Alan replies to the discussion
Socialist Resistance online2010sAlan Thornett of Socialist Resistance replies to the discussion at the London meeting on the outcome of the referendum.
A corrected transcript of the recording. The recording is the authority.
00:00 Alan Thornett: [inaudible] I'm trying to [inaudible] quite a few things to be — sorry. But we should recognise in this situation that everything is split, absolutely everything is split. The working class is split, the Tories are split, Labour is split, the left is split. Everything [inaudible] because [it's] an earthquake, you know, [inaudible] but everything is split. And the only — the only thing, in actual fact, we've got two main parties — there are only two main parties because of the electoral system. If we had a democratic electoral system, the Tories would be split into two; one would join up with UKIP. Labour would split into two: a right-wing Labour Party and a much more radical Labour Party. That's where politics is. It's held together by the electoral system.
00:30 And what I was saying about PR, my point is it's very important that Labour adopts PR, because it's a winner, it's a vote-getter [?]. It's very important that Labour now [inaudible].
01:01 I don't share the amount of pessimism over Corbyn — like [inaudible], for example, [who] says now if Corbyn goes, the left is politically finished [?]. I mean, I can't — just because [inaudible]. And I think the chances are that we could see another upsurge of young people around this, with the real possibility of winning. And Mark Serwotka was — I mean, actually, today Mark Serwotka defended him to the hilt. He said that what we've got to do is we've got to campaign to get thousands more people to join the Labour Party so that he has another resounding victory. That was Mark Serwotka. And that's not at all impossible; in fact I would have thought that it's possible.
01:33 Now, I don't think they can keep him off the ballot paper. I think that's a false debate, because the rules will be decided by the NEC, and if they kept him off the ballot paper then there'd be a legal challenge. It would be [inaudible] even legally. So I think they could just forget that: he's going to be on the ballot paper. The question is, is he going to win? And so I think that we've got to be part of that, getting every single person we possibly can in the Labour Party and getting the biggest vote possible.
02:04 So I think what I mean about a referendum — you know, it is a — it's very difficult to get [inaudible], and there's no way that we could say that a second referendum would be a better outcome than the existing one, because, as [inaudible] says, they would call foul, and they would appeal to the — you know, "this has been overturned" — and you might get an even bigger exit vote in the second referendum. This is why I think that we have to focus on trying to have an input and influence in what is being proposed as a Brexit framework. And we need to follow it in detail. We need to expose what they're doing. We can't let them do it behind closed doors. And there needs to be an alternative Brexit agenda based on civil rights, democratic rights, everything else — a completely different Brexit agenda. And so I think that's the only way to go in this situation.
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