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Senior Member
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 12,871
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 12,871
Favourites (more):
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Withano
Can you paste the full article Brillo. You've read it, right? Others cant read it unless they're subscribed to the website, which you deffo are, right?
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I got nosy, so here it is...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...byn-get-power/
Quote:
The election result was rather exciting for Jeremy Corbyn and his followers. "We are ready to serve this country," he promptly announced. The Labour leader's supporters have been boasting of how he oversaw the party's biggest increase in vote share since 1945. This gave Emily Thornberry the licence to dismiss suggestions that the party had lost the election, declaring on Sky News magisterially: "No, I don’t think that we did".
Yet those swept up by this collective delirium will have found it hard to escape the conclusion this week on seeing Theresa May in Downing Street reshuffling her cabinet that Labour had not actually won. Corbynistas may feel their time in office has come, but have been forced to accept reality on looking at the electoral landscape.
The Conservatives picked up 55 more seats than Labour, meaning that Mrs May only need to work with her "friends and allies in the Democratic Unionist party" to have a majority in the Commons. Even if Jeremy Corbyn teamed up with the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, his 314-strong "progressive alliance" would not be big enough – and it would still be out-numbered by the Tories's 317 MPs alone.
Corbynistas have never come this close to power, so falling at the final hurdle – last week's general election – will have been hard for them. They have decided that the best way to get over their disappointment is to take it out on the DUP for cementing the Tories' grip in power.
The vitriol from the Left has come thick and fast. Owen Jones called them "gay-hating, anti-choice terrorist-sympathisers". "They have nothing to bring to a modern body politic," Zoe Williams opined. "The DUP are the closest thing we have in this country to institutional religious extremism, all ancient hatreds and bigotries so dated it is like arguing with the past."
Tempting as it may be for them to stick it to Mrs May's new allies, they have forgotten two things. First, the Tories aren't looking to draft the DUP into Government; they just want their backing to get business done in the Commons on key areas like Brexit. They aren't so much "jumping into bed" with the DUP as sleeping in separate beds but occasionally having dinner together.
Second, Labour was more than happy to talk to the DUP about how they could work together in past elections. Gordon Brown was reported by US officials in 2010 to be "doing whatever he can to hold on to power", a process which required one of his cabinet ministers to work on an "economic package for Northern Ireland to win support from the DUP... for Labour".
Labour tried again to woo the DUP in 2015, one of its MPs Ian Paisley has said, although such a prospect will have been snuffed out as soon as David Cameron's surprise majority became clear.
That hasn't stopped Labour from trying to stir the pot. The party has wheeled out grandees – former Northern Ireland secretaries Peter Hain, Shaun Woodward and Peter Mandelson – to accuse Mrs May of putting the peace process at risk by working with the DUP. "London is no longer an honest broker," Mr Hain declared portentously.
In Mr Hain's view, the Conservatives have crippled their ability to be do business in Northern Ireland by allying with unionists. Mrs May has already said that her party make clear in their manifesto that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom, so why is it a shock that the Tories prefer to talk to the DUP rather than Sinn Fein?
Tony Blair managed to work on the peace process as Prime Minister despite the fact that the SDLP – Labour's sister party – were active in Northern Ireland. His Government sent letters to more than 200 "on-the-run" IRA suspects after the Good Friday Agreement granting them immunity from criminal prosecution, yet Mr Hain and his colleagues decided not to express public concerns – like they do now – about how neutral this left London looking.
Moreover, the Democratic Unionist Party's decision will be more than happy to support Mrs May's administration because it ensures Jeremy Corbyn is shut out of power. "For as long as you allow yourselves to be led by an IRA cheerleader, you exclude yourselves from entering No 10," a party source told the Guardian. Party leader Arlene Foster survived an IRA bomb on her school bus and was only eight when they tried to kill her father, so she would not look kindly on his past coziness to its members.
Labour has previously been happy to do business with the DUP, but now finds itself frozen out due to Mr Corbyn. This should give the Left cause for thought, but his followers have decided it is much easier to pay the DUP back by demonising them for deciding to help the largest party get business done in Government.
The Corbynistas' decision to respond with name-calling, rather than by asking themselves tough questions about their leader, shows why they will remain too immature for power.
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Last edited by jet; 14-06-2017 at 01:00 AM.
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13-06-2017, 10:42 PM
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