LABOUR have plumbed new depths of shameless hypocrisy and cynical opportunism by opting for yet more delay and confusion instead of backing Boris Johnson’s deal. But amidst all this deceit, one senior Labour figure has stood out for her heroic determination to honour the referendum verdict. Caroline Flint, the long-serving MP for Don Valley in […]
LABOUR have plumbed new depths of shameless hypocrisy and cynical opportunism by opting for yet more delay and confusion instead of backing Boris Johnson’s deal.
But amidst all this deceit, one senior Labour figure has stood out for her heroic determination to honour the referendum verdict.
Caroline Flint, the long-serving MP for Don Valley in Yorkshire, was among the six brave Labour rebels who backed the Prime Minister in the crucial vote on Saturday.
And she was certainly the most impressive of this courageous band, distinguished not only by her record as a former Minister but also her willingness to speak out in defiance of her party’s stance.
At the last General Election in 2017, Labour promised to “respect the result of the referendum.” But since, they have done everything they can to undermine that historic decision.
The Commons may have become the House of Cowards in blocking Brexit, but Flint is a shining beacon of valour.
In the Westminster debate at the weekend, she made two powerful interventions.
First, she denounced the procedural manoeuvres which “have only one motivation and that is to delay and stop Brexit.”
Then she attacked the argument, much used by her Labour colleagues, that the EU is the ultimate guardian against workplace exploitation.
Pointing to the growth in zero hours contracts, she declared, “when it comes to workers’ rights, the EU is not God.”
She followed this up yesterday with a newspaper article, in which she pointed that for deprived communities in her Yorkshire constituency, “the European Union was not for them. More than 80 per cent of voters in my mining villages voted Leave in 2016.”
She concluded rightly that the public “feel MPs should work together to resolve Brexit” instead of “slugging it out.”
Her attacks at the weekend on the anti-Brexit brigade are part of a consistent pattern since 2016, driven by her belief that the will of the British people must be fulfilled.
Her approach is all the more potent because she actually voted Remain in the referendum.
But, unlike too many other Remainers in Parliament, she accepted the verdict and has battled to make Brexit work.
In that quest, she has had no time for the Parliamentary shenanigans and legalistic manoeuvres that have dominated the withdrawal process, with MPs always “kicking the issue down the road.”
Nor, in contrast to most of Labour, does she favour membership of the Single Market and Customs Union, which she said in 2017 would represent “staying in the EU in all but name.”
For her principled stand, she has been viciously condemned by others on the left, who have called her a Tory, a turncoat and a traitor.
With typical fortitude she has shown no signs of buckling.
“I was not elected to Parliament to bow to threats and intimidation. I won’t now,” she says.
The charge of treachery is absurd, given that she is abiding by Labour’s 2017 manifesto.
Moreover, she has devoted most of her adult life to the party.
Caroline Flint in 2003 – she’s been a Labour MP for 22 years
Her warm but steely confidence is a reflection of her tough working-class upbringing.
Her deprived background is very different from the worlds of privilege inhabited by so many of the affluent liberal Remainers.
She was born in 1961 in a home for unmarried mothers in London, the daughter of a 17-year-old typist Wendy Beasley who later died of alcohol-related liver problems.
Flint never knew her biological father.
At the age of two, she was adopted by a couple who lived in a one bedroom flat.
“My sister and I slept on one side and my parents on the other,” she later recalled of her childhood.
Her adoptive parents split up when she was 13.
Her difficulties continued into her young adulthood.
Though she was the first member of her family to go to university, she embarked in 1985 on a disastrous marriage to Saief Zammel, a Tunisian stockbroker, by whom she had two children.
The marriage fell apart after a series of incidents, including Zammel’s arrest on charges of violent disorder.
He was eventually deported from Britain, and Flint was left to bring up their children alone.
These were hard times, during which she was turned down for a job at Woolworth’s.
But she turned her life around, partly through her involvement with the Labour movement.
An MP for 22 years, she has been a card-carrying Labour member for 40 years, since she first joined when she was just 17.
Before she was elected to the Commons, she worked as an official for the GMB trade union.
“She has more integrity in her little finger than many in that place,” says her fellow Labour MP Laura Smith, referring to the barrage of criticism Flint has endured in Parliament.
Despite the fury from the pro-EU mob, she seems to have her Don Valley constituency behind her, precisely because she represents its views.
“I think she’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful. She has listened to her constituents, it’s as simple as that,” said Bob Davis, an engineer.
Flint was reelected by her constituency Labour party last week, after a petition to throw her out got just 178 signatures.
Part of the admiration for her stems from her capacity – as she has shown over Brexit – to speak her own mind, instead of meekly following the trendy left-wing orthodoxy.
So while others in her party wailed about Tory benefit cuts, she attacked the culture of welfare dependency, where claimants expected something for nothing.
In 2015, she even argued that those who chose a lifestyle on benefits deserved “a kick up the backside”.
Given her experience, it is a travesty to pretend she is some kind of anti-Labour hack.
With her roots in the working-class, she is far more in touch with ordinary people that most posturing, preening Remainers.
