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| Richard Burgon at a meeting in Crawley recently (ooh, diverse) |
Dickie Burgon spoke to Andrew Marr yesterday and exposed just about everything that is daft about the hard left following the election. Asked what lessons had been learned from the result, Burgon should have answered 'none' because everything that he said thereafter was nonsense. It was 'Bregsit' and the right wing press that cost Labour the election and he hastened to add that Corbyn's socialist policies were not a factor. The problem with Burgon's 'Bregsit' argument is that he and his hard left colleagues were complicit in Labour's Remain stance. None of them made any concerted efforts to drive Labour back to their 2017 position of accepting the result. Therefore he can't extricate the hard left from blame in this regard.
When asked about the rise of Keir Starmer and a potential shift in policy back to the centre, Burgon comes out with a humdinger of a statement: "I don't think there's a future for the Labour party politically, morally or electorally, by trying to triangulate our way back to power". So, rather than seek to win an election, he'd rather confine Labour to a talking shop of unelectable socialist principles? Fair enough Dickie. Enjoy perpetual opposition.
Burgon also repeated his bizarre assessment that the successful leadership candidate won't have a "mandate to ditch a single socialist policy from the last two manifestos". Er, they will have a mandate from the members who elected them. That point asides, what we can learn from this is that should a victorious Starmer attempt to diverge from the hard left policies of the last five years he is going to come up against vociferous opposition. This won't just merely be 'members led', it will include the Parliamentary Labour Party, because one of the successes for Corbynism from December's election was that the PLP is now loaded with more hard left MPs than ever before. There is trouble ahead for Starmer, should he win, but as we have already learned - the left are happy to be out of government as long as they can retain control of Labour itself.
Watch the full nine minutes of mind blowing idiocy below.
As per usual, Burgon was brutally ridiculed online following this interview. Many found his "we can't go back to the future" line most amusing. In truth the whole nine minutes were a joy to behold. The denial, the delusion, the hopeless dreams, the inexorable stupidity - Richard Burgon is a gift to the Tories and one hopes he maintains a presence on the front benches following the leadership election.
