Even if Jeremy Corbyn isn’t making waves in Labour’s EU campaign, the rest of the party is trying to knuckle down and get on with what is essentially an enthusiastic get out the vote operation. The party knows that the bulk of its voters are in favour of Britain staying in the European Union, and that it just needs to enthuse them enough to bother to vote – which is the problem I set out in this earlier post.
If Corbyn can’t do the enthusing, then other frontbenchers need to do it in his stead. Those involved in the Labour for In campaign are trying to ensure that the party has as clear and united a message on Europe as possible – which is made slightly more difficult by the fact that the small number of Labour MPs who want to leave the EU get a lot more air time than the vast majority of their party colleagues who are in favour of Remain. Nevertheless, the party is trying to hunker down on a set of key themes: jobs, investment, growth, security and influence in the world, or ‘jigsi’.
I hear that aides to Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn told their colleagues at the party’s weekly special adviser’s meeting that they needed to sing an adapted version of Will Smith’s Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It to their bosses until they remembered these important themes. This has had mixed success as some advisers were unaware of the seminal song before the meeting.
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