I was shocked at the amount of Corbyn bashing on the news today. This was deemed to be an appropriate response to the number of Labour MPs voting against the triggering of article 50 and apparently defying their leader. I know that Sky and the BBC don’t really need an excuse to go Corbyn bashing but this was beyond ridiculous.
So what if some members of the Labour party decided they wanted to vote against article 50. That doesn’t necessarily denote that everyone who voted against triggering article 50, or who abstained, did so because they had it in for Corbyn. Clearly all Labour MPs will have voted with their conscience and some will have voted according to what the majority of their constituents would have wanted.
Anyway, I thought I might just do a little breakdown to try and build up a better picture of this alleged shocking level of defiance from within the Labour ranks. In fact, maybe we could look at how other parties voted as well and then maybe we could look at how those voting figures compared to how their voters actually voted during the EU referendum?…
Conservative : 1 MP opposed the triggering of article 50, while 319 MPs voted for triggering article 50. That’s 99.69% FOR vs 0.31% AGAINST. Now many of us might recall that only 58% of Conservative voters actually voted to leave the EU in the referendum. In other words, Conservative MPs have gone against the wishes of 42% of their voters and many Conservative MP’s will have gone against the wishes of their own constituencies.
Labour : So 40 Labour MPS opposed the triggering article 50, compared to 153 MPS who voted for triggering article 50. That’s 79.27% FOR vs 20.73% AGAINST. If we bear in mind that only about 37% of Labour voters actually voted to leave during the referendum this means that Labour MP’s voting to trigger article 50 have decided to respect the result of the referendum rather than be swayed by the 63% of Labour voters who voted to remain. Under the circumstances, it’s quite significant that only 20.73% of Labour MP’s voted against triggering article 50, wouldn’t you agree?
SNP : 50 MPS opposed to triggering article 50 and no SNP MP voted for, so that’s 100% AGAINST. Bear in mind now that there was also a sizeable number (about 36%) of SNP voters who voted to leave the EU last year. In other words, these results show that SNP MP’s were not going to be swayed by the Brexit voters within their constituencies.
LibDems : Like the SNP, all 7 LibDem MP’s (100%) opposed the triggering of article 50 and so, they voted against the wishes of approx. 30% of their electorate.
UKIP : Being the party with the singular objective of extracting the UK from the European Union, UKIP’s solitary MP, Douglas Carswell, understandably voted to trigger article 50. It’s worth noting though that this gives UKIP the unique accolade of being the only party to vote overwhelmingly in favour of its electorate, 96% of whom voted in favour of leaving the EU.
In conclusion, I think it’s hard now to ignore the fact that mainstream media has not just turned its back on objective, fact based reporting, it’s now effectively happy to serve its own bias and support a right wing political agenda.
Don’t believe the hype folks!
Koser Saeed
