Thread by @IVotedRemainEU

(Thread) To all @UKLabour candidates in the upcoming May local elections:

Unfortunately I will not be able to vote for you as a representative of the Labour Party; this is despite having been a #Labour voter myself in the past. Please allow me to explain briefly my reasons why.

After the sacking of Owen Smith, I cannot vote for @UKLabour in any shape or form at the moment due to Jeremy Corybn's approach towards #Brexit which I view as highly undemocratic and contradictory to what the Labour party is meant to stand for ("for the many, not the few"?).

The attitude towards #Brexit by @jeremycorbyn and other hardcore Brexiteers like him really is now bordering on the fascist, something I find deeply disturbing. It seems that dissenters are being crushed.

In my humble opinion, there never should have been a referendum in the first place, but MPs voted to allow one to take place (the European Union Referendum Act 2015) on the basis that it was "consultative" only. (See legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/36/…)

With regards to the three large groups of people denied a vote altogether, MPs voting to allow the referendum to take place were assured that it didn't matter because,

"major constitutional change is something more important that the result of ordinary elections, and therefore should be the outcome of something more than a simple plurality of the votes." (please see Briefing Paper 07212, published 3 June 2015, page 26: researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-…)

Despite excluding (conveniently-selected) large swathes of the population, many of whom would surely have voted to #Remain, the #Leave side only managed 51.9% - a tiny slither over the line. A line which was officially supposed to have no relevance anyway.

That 51.9% represented just 37% of that heavily gerrymandered electorate, which is just 26% of the wider population - hardly enough to begin thinking about huge constitutional changes, let alone going all-guns-blazing like the @Conservatives have, fully

supported and backed up all the way by @UKLabour. It's not the will of the people, and nothing has ever truly indicated that it is. I want to live in a Britain where I'm proud of the integrity of our electoral system, not one where I'm left comparing it to Russia or Zimbabwe.

Young people aged 16/17, UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU for 15+ years (able to do so precisely because of our EU membership) and non-UK EU citizens likewise living here in the UK were all denied a vote in this "consultative" referendum,

despite them being arguably the most directly affected by the outcome! How can that be permitted in a modern, civilised, democratic society? I have seen first-hand the severe worry, heartbreak and physiological toll that #Brexit has had on these groups of people.

It's cruel, it's unfair and it's inhumane and I simply cannot support anybody who supports it.

Add to all the above the facts which have been widely known for a long time, but only made it into the mainstream media in the last week, namely the cheating tactics of @Vote_Leave's overspending and the shady of use of secret military-style psychological warfare techniques

on the British public that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud with the unethical (and possibly illegal) dissemination of propaganda, fake news, rumours and lies based on data sought illicitly from #Facebook.... and it's clear that no self-respecting lover of this country

and all that is democratic could possibly support #Brexit in the form in which it has presented itself and is being pursued currently.

We're facing tough times. Let's not make it many times worse by continuing this senseless act of national self-harm in order to benefit the billionaires and the tax-dodging toffs then, eh?

With you as part of the @UKLabour party I simply cannot - on principle - put a cross in that box on polling day.

If @UKLabour changes its stance on #Brexit between now and 3rd May then I would be delighted to reconsider.

However, right now the @LibDems seem to be the only party standing up for common sense, democracy and the rule of law and common decency by campaigning for an #ExitFromBrexit.

I feel it's important for you to understand why votes like mine were lost.

Yours,

@IVotedRemainEU