How Chuka Umunna actually helped deliver what he's warning against

The Labour Party MP Chuka Umunna has written an article for the Independent warning that Theresa May's snap election is just a power-grab designed to give her "the freedom to go back on all the promises made by her and by the Leave campaigners with little meaningful challenge in Parliament".

He also warned that a thumping majority would allow Theresa May to deliver the wet dream of the fanatical hard-right wing of the Tory Party; a "no deal" Brexit that "would mean us defaulting onto WTO trading terms, leading to high tariffs on all our imports and exports; a job-destroying, price-raising nightmare scenario that would leave working people worse off".

He's right of course. Theresa May has admitted it herself that this election is a power grab to ensure she gets to dictate the future of the UK without any kind of proper democratic scrutiny, and I've been warning of the dangers of a "no deal" strop away from the Brexit negotiating table ever since Theresa May made the threat of it the centrepiece of her so-called "negotiating strategy".

He's also right to warn of the danger of a "no deal" flounce away from the negotiating table that would leave millions of ordinary Brits worse off, while the wealthy elites insulate themselves from the economic consequences.

The glaring problem though is that Chuka and his ilk could have been holding the Tories to account over their Brexit shambles like this from the very beginning, but instead they used the Brexit vote to launch their own self-serving pre-planned (and hopelessly failed) coup plot against their own democratically elected party leader.

• Instead of lambasting David Cameron for gambling the entire future of the UK in return for a bit of short-term party political advantage over UKIP, then losing and resigning in disgrace...

• Instead of ridiculing the anti-democratic way the Tory MPs appointed Theresa May as their leader by bullying her rival out of the leadership contest ...

• Instead of pointing out time and again that the Tories delivered a Brexit without even having developed a contingency plan in case it happened ...

• Instead of every Labour MP repeatedly pointing out that Theresa May's "Brexit means Brexit" rhetoric was a meaningless platitude to mask the fact that the Tories had no coherent negotiating strategy whatever ...

Chuka and the other coup-plotter Labour MPs threw away the best opportunity to rubbish the Tories in decades in order to launch a pre-planned attack their own party leader, dividing the opposition at the very moment the nation needed a unified opposition more than ever.

If Theresa May gets the whopping great majority that she needs in order to launch the socially and economically ruinous "no deal" cliff edge Brexit that Umunna is rightly warning about, the Labour coup-plotters must admit that the distraction of the ridiculously ill-timed and ultimately failed Anyone But Corbyn coup was one of the main reasons such a disastrous scenario ever became such a strong possibility.

If Chuka and his coup-plotter mates had concentrated on holding Theresa May to account from the moment she was appointed to power, instead of focusing most of their efforts on an internal Labour Party squabble, there's no way she could have put herself in such a strong position to deliver the ruinous "no deal" nuclear Brexit that the fanatical hard-right wing of the Tory party have wanted all along.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR