Ex Labour MP says party must return to Corbyn's 'magnificent' manifesto

7 May 2021, 09:35

Ex Labour MP says the party must return to the Corbyn's manifesto

Ex-Labour MP Laura Pidcock tells LBC that the party need to return to Jeremy Corbyn's "magnificent manifesto" of 2019 as elections appear to show voters deserting them.

Millions of people took to the ballot box to decide who represents them across a number of elections in Britain, with Labour seeing losses in early results.

Council contests elsewhere also appeared to show voters deserting Labour, as ballots continue to be tallied up across England, Scotland and Wales following the Super Thursday polls - the largest test of political opinion outside a general election.

The Tories seized Redditch and Nuneaton & Bedworth councils in the Midlands from Labour, along with Harlow in Essex, while Sir Keir's party saw heavy losses across North East local authorities.

In a key by-election, Hartlepool turned blue for the first time in its history.

Ms Pidcock told Nick Ferrari, "I think the Labour Party have got it wrong...the leadership of the Labour Party have spent a lot of time attacking the left of the party, an internal dispute that needs to end, instead of looking outwards to those working class communities that we need to so deeply represent.

"We've just come through a crisis and people are desperate for that representation."

Read more: 'The people of Hartlepool aren't daft,' newly-elected MP Jill Mortimer tells LBC

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She commented that people are "intensely scared" about Covid-19 and losing their jobs because of it: "I think there was a feeling that Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, that they were not ferocious enough in taking on this hard-right relentless Tory Government."

She told Nick her overrriding message to the leadership is "no lurch to the right of the Labour Party."

"If we look at the results in Hartlepool under Jeremy Corbyn, we were successful in maintaining those seats," Ms Pidcock.

Nick countered that Jeremy Corbyn led Labour to a "disastrous" election result, and Sir Keir Starmer has led to the party to a "hideous defeat."

"Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, need to return to that magnificent manifesto of 2017, 2019, without the shroud of Brexit hanging over us," Ms Pidcock said.

Nick cited former key Labour MP Phil Wilson who earlier told LBC that the party was "dented by the Corbyn era" and that "world view" needs to be extinguished.

She responded, "He is just wrong, Nick...no faith in the country? We had a plan to eradicate in work poverty, we had a plan to eradicate homelessness, we had a plan to bring us to a more peaceful nation. That is absolute faith in the country.

"It was shrouded in this deep division over whether we were leaving or remaining in the EU."