Over the last 24 hours members of the Shadow team have resigned, citing concerns over Article 50 and a three-line Whip imposed on Labour MPs, triggering fears of a repeat of last year's wholesale ship-jumping by MPs intent on discrediting Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party.
The Labour Party is caught in a difficult position over the BREXIT vote. Tory MPs are overwhelmingly (bar one so far) in favour of triggering Article 50, whilst the LibDems (all 9 of them), the sole Green MP and the SNP are all against it. Labour however has the dichotomy of having MPs representing the highest vote Remain areas and the highest vote Leave areas, so any Labour MP where the Remain vote carried has a duty to their electorate to reflect the wishes of their constituents. Hence the rebellion against the party Whip. For those MPs where the Leave vote carried but who campaigned for Remain there is the problem of which way to vote on the Bill.
But, as Chris Hanretty blogged, not all voting areas reflected whole constituencies, so it is not possible to tell how every constituency voted. Some areas cover multiple whole or part constituencies, so how do you apportion voter intent to a constituency there?
In my own (Westmorland & Lonsdale - the big yellow area in the north-west of England on the map represented by LibDem leader Tim Farron) it was a clear Remain vote, one of the few Remainer areas in England outside of London and the South-East. Looking at the map gives a better picture of which areas voted Remain and which voted Leave.
However, Labour voters nationally voted by 65% to Remain in the EU as this YouGov poll showed (despite being in the 50-64 age group my husband and I both voted Remain!)
The results show that 51.89% of all those who voted vote Leave
and as that is a simple majority it would appear to be the democratic thing to abide by it, hence the official Labour Party stance. So it does give a huge problem for Labour MPs who have to balance the will of their local electorate as against the will of the national electorate and the will of Labour supporters and voters generally.
Which brings us to the other big problem: England and Wales voted to leave, Scotland and Northern Ireland didn't, so how will BREXIT for the United Kingdom manage that, and will the UK itself survive BREXIT or will it result is the break up of the union?
All of this totally ignores the fact that the Referendum as created by the European Union Referendum Act 2015 was an ADVISORY one not a MANDATORY one, so should have been treated as an Opinion Poll to lead onto further negotiation, rather than a clear instruction to leave the EU, and you then end up with the almighty mess we currently have!
