Lisa Nandy: I dont think the country is half as divided over Brexit as people think – iNews

Lisa Nandy says she is getting hot under the collar. Labours shadow foreign secretary has circled back to a question of how someone who wants to rejoin the EU should vote at the next election.

Ms Nandy has already said that she believes Brexit has been settled for a generation and that it would be really irresponsible for Labour to campaign on a promise to reopen negotiations with the EU.

But the paper-thin deal is the floor not the ceiling of the UKs relationship with the EU, she says, and the Labour Party would deepen cooperation particularly over security, she adds.

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She returns the question thats been playing on my mind with an attack on the political culture that reduces complex issues to a binary choice and uses the consequent division as a distraction and evasion of responsibility.

Having the referendum that descends into this very binary, very angry, very partisan argument afterwards, allowed politicians to stop the real question which is, how do we forge better closer cooperation that doesnt just deliver for people around the world but delivers for people in our own countries, as well.

The core of Ms Nandys argument is that the country post Brexit, post pandemic needs like never before to recover a national ability to blend the individual in the collective and maximise common ground.

So many of the problems that weve created in this country weve created because we sit in rooms like this, having artificial conversations about people rather than with them

I dont think the voters are half as divided as people think I dont think the country is half as divided as people think. Im getting a bit hot under the collar but I just feel that so many of the problems that weve created in this country weve created because we sit in rooms like this, having artificial conversations about people rather than with them.

She quotes George Orwells phrase of an England only just below the surface to evoke this national spirit temporarily hidden underneath the rubble of a succession of divisive referenda (although its worth noting Orwell uses it immediately after a call to break the grip of the monied class.)

Expanding the notion to include the rest of the UK, Nandy says it found expression in Danny Boyles celebration of the NHS in the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and hears echoes in Gareth Southgates stewardship of the England team.

She also compares the England football team managers quiet and principled leadership to that of US President Joe Biden. Both succeeded in defending positions on issues such as Black Lives Matter without allowing them to derail their central mission.

There is a there is a connection between Gareth Southgate and Joe Biden, which is that both of them very comfortable in their own skin, very sure in their own beliefs, but absolutely determined not to be knocked off course and diverted from their absolute core task.

She admits that the Tories were quicker to understand the specific set of issues of concern to towns predominantly in the Midlands and North now weaponised as Johnsons levelling up agenda than her own party. That saddens me.

She had promised to move Labour HQ to Warrington if she won the leadership. Although it remains firmly in central London she says shes heartened by David Evans, Labours general secretary, to devolve power she says could help local parties prove they can make a difference.

Look around Wigan in every local library youll see somebody running a credit union, youll see people collecting food for the food bank, you know, dropping off, picking up. You see all sorts of that going on around the town, and every single one of those groups is run by somebody in the Labour Party, but its not happening under a Labour banner.

So if we start to put our organising capacity behind that, and that can only happen at a very local level, then that could be a game changer for Labour. [We] will have a story to tell about the change that Labour delivers in the next election.

In the end, not enough Labour members signed up to Ms Nandys vision to beat Sir Keir Starmer last year. She says there were reasonably close and friends until Labour MPs started to fracture under the twin forces of Brexit and anti-Semitism.

Some like Ms Nandy refused to continue to serve under Jeremy Corbyn because of his failure to deal with issue of anti-Semitism among a toxic minority of Labour members others like Sir Keir chose to work from within.

Ms Nandy was among the first to warn that Brexit was a rock that was going to break Labours electoral coalition and urged her colleagues to accept the vote, Sir Keir Starmer persuaded Mr Corbyn to offer a second referendum.

She says she has a decent relationship with the leader now. The Shadow Foreign Secretary is not uncritical of her partys campaigning efforts, however. She said she was surprised that it used a picture of Boris Johnson shaking hands with Indias PM Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, in an apparent attempt to motivate Muslim voters of Pakistani heritage in Batley and Spen.

She dismisses claims she would have challenged Sir Keir had Labour lost the Batley and Spen by-election. Although she insists she hated taking part in the leadership election, she remains the subject of speculation.

And if Sir Keirs decision to hand his defeated rival the foreign affairs job was motivated in part by a desire to keep her away from domestic affairs its failed: she brings most questions back to the concerns of her Wigan constituents.

Shes working on a book due out next year. I think, in the last few years, Labour has proven itself very good at fighting the last battle, and not looking at the challenge thats in front of us, weve got to start focusing on the future.

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Lisa Nandy: I dont think the country is half as divided over Brexit as people think - iNews