Opinion

Centrist MP Chuka Umunna has been praised by the “People’s Vote” campaign for his ‘power’ and ‘brilliance’ in his statements about a second vote on leaving the European Unions and has acted as a regular mouthpiece to drum up support for the campaign. Umunna dropped out of the Labour leadership race in 2015 before it had really begun.

Umunna’s ‘brilliance’ has a familiar feel to it – as an ardent ‘centrist’ who has allegedly been part of plans to form a breakaway party while at the same time speaking out against it as ‘utter bollocks’, according to Politics Home, he is no stranger to holding conflicting viewpoints depending on the prevailing wind. Or as people would have said about Blair’s New Labour, of ‘triangulating’.

The same applied to his mobile stance on alleged racism in the Labour Party. In 2016, Umunna contributed to a report on alleged antisemitism that was emphatic that there was no evidence of a particular issue in the party – yet he was a prominent voice claiming the opposite over the summer.

And just last month, Umunna was slammed by BAME Labour MPs and activists for ‘exploiting’ racism after he claimed the party was institutionally racist when just two years before he had dismissed the idea:

Umunna is the archetypal ‘weather vane’ – and the same goes for his enthusiasm for a misnamed “people’s vote”. In 2016 – seemingly the year that Umunna is now trying to forget in a series of u-turns – he said this about the idea of a new vote on Brexit:

Brilliance? No.

U-turn. About-face. Weather-vane. Flip-flop. Whatever your term of choice, Umunna adds a new dimension to it.

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