Labour chair Ian Lavery has revealed he would campaign for a Brexit deal in a second referendum – and is mulling a run to be his party’s deputy leader.
Speaking to HuffPost UK in Northumberland, the left-winger also issued an eve-of-poll appeal to undecided voters calling on them to “wake up and smell the coffee” over Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.
Claiming the NHS “will be gone” if Labour fails to win the keys to Downing Street on Thursday, he said a Tory victory will be “something that every citizen in this country will come to regret”.
“This is a defining moment in political history,” he said. “People need to be on the right side of history.”
It comes after a shock YouGov/Times poll suggested the gap between the two main parties was rapidly closing – though with Johnson still enjoying a commanding lead that could hand him a 28-seat majority.
Johnson, meanwhile, is planning a final assault on Labour heartlands, touring so-called “red wall” northern marginals repeating his campaign pledges to “get Brexit done”, invest in the NHS and launch a crackdown on crime.
Lavery attempted to paint the election as a stark choice, adding: “It’s time to get off the fence. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Do you want a Labour government who has promised to save the NHS and to put more money in your pocket and real change?
“Or do you want a Boris Johnson-led Tory government, who overshadow Thatcher with the right-wing ideology that they have, to lead this country into the abyss?”
Lavery, who is campaigning to hold his own area of Wansbeck after touring more than 60 Leave seats, insisted he was “feeling better now than at any point in the campaign” about Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of victory.
Despite claiming “both sides of this debate should feel at home” with Labour, Lavery also made a personal appeal to Leave voters tempted to back Johnson by revealing he was “on their side” against Remainers who “sneer” at northern Brexit voters.
“I’m an MP who will undoubtedly support a Labour Leave position once we win the election,” he said. “I am not somebody who will sit on the fence on this issue.”
It is a move that sets him against most of his shadow cabinet colleagues, including Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and John McDonnell, who have said they’d back Remain.
He added: “With something as big as this you’ve got to bear in mind the best interests of the nation.
“Democracy is the key issue in all of this and I don’t buy into [...] people or MPs or campaigners who suggest that people in the north were wrong. I don’t buy into that.
“The thing about democracy is, you have to accept it when you get defeated. I think that is important.
“I’ve met fantastic people up and down this country who are saying ‘we voted to Leave and you’re not accepting that,’ and they’re right.”
He added: “I love the north. I’m from here. I have never tried to hide my accent. I have never tried to hide the fact that I like a pint or I go to the betting shop.
“I don’t hide the fact that I’m an ordinary bloke. While a lot of people might sneer at that fact, many others see that I am one of them.”
Lavery claimed the PM’s “appalling” response to a sick boy sleeping on a hospital floor due to a lack of beds had damaged the Tory campaign.
He said voters saw Johnson as a “poor communicator” who “ran away from Andrew Neil like a little laddie in the school yard”.
“If you want to be PM you have to be up for getting grilled everywhere and Jeremy has,” he said.
Lavery refused to accept any criticism of Corbyn’s leadership, despite him being one of the most unpopular leaders ever to contest a general election.
“If being warm and considerate and compassionate to your fellow man is ‘weak’ then I feel sorry for those people who think that is the case,” he said.
Lavery also refused to rule himself out of running for deputy leader, with Tom Watson standing down on Thursday set to trigger a contest.
“It will be discussed after the election, but I will say never say never,” he said. “I have had lots of people and some unions who would like me to stand.
“They have said to me that were I to stand I would have their support. We have a whole array of talent and let’s see what happens after the election.”
He added: “This party is not the London Labour Party. The party is the national Labour Party.
“This party is not the London Labour Party. The party is the national Labour Party.”
- Labour chair Ian Lavery
“I understand when people have asked: ‘Are we not too London-centric?’ and: ‘Isn’t the decision made by a leadership who are by and large based in London?’
“And there is a recognition we need to start reflecting more of our MPs in the north and midlands.”
Amid rumours that Corbyn may stand down should Labour be defeated, Lavery, who is very close to Laura Pidcock, said the next Labour leader should be a woman – but that there should be a “fair competition if and when it came about.”
“Personally speaking, I would prefer it to be a female leader,” he said. “There isn’t a vacancy but I would strongly favour a female leader, because we live in 2019 and we haven’t had a female leader although we have had deputy stepping up to the plate.
“We have got to show that we have changed as a party.”