LABOUR were last night preparing for a “good kicking” from voters in the European Parliament elections, John McDonnell said.
Jeremy Corbyn’s party has faced repeated criticism for its lack of clarity over EU withdrawal.
Shadow chancellor McDonnell says they would “probably” suffer a humiliating result over their handling of Brexit.
Writing in The Observer yesterday, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson called on the party to “find some backbone” and fully commit to a second Brexit referendum in order to have a
chance of success in the next
General Election.
Speaking on Sky’s Ridge on Sunday show, McDonnell said: “I think we most probably will get a good kicking in the election results tonight. We’ll see. We are braced for that.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.”
Corbyn critic Watson said he feared the results of the European elections would show voters had deserted the party.
He blamed Labour’s ambiguous position on a public vote, stating
that the party’s performance at
the polls “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”.
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