Les May
IN an
article in yesterday's “i” Angela Eagle showed where she gets her information
about Jeremy Corbyn. It's the media.
Referring to Corbyn's ability to 'hold Boris Johnson's feet to the
fire', amongst other things, she wrote 'The tepid words and lip service he paid
to the Remain campaign showed this past month.'
According
to the media it's received wisdom that Corbyn's performance in the referendum
was poor. And Angela Eagle has swallowed
that story without bothering to check the facts.
According
to an analysis of media coverage by Loughborough University for the period 6
May to 22 June, Corbyn scored 123 media appearances. Eagle scored 15, one less than Angela Merkel
who is Chancellor of Germany! Alan
Johnson who was supposed to be running the Labour party's Referendum campaign
scored slightly better with 19.
So how
did Corbyn do in mobilising the Labour vote for Remain? You can check out the
exact figures on the link below, but in round figures, 40% of the people who
voted 'Remain' had voted Labour in the 2015 election and 40% of those who voted
'Leave' had voted Conservative. Put
another way 60% of Labour voters supported 'Remain' and 60% of Conservative
voters supported 'Leave'.
Dumping
the blame for Brexit on a few northern towns where Labour had performed well in
past elections and ignoring the vast swathes of the country which were solidly
Conservative in the election and solidly for 'Leave' in the referendum, won't
wash. Check it out on the appropriate
maps if you doubt it.
The
witless bunch of plotters who have tried to launch a coup against Corbyn missed a glorious opportunity to dump the
responsibility for the vote to leave the EU fairly and squarely where it
belongs on David Cameron and his Tory party.
Had they
pointed out how well Corbyn had mobilised the Labour vote for Remain whilst
David Cameron had pointedly failed to do so, it would have been difficult for
anyone in the media to argue differently because that is what the facts point
to. On this matter Corbyn showed far
more leadership than Cameron whose troops ignored his pleas.
Angela
Eagles' leadership style would certainly be different from Corbyn's. We'd be back to a world where Labour's
policies would be determined by what suited the media.
Incidentally,
Angela just what did that sentence you mangled actually mean?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment