Labour MPs Break Ranks and Back No Deal over No Brexit

Corbyn
Rob Stothard/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

A Labour MP has publicly backed a no-deal Brexit over stopping Brexit, defying the official Labour Party position.

Sarah Champion, the MP for Rotherham, told the BBC’s Politics Live on Tuesday: “I want us to leave, the country wants us to leave and for our democracy I think we have to leave.

“So therefore if it came to it, I would take no-deal if it meant we could leave, because we have to leave.”

On July 8th, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced a shift in Labour policy on Brexit, stating that the party would back a second referendum on any deal agreed between the Tory government and the EU and in the case of a no-deal Brexit, a move criticised for having betrayed the five million Labour Leavers across the nation.

Rotherham voted Leave in the 2016 referendum and the Brexit Party took 43.3 per cent of the voter share in the constituency in May’s European Parliament election. Whilst Ms Champion herself voted Remain, the Labour politician’s decision to put her local constituency and the national support for Brexit before her own preference may put her at odds with the party leadership.

However, it would not be for the first time, with the northern constituency MP having been forced to resign from the shadow Cabinet in 2017 after penning an article highlighting that Muslim Pakistani-origin men groomed more than 1,500 white girls for rape in her home city. The MP later criticised the London elites in the party for failing to connect with the concerns of their northern constituents and tackle the rape gangs.

A reported “eight to ten” Labour MPs, including Caroline Flint and Emma Lewell-Buck, are also believed to be ready to back a no-deal Brexit under a prospective Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to HuffPost.

Ms Lewell-Buck told the news website that her Remain supporting colleagues “need to get realistic” and stand by the 2017 manifesto pledge to respect the outcome of the referendum or face obliteration at the next election and “end up with Nigel Farage in Number 10”.

“Eighty percent of MPs were elected on a manifesto that said we would deliver Brexit,” the MP for South Shields said.

“I would obviously prefer to leave with a deal, but if it comes down to no Brexit or no-deal then I would go with no-deal because the consequences mean that Labour will not be in government in the future and we will lose seats. For me that is a far worse scenario than any Brexit outcome would be,” she stated.

Historically a strong voice of Euroscepticism in the Commons, Labour has become dominated by liberal-progressive elites who back Remain, the party’s recent changing position on Brexit isolating its traditional working-class voters in England’s north and midlands and in Wales.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage wrote on Sunday that Labour had “signed its own death warrant” by declaring support for a second referendum, saying that Corbyn had “failed the people” of the Leave-voting regions and had “taken their votes for granted”.

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