Corbyn hardens policy of backing Brexit – and increases the chances of a split in the Labour Party

Once again, the veteran socialist has disappointed supporters of a Final Say referendum

Jeremy Corbyn is still trying to hold the Labour coalition together on Brexit. He wrote to the prime minister last night, urging her to change her deal to include a permanent customs union with the EU to “win the support of parliament”. This was calculated to maintain his straddle between those in his party who want to stay in the EU and those who say the referendum must be respected.

The Labour MPs who want to stop Brexit reacted badly. They condemned Corbyn for facilitating “a deal which will make this country poorer” (Chuka Umunna), indulging “nativist nostalgia” (Owen Smith) and putting “Labour’s conference policy in the bin” (Chris Leslie).

Corbyn has appeared to shift Labour’s position, but this is an optical illusion. What he has done is to keep it the same at a time when opponents of Brexit hoped he would move closer to advocating a new referendum.

Most Labour Party members want a second referendum in the hope that the people would vote Remain this time. Many of them are under the impression that the policy agreed at conference last year was that the party would support a referendum if it could not force a general election, but in fact the policy simply said that “a public vote” was one of the options that had to remain on the table.

Instead of moving that option to the centre of the table, Corbyn has kept it to one side and he has repackaged the centrepiece, the six tests by which Labour would judge a Brexit deal. Now there are only five of them. He has got rid of the impossible one, the mischievous quotation of David Davis’s promise of “the exact same benefits” of the single market, but the rest remain. The only one that is specific is the permanent customs union – one “that includes a UK say on future EU trade deals”.

He may have calculated that Theresa May cannot accept this demand, even though it is very close to the deal she negotiated with the EU, which included a temporary customs union for the whole of the UK as part of the protocol to keep an open border in Ireland.

But the significance of Corbyn’s letter is that it focuses entirely on what Labour wants out of a Brexit deal and therefore continues to assume that the UK is leaving the EU. This is what has set off the protests from those in the Labour Party who expect the leader to bow to the wishes of the membership by opposing Brexit altogether.

It is sinking in with anti-Brexit MPs that Corbyn would probably be happy for the UK to leave the EU as long as he could vote against a “Tory Brexit deal”, so that, if anything bad happened after we left, he could blame the Tories for it. He and Donald Tusk, with his “special place in hell” comment, are both anticipating the post-Brexit blame game.

Corbyn is accused of being willing to turn a blind eye to breaches of the party line by a large group of Labour MPs, up to 35 at the last count, who would rather vote for the prime minister’s deal – almost any deal – than “betray” Brexit. Eight shadow ministers failed to vote on Brexit amendments in defiance of the Labour whip last week, but no action was taken.

On the other hand, the idea that Corbyn could crack the disciplinarian whip and force these MPs into line is implausible.

Both Corbyn and May are managing divided parties, and so far Corbyn has been rather better at it. But one way or another, and which ever way Brexit is resolved, both parties are likely to split.