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Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson has adopted an extreme opposition to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party since assuming her role earlier this year. And on 13 October, she kept up her sectarian stance by again suggesting that there’s no way she’d ever work with Corbyn. Labour’s response to this, meanwhile, was pure gold.
Sky‘s Sophy Ridge asked Swinson:
Are there any circumstances that you would back a Jeremy Corbyn government?
Swinson answered:
No.
Millions of workers are in poverty because Jo Swinson went against raising minimum wage. She sold herself to a fracking company, voted to take £30pw away from the disabled & sold Royal Mail for £1.5bn less than its value.
How dare she say Corbyn is unfit.pic.twitter.com/zw4H15cbjY
— Ben (@BenJolly9) October 13, 2019
Labour’s knockout response
The Labour Party’s press team on Twitter responded brilliantly to Swinson’s latest assertion of Lib Dem inflexibility. Echoing a point that many critics have been ensuring Britain doesn’t forget, it said:
The Lib Dems have previously said they couldn’t work with Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband or Jeremy Corbyn.
But they did jump into bed with David Cameron and George Osborne and imposed a decade of austerity on our country. #Ridge
— Labour Press Team (@labourpress) October 13, 2019
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott also hammered this home, tweeting:
Jo Swinson and LibDems supported Cameron and Osborne in government for 5 years. Implementing all the worst of austerity. But now they have ‘principles’ which mean they won’t support Jeremy Corbyn even as a caretaker PM to block No Deal Brexit. Shameful
— Diane Abbott (@HackneyAbbott) October 13, 2019
The Lib Dems haven’t just taken an extreme position on Corbyn, though. Because it’s the same with Brexit, with them promising to revoke Article 50 and just ignore UK voters who opted to leave the EU. They’re also welcoming Tories with terrible records into their party as long as they back this anti-Brexit mission.
Never forget Swinson’s appalling record of backing austerity
Swinson herself, meanwhile, has a terrible record of supporting the Tories’ ideological austerity – from opposing higher taxes for the super-rich to backing privatisation and welfare cuts. In short, she helped to prop up a vicious regime which oversaw skyrocketing food bank usage, attacked some of the most vulnerable people in Britain, and managed the decline of the NHS. The government’s public health spending cuts alone reportedly led to over 130,000 premature deaths in the UK. And a 2018 UN investigation found that “14 million people, a fifth of the population” now “live in poverty”.
The Lib Dems may hope that their hardline Brexit position is enough to save them from electoral irrelevance and make people forget their role in destroying Britain with austerity. But statistics show that around half of the British population don’t feel strongly about either Leave or Remain and prioritise other issues instead. And Corbyn’s Labour isn’t just trying to unite British people by pledging to let them choose between a Brexit deal or remaining in the EU; it’s also got bold and exciting policies on the issues most people really care about.
By dogmatically opposing Corbyn at every turn, Swinson is saying much more about herself than she is about him.
Featured image via Ridge on Sunday
