Labour Brexiteer slams Starmer for treating Leavers as pariahs

Keir Starmer insists Brexit agreement with EU is a ‘bad deal’

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Ex-sports minister Baroness Hoey says Sir Keir’s support for a second referendum drove her out of the Labour party. Sir Keir served in Jeremy Corbyn’s cabinet as Brexit secretary before succeeding the veteran Left-winger as party leader.

Former Vauxhall MP Ms Hoey told GB News: “I left the Labour party very simply because Keir Starmer took the Labour party to a position, under Jeremy Corbyn, where they were reneging on the manifesto promises, that they would implement whatever people voted for.

“Once they called for a second referendum on Brexit, I felt very unhappy and disillusioned with the Labour Party. I was unhappy with the way that they were switching their views, and the way they were ignoring people who genuinely thought that Labour was going to support them in their vote.

“I just thought, ‘That’s it’, and I left. But, I think the Labour Party left me really rather than, you know, me leaving them.”

Ms Hoey, who sits as a non-affiliated peer in the Lords, declined to say whether she would rather see Sir Keir as Prime Minister than Rishi Sunak.

She said: “I’m not enamoured with Keir Starmer, I have to be honest. Because I saw the way he operated… I mean, he, more than anyone else in the Labour Party, I believe, was responsible for us changing our position, for us ignoring the 17 and a half million people who voted to leave, and for treating anyone who voted leave as some kind of pariah.

“I remember a group of us trying to see Keir, and he never wanted to really talk to us about it. I think he had decided and knew that he was a fervent European, so I just don’t believe that he’s changed.”

A YouGov analysis found that more than one in three people (35 per cent) who voted Labour in 2015 went on to vote for Brexit. Winning back Leave-voting constituencies that the Conservatives took from Labour in the 2019 election is considered a key goal for Sir Keir.

In November, Sir Keir told the Sunday Express there is “no case for going back into the EU and no case for going into the single market or customs union”. He ruled out a return of freedom of movement and said Labour wanted to “make Brexit work”.

Polling for GB News has found just four per cent of people think that the UK Government got a “good” Brexit deal.

Fifty-three per cent of Leave voters and 65 per cent of Remain voters say it got a “bad deal”.

Only two per cent of the public believe Brexit has made them richer, with 45 per cent saying it has left them poorer.

When asked whether the UK should have left the EU, 49 per cent told People Polling it was the wrong move, with 30 per cent saying it was the right decision.

Labour was invited to comment.

• Ms Hoey’s interview with Gloria De Piero will be broadcast on GB News from 6pm.

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