Frank Field: “Brownites are attempting to terrorise Labour MPs into inaction”

From @LabourList

Labour MP Frank Field has just put the following statement on his website:

Labour supporters claiming that the European results were not a catastrophe for the party can only do so by inventing a new meaning for the word catastrophe. Whether one looks at them on a national, regional or local level the picture is pitiful…

The results reflect the collapse of support for the Government in the country. They also ring a clear verdict on the EU.

Take the Wirral results, which cover four Labour Westminster constituencies. The Tories romped home with almost 21,000 votes. Labour was in a poor second place with 16,000.

Wirral there is considerable resentment against the current EU. It may be that all of these natural voters deserted their natural party to support one of the clearer anti-European tickets, but I doubt it.

Even so the two parties standing in the election who hold the strongest views against our present relationship with Europe far out stretched the Labour vote, and almost toppled the Tory vote.

The BNP came in with 4,666 votes and UKIP’s vote totalled more than 13,000.

Don’t let anyone kid themselves that this was an unimportant election where voters felt they could make a clear protest vote. Unless something changes significantly on a national level these results would be reproduced at a general election.

Labour cannot win with the present Prime Minister. I was one of the seven who would not support his coronation after Tony Blair was shoehorned out of Number 10. But even I didn’t think a Brown administration would be as inept as this one.

The Brownites are attempting to terrorise Labour MPs into inaction. If they succeed then we deserve our fate.

It is simply absurd to argue, as does No. 10, that the next leader must call an immediate general election. A new leader, when being invited by the Queen to form a government, should inform the Monarch that he or she intends to return in April of next year to call for a General Election on May 6.

The new Prime Minister would make that a part of a message brought back from the Palace.

Similarly, the failure to deal with immigration and Europe is poisoning our political system. I have set out in the Balanced Migration campaign how we should counter positively the BNP. Similarly, we need to cut loose European politics from our domestic politics. Voters have no party to represent their worries on this score, only the BNP with their evil interests.