Labour has finally found its feet on Brexit – but can it win back its disillusioned members?

Do not underestimate the power of Corbynism to bring those who felt betrayed by the party’s weak anti-withdrawal stance back onside

There are many odd alliances and coinciding agendas in Brexit Britain. One of the oddest, and least remarked upon, is between the pro-Brexit elements of the Labour left and the centrist political establishment.

Len McCluskey and Vince Cable are not politically that similar, but on Brexit they agree: Labour is committed to delivering it. So when Jeremy Corbyn emailed members with news that the party would back a public vote on any Brexit deal and back Remain against a bad one, a substantial proportion of the political spectrum agreed – nothing had really changed.

There is some truth in the idea that Labour has not gone as far as it could shifting on Brexit. Largely as a sop to Unite, Corbyn left open the tortuous possibility of Labour coming to power, renegotiating Brexit, and backing its own version of Leave, if we are not all bored to death by then. As someone who has invested a lot of time, and burned many bridges, in the name of making Labour an anti-Brexit party, this is obviously not the kind of clear, wholehearted position that I think we need to win back our voters and challenge the right-wing drift on migration and nationalism.

But sometimes it is good to pause and reflect honestly on how far we have come. And when you do this, it is clear that Labour’s position has moved massively.

This time last year, in the run up to the party conference in 2018, the Another Europe is Possible group led a campaign which saw more motions submitted from local parties than on any other subject in the party’s history. We went in prepared, and ready for a fight.

They key issue was whether Labour would ever back a referendum, and on this we got a fudge, with it being an implicitly preferred option only if we couldn’t get a general election. We won a commitment that Labour would vote down the Tory Brexit deal and we removed any idea that Remain wouldn’t be on the ballot. However, we also failed to get an explicit commitment to it being there. The final motion contained a narrative in favour of free movement and transforming Europe, but no policy commitment.

These were chalked up as victories at the time, and to an extent they set in motion the process which led to Labour ultimately moving position on Brexit.

This year, things are utterly different. As we prepare for conference 2019, Labour is committed to backing a referendum on any Brexit deal, and to including this commitment in any election manifesto. It will back Remain in a referendum on a deal it doesn’t like.

Last year, the main roadblock to forcing a full change in Labour’s position was backroom manoeuvring by major unions. This year, the unions are all on board with the current commitments. Anti-Brexit sentiment in the rank and file of the party has hardened, and Corbyn and McDonnell are beginning to make public statements in favour of a public vote on a deal.

The main problem for Labour is now not the party line but its presentation. For millions of disaffected left-inclined voters – the Glastonbury crowds of 2017, the young, the public sector workers, the electoral base of Corbynism – Labour has already fatally disappointed them.

Winning these voters back is not a question of rebranding Labour’s reputation on Brexit, but of bringing it back from the dead. They need a moment of contrition, an admission that Labour has moved too slowly and will now make amends. They need to see everyone from the Shadow Cabinet to the activist base mount an enthusiastic campaign for a public vote. They need to see Corbyn out on the stump, defending free movement and laying into Brexit as a right-wing project.

There are many obstacles to Labour undertaking this kind of transformation, not least the fact that much of the leadership has spent years railing against it. A culture of loyalism and intolerance of dissent pervades the grassroots Labour left and has worn down many Remainers within it. Together, Cable and McCluskey have convinced many party activists that Remain is the enemy.

All kinds of people have an incentive to hijack Labour’s Brexit debate and claim that nothing has changed. But the people who really ought to own it are Labour’s members. They should take some credit, and we should reflect on how far the party has come. If the leadership can regain its passion and direct it towards fighting Brexit as part of overthrowing the political elite and transforming the country, Labour could become unstoppable.

The Lib Dems will claim that this transformation is impossible. But they always claimed we’d never get as far as we have. On Brexit as on every other issue of the day, recent history repeats the same lesson: do not underestimate Corbynism, and do not underestimate the power of the movement around it.