Leadership hopeful told Ridge he still thinks second referendum policy was correct – and Labour should have said which way party would campaign in it

Labour leadership candidate Keir Starmer appeared on Sky’s Ridge programme yesterday.

In a remarkable segment of the interview, when Sophie Ridge asked him about Labour’s catastrophic loss of over fifty seats in leave-voting towns in December’s general election, Starmer responded that he still thinks that pushing for Labour to support a new referendum was the right thing to do – and added that he thought Labour should also have said which way it would campaign in the referendum:

There is no doubt about which way Starmer thinks the party should have said it would campaign, as Starmer was saying publicly last year that Labour was a ‘remain party’, even though Labour’s policy was nothing of the sort – and was pushing for remain to be a referendum option months before that.

Ahem!

We lost dozens of leave seats in the North and Midlands. https://t.co/p2O1BRjdsO — Jon Trickett (@jon_trickett) February 16, 2020

The SKWAWKBOX went on record before the leadership to say that if the party wants to win back the leave seats it lost – its only route back to power – then no MP who pushed a new referendum can lead it.

That reality is only underlined by the denials of responsibility and rewriting of history currently underway.

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