Labour is braced for a “good kicking” in the European Parliament elections, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said.
His comments come after deputy Labour leader Tom Watson said the party must “find some backbone” and fully commit to a second referendum on Brexit to have any chance of winning the next general election.
Mr McDonnell said he understood Mr Watson’s frustration, but that the party had been right to “tread a really difficult road” of trying to bring Leave and Remain supporters back together.
The shadow chancellor said Labour would pay an electoral price for that stance when European Parliament results begin to be announced late on Sunday.
Mr McDonnell told Sky News: “I think we most probably will get a good kicking in the election results tonight.
“We’ll see. We are braced for that.”
He added: “But, you know, we had to do the responsible thing.
“It was a hard road to follow. But someone had to be there and say ‘Can we bring the country back together again?’
“And it would have been easy to go to one side, go to the Remain side and ignored all those people who voted Leave – that’s not the nature of our party.
“We are the party that is trying to bring people back together again.
“That’s been difficult electorally for us in these elections, of course it has.
“But now we have got to move on.”
Mr Watson said he feared the results of the European elections would show that voters had deserted the party and blamed Labour’s ambiguous position on a public vote.
The party must stop “hedging its bets” and urgently rethink its stance in order to realign itself with its members, he added.
Writing in The Observer, he said: “For our party’s sake, but most of all for Britain’s sake, Labour needs to find some backbone on Brexit, find our voice – and do it fast.”
He added: “Our performance (in the European elections) is a direct result of our mealy-mouthed backing for a public vote on Brexit when it is being demanded loud and clear by the overwhelming majority of our members and voters.
“Polls show Labour has been losing up to four times more voters to parties giving full backing to a people’s vote than to (Nigel) Farage.
“And those same polls show we would have beaten him by a country mile if we had unambiguously backed a public vote on any form of Brexit.
“Once results are in, we must channel our frustration into winning those voters back. Never again can Labour policy on the most crucial issue of our generation be on the wrong side of its members and voters.”
Mr Watson described the party’s stance on a second referendum as “a deliberate, self-defeating attempt to triangulate between different groups”.
Ahead of the European elections, Jeremy Corbyn saw off an attempt by pro-EU members to commit the party to a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal.
The party’s ruling National Executive Committee agreed that its manifesto would instead stick to the wording of a motion passed by Labour conference last year, which keeps a public vote on the table as a last option.
This decision was made by a “small number of people” and should instead be made by party members, Mr Watson said.
The deputy leader also vowed to support calls for Labour’s Brexit policy to be changed before the autumn party conference.
“I fear that unless our policy on Brexit changes we will not have the opportunity to be the radical reforming government that so many millions of people in our country need,” he said.
“The campaign to change that begins now.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel