Corbyn just doesn’t understand…
It's been a fairly tumultuous week in parliament, so to add to all the noise Comment Central's Deputy Editor Ted Jeffery decides to give his view on Jeremy Corbyn's performance.
It would be fair to say that the general mood amongst the British electorate is one of anger, frustration and tiredness. Who could blame them? For the past four years, elected representatives, funded by the taxpayer, have failed to carry out the biggest democratic mandate of a generation. In fact, if they had been in any other line of work such as business, they would have been sacked months ago.
For the past few months, Boris Johnson has been doing everything he can to ensure the UK leaves the EU with a deal on the 31st October. And if a deal can't be reached then to exit with a No-Deal instead. Why? Because it's what the British electorate voted for, in what seems to be a life-time ago. When you think about it, the definition to 'leave' is very straightforward. To leave means to "depart from". So considering 52% of the electorate voted to "depart from" the EU, why is Jeremy Corbyn trying to stop them from doing so? It would seem as though by preventing the electorate to have what they desire is to somehow say that their values are less important than his.
Jeremy Corbyn's reasoning for not wanting a 'No-Deal' exit is because it's undemocratic and that it will damage the British economy. Well lets just look at the facts. Banks such as Lloyds have been making preparations for the past few years, in particular looking at a worst case scenario. Their CEO Antonio Horta-Osorio announced a few weeks ago to his employees that the bank was prepared for any issues that may occur when departing from the EU. The Chancellor today has also announced a spending budget promising £54m of new funding into homelessness. So although Jeremy Corbyn would have you think that issues like homelessness will get worse because we will be living through extremely austere times, what we are seeing now is the government spending £13.8bn on Health, Education and Policing. Not only does that mean more investment but it also sees the government combating some of the biggest domestic issues this country is facing. All of this, let's not forget, being promised with the idea of us leaving without a deal.
So when Corbyn says he's scared of the ramifications of a No-Deal what he's actually saying is that he's scared of delivering on democracy. Essentially his job. Leaders aren't supposed to just spend their careers making plain, black and white decisions on how much the government should be spending on the NHS or what's the best way to end our rough sleeping epidemic. The role of a leader is to take a firm grasp of an opportunity (Brexit) and lead the nation towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It's not supposed to be an easy task, but if the will of the people is to "depart from" the EU, then it should be delivered. Boris Johnson right now seems to be the only leader (also Nigel) willing to do just that. It's what the electorate and party membership employed him to do, so we should all let him get on with doing it.
It's funny to think that it was only a few weeks ago that Corbyn and the rest of the Labour party were calling out Boris and his unelected clique for being cowards and not facing them in an election. Yet when Boris decides to call for one yesterday Jeremy's response was more along the lines of: "Erm, yeah… but, no. Um?" It's clear Corbyn wants a No-Deal exit off the table, but for the hundredth time… You can't just scrap it, especially when MP's voted for it to be the legal default.
