Emily Thornberry appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show to promote her candidacy for the Labour leadership today. Derbyshire challenged Thornberry on her sneering tweet about working class people, the Labour manifesto from 2019 and why she didn’t use her title as Lady Nugee, all deflected in Thornberry’s customary waffly style.
But when Derbyshire asked how Thornberry would deal with the housing crisis, Thornberry suggested the confiscating of any flat, house or land that was unused in 6 months, for council housing. Derbyshire, appearing surprised, gave her the opportunity to pull back from what she was suggesting with a clarification question “what, a flat that someone had bought, you would take that off them?’ “Yes I would” was Thornberry’s reply.
There are effectively two separate parties that make-up the Labour Party in 2020. The traditional working class voter, often from industrial towns and cities from the north and midlands, and the metropolitan ‘elite’ from middle class cities in the south east who see Socialism as an intellectual ideology with Marxism at its core. Whilst Thornberry may have started in the former category, it is clear that Marxist ideas of confiscating wealth and property puts her very much in the latter.