an interesting question, but they have been using it to send out more leaflets than any other party, spreading more of their lies about the EU.

Being an erudite and thoughtful party their EU manifesto is called #BollockstoBrexit".
This follows their successful 2010 campaign #BollockstoStudents and their 2012 sell-out called #BollockstotheNHS

In one of their many election leaflets they claim that being in the EU under the LibDems will mean "A country with a growing economy fit for the future." This after 46 years in the EU has left us with an unsustainable trade deficit of £95 billion with the EU27, financed by debt and selling off the country's assets.
If we continue to be in the EU with this level of trade deficit, the country will be in the same austerity measures imposed by the EU, as Greece is now, within 10 years.

"A country where everyone can afford somewhere to live" the LibDems claim, just when the report by Sir Angus Deaton appears, showing massive inequality in wealth in the UK and record post war levels of child poverty. Just look at the graphs in the Lib Dem loving Guardian below and just look when that inequality started to rise, given that the UK joined what is now the EU in 1973.

Whilst in the EU, the UK is POWERLESS to change the neo-liberal economic policies that have caused this inequality, as these are written into the EU treaties and controlled by the unelected Eurogroup, consisting of bankers and headed by the German finance minister.

"Democracy had indeed died the moment the Eurogroup acquired the authority to dictate economic policy to member states..." (Yanis Varoufakis "Adults in the Room").

If we are to stop the slide into poverty of the country and its citizens, WE NEED BREXIT. Only then can we have the debate to decide what economic policy is right for the UK and its people.
So please, ignore the billionaire funded claptrap of the LibDems and VOTE FOR THE BREXIT PARTY ON MAY 23rd.