Gavin Felton, Party Chair of the Democrats and Veterans Party, has commented on the recent developments around the Brexit agreement, including Johnson's decision to remove the Irish backstop from the Brexit agreement.
Sputnik: Should the Irish backstop be removed from any Brexit deal, as Boris Johnson has demanded?
Gavin Felton: The backstop is totally unacceptable. Macron has already come out and said how he is going to use that with our fishing industry, and that he’s going to punish us, these are the type of people that we are dealing with here, so Boris Johnson is absolutely correct, and his threat of a no-deal is real and the EU must know that.
We’ve got a Brexit cabinet one would argue, in all the key positions and the key posts, Boris Johnson has Michael Gove who for all his faults, is a detail-oriented man, doing all the planning for a no-deal, so you know that it’s a real threat now to the EU.
Sputnik: Will the EU cave in and agree a Brexit deal with the UK?
Gavin Felton: Do I think a deal could be achieved? I think it will do. It will come down to the eleventh hour as it always does with the EU, but they will strike a deal and they will be forced to do it.
It’s not just about us and the EU; the main powers within the EU have got their own problems, Macron is the most unpopular French President in a long time, Merkel is literally on her way out now and Germany are in a recession, so these people need our money, whether they like it or not, they just do.
Boris Johnson to be fair; and I’m not a Tory, far from it, since he’s took over I have to put my hands up and say he’s saying all the right stuff and he’s put all the right people in the right positions, so I think there will be a deal struck and I think that the EU realise that he is serious.
Sputnik: Should the Labour party find a replacement for Jeremy Corbyn in order to better challenge the Conservative Party?
Gavin Felton: The Labour Party is more divided than the Tory Party; I’ve said this for years. The Labour Party sadly has been taken over, the power as always with any political party is with the NECS, and the NEC is Corbynite, it’s hard left, so even if they got rid of Corbyn, the chances are through Momentum and all these other hard-left Marxist groups out there, that he would be replaced by another hard left-wing leader.
My personal opinion is that the only way they can get rid of Corbyn is if there’s a general election; Boris Johnson wins and he wins big, then the membership will have a wakeup call and will go “hang on a minute, look we are getting hammered here”.
What people have got to remember about the Labour Party is they have been in opposition, they should be way ahead in the polls, they should have taken so many more seats in the local elections; they didn’t, they were losing seats in Labour heartlands, they lost four seats to us in Barnsley, in Arthur Scargill town, so the Labour Party is in a complete mess.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Gavin Felton and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
