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Campaigners pour scorn on People's Vote claim it isn't hostile to Corbyn

A LEAKED memo from the People’s Vote organisation shows it is hoping to arrange a vote at the Labour Party conference next month to commit the opposition to a second referendum.

The memo, drafted by director of communications Tom Baldwin, claims the campaign is not seeking to undermine Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, despite the records of many of its most prominent supporters.

People’s Vote advocate Chuka Umunna has repeatedly attacked the Labour leader, including by claiming that the party appears “institutionally racist” and echoing smears that the leader has tolerated a rise in anti-semitism, while fellow campaigner Lord Adonis has claimed Mr Corbyn’s failure to win last year’s election, in which Labour saw its biggest increase in vote share since 1945, meant he should “go asap.”

Nonetheless, Mr Baldwin insisted that, whatever people’s views of the “overall direction” of the party, using a second referendum as “a stick with which to beat Mr Corbyn” would not “serve our purposes.”

Former Glasgow South West MP Ian Davidson told the Morning Star the campaign’s claims to be neutral on Mr Corbyn’s leadership were unconvincing.

“Of course, Labour MPs and their friends in the press are using this to undermine Jeremy as leader,” he said.

“They’re afraid to come out and say they want a second referendum and Jeremy ousted because that would be so unpopular.

“So they pretend it’s about democracy. But it’s only about democracy for the few — those who lost the people’s referendum and lost the party leadership.”

Alex Gordon, who convened Lexit: the Left Leave Campaign in 2016, said: “People’s Vote is the new chicken coup.

“In 2016, right-wing MPs thought they could topple Corbyn’s leadership by co-ordinated resignations to precipitate a leadership challenge.

“In 2018, they believe they can use Momentum as a Trojan horse to bind Corbyn and McDonnell to a second referendum, which is politically toxic and will make Labour’s 2017 manifesto impossible. They cannot be allowed to sabotage Corbyn.”

At the weekend, Blackley and Broughton MP Graham Stringer told the Manchester Evening News that he could “think of nothing that would do more damage to our democracy than a failure to deliver on the EU referendum, which after all was the largest single vote in our democratic history.”

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