Last night’s BBC documentary on the Labour election campaign had a very telling moment that appears to have been filmed in MP Stephen Kinnock’s campaign in the run up to the June 8 General Election.
A campaigner for Labour’s MP for the Welsh constituency of Aberavon makes clear how if certain MP’s had got behind party leader Jeremy Corbyn a lot sooner, the result of the election could have been very different.
And imagine how different the political landscape of the UK would be right now….
“Jeremy Corbyn has proved a damn site better than Ed Miliband did in 2015. And if 162 MPs could have swallowed their pride six months ago and got behind that man it would be a different bloody story today,” says the campaigner, articulating a theme that recurs in “Labour – The Summer That Changed Everything.’”
Watch:
Corbyn supporter drops mic on Kinnock team
"If the 162 Labour MPs had swallowed their pride 6 months ago, we'd have walked this election."
Posted by The London Economic on Tuesday, 21 November 2017
The BBC documentary ‘Labour – The Summer That Changed Everything’ follows four Labour MP’s who had expressed concerns about Corbyn’s leadership expecting to capture their critical reactions as Theresa May won the enormous majority she plotted to destroy the Labour Party with.
Instead the film maker captured their gobsmacked reactions as Jeremy Corbyn won the biggest Labour vote in years, and a sense of the wasted opportunity that the Parliamentary Labour Party was unable to unite behind the Labour leader to focus on beating the Tories.
Lucy Powell, who had claimed Mr Corbyn was “unable to command the support of the country”, is filmed stunned by the exit polls, declaring: “Oh my God, that’s unbelievable. Oh my God. That’s 30 seats gain.”
Labour MPs Lucy Powell, Ruth Cadbury and Stephen Kinnock, who had been calling for Mr Corbyn to resign, as they’ll be seen on BBC2 Mon 9pm pic.twitter.com/yiYuHo3fvq
— BBC Daily Politics and Sunday Politics (@daily_politics) November 20, 2017
As election night goes on Stephen Kinnock, one of Corbyn’s biggest critics, looks genuinely shocked as his jaw drops and he declares: “We’re looking at a hung Parliament then”.
The documentary captures the groundswell of popular opinion shoring up Jeremy Corbyn’s position as despite the media’s scornful predictions, the Labour vote increases by 9.6 per cent and 30 seats.
It is a stark indictment of the mainstream media that focussed on Labour squabbling with so many issues plaguing Theresa May’s government – A mainstream media that totally failed to anticipate the groundswell online on social media that people turned to instead to share their message.
In one scene, filmmaker visits the Momentum HQ where he is totally gobsmacked to learn that the campaign has 196 million likes on its Facebook page. (The Conservative Party currently has 641,000.)
By Benjamin Jenkins,
Westminster Correspondent
RELATED
Recap: These are the Labour “experts” who publicly doubted Jeremy Corbyn
Leave.EU Co-founder says Jeremy Corbyn will be the next PM – if Theresa May stays on
Why “Enfeebled” Tories are set to lose next election – Michael Heseltine
Since you are here
Since you are here, we wanted to ask for your help.
Journalism in Britain is under threat. The government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and our media is run by a handful of billionaires, most of whom reside overseas and all of them have strong political allegiances and financial motivations.
Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It is vital that free media is allowed to exist to expose hypocrisy, corruption, wrongdoing and abuse of power. But we can't do it without you.
If you can afford to contribute a small donation to the site it will help us to continue our work in the best interests of the public. We only ask you to donate what you can afford, with an option to cancel your subscription at any point.
To donate or subscribe to The London Economic, click here.
The TLE shop is also now open, with all profits going to supporting our work.
The shop can be found here.
You can also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER .
