Will a long extension make it easier for May and Corbyn to reach agreement on Brexit?

Brexit Explained: The prime minister needed talks with Labour to be going on while she was in Brussels asking for a postponement – but once that has been agreed, the dynamic could change

My prediction is that nothing will come of the Brexit talks between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.

She needs him. The only way she can get her deal through the House of Commons is with Labour votes. But he doesn’t need her. He says the result of the referendum should be respected, but it is not in his interest to do anything that helps to take us out of the EU.

So the deadlock is likely to continue.

As long as the talks don’t reach agreement, they are useful to both sides. The prime minister needed them to be going on while she was in Brussels asking for Brexit to be postponed, so she could say she needed more time to come up with a new plan.

And Corbyn needs the talks to give him the air of a national leader engaged in dialogue in the country’s interest.

He learned that lesson a few weeks ago when he refused to talk to the prime minister and it went down badly in the opinion polls. He seemed to be playing party politics with the future of the nation. Now he is willing to talk, especially if Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey do most of the actual talking, but not to agree anything.

That is why Labour briefings about the talks are always more downbeat than government ones; and that is why the talks adjourned at 5pm yesterday and do not reconvene until tomorrow. This is not a serious attempt to find a deal to solve the greatest constitutional crisis since 1910; it is a charade for presentational purposes.

EU leaders agreeing tonight to a long extension to the Brexit timetable will make no difference to the prospect of agreement between the government and the opposition. It is simply not going to happen.

If May offered to put a Boris-proof commitment to a permanent customs union in the political declaration, Corbyn would still find something wrong with it. And neither the prime minister nor the leader of the opposition wants to promise a new referendum.

Nor is May’s offer to be bound by a vote of the Commons likely to produce a breakthrough.

That might allow Corbyn to distance himself personally from delivering Brexit, but as an eliminating ballot of MPs would probably discover that a “Labour Brexit”, including a customs union, was most popular, it would mean he had to allow Labour MPs to vote to leave. That would upset party members and Labour voters who want to cancel Brexit altogether.

That is why I think a second Brexit extension means we are unlikely ever to leave the EU. It will never be in Corbyn’s interest to facilitate the UK’s exit. As long as he can blame Tory MPs – the Eurosceptic irreconcilables who think staying in the EU is better than the prime minister’s deal – he will avoid the worst of the backlash from the minority of Labour voters who want to leave.

Most Labour MPs, members and supporters will be quite happy if we never get round to actually departing.

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