Not Johnson, Farage or Corbyn: This is the one man doing more than anyone to make Brexit happen

Brexit can only be stopped if Labour becomes a Remain party and allies itself with like-minded others. Len doesn’t like that, so it won’t

Who is it, do you think, in our public life who is doing the most to ensure that Brexit happens?

Nigel Farage? Arron Banks? Emmanuel Macron (covertly)? Boris Johnson? Jeremy Hunt? Jeremy Clarkson? Jeremy Corbyn?

You’d be nearest the truth with the last one, of course. It has been claimed that civil servants think that Corbyn is too “frail” to be prime minister and that his memory is going. What nonsense. If anything his memory is rather too sharp. He remembers exactly the radical contents of Labour’s Programme 1973. He has perfect recall about why he voted to get out of the then-European Community in the 1975 referendum, and nothing he was taught in his long apprenticeship under Tony Benn he has seen fit to revise. Like the Bourbons, Corbyn has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

One of those eternal Bennite verities is that the trades unions represent working people, and that their leaders are always right. Hence Corbyn's reluctance to follow his domestic instincts and do what the vast majority of his members, supporters, sympathisers, shadow cabinet, MPs and, indeed, trade unionists, want – to commit Labour now to a second referendum and to become a party of Remain (and of power).

The single person, then, who is doing the most to ensure that Brexit happens is the man behind Corbyn – Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the huge Unite union. Brexit can only be stopped if Labour becomes a Remain party and allies itself with like-minded others. Len doesn’t like that, so it won’t.

For it is McCluskey's complacent intransigence that is guiding the leader and everything that is going wrong now. The wisdom, and power, of Len says that there is no need to do anything much except “consult” the labour movement (i.e. Len) on what to do next.

“There seems to be a panic to rush, in order to establish a different position from one the Labour Party’s had for a couple of years now, which is respecting the 2016 referendum and trying to negotiate a deal that would unite the nation,” he told Andrew Marr at the weekend.

Well, how about respecting what Labour members, whose party it is, actually want? It’s not just Keir Starmer any more, fighting his lonely rearguard action. Now we find Diane Abbott, John McDonnell and many others voicing their frustrations, urging the party to move on, and quickly.

You can see why. Labour is a little behind our unpopular, misgoverning Conservatives in the latest opinion polls. Behind! The British electorate are basically saying that they would rather have a party without a leader running the country as badly as they are than risk Corbyn and Labour. It’s that bad.

What seems to be dawning on just about everyone except Len is that there is virtually no chance of Labour being in any position to negotiate its own cuddly version of Brexit and then put that to people in a second referendum, even if the EU was gracious enough to allow time for it (not guaranteed).

It’ll much more likely be Boris’ deal or Boris’ no deal. By the time Labour has “consulted” with the unions and party members at Conference it’ll all be over. Conference ends on 25 September and, assuming Labour actually has a policy by then, it will have just five weeks to bring down the government, install Corbyn and sign off an agreement with the outgoing European Commission.

McCluskey says that might happen, and that it could be done with an Article 50 extension; it could, yes, but only in the sense that next year we could see Len headlining on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury.

And that is not even allowing for the wishful thinking inherent in a “Labour Brexit”, formerly known as a “Jobs First Brexit”. You know, the one where we get all the benefits and none of the costs of leaving – cakeism again.

In McCluskey’s words: “Our alternative is to get a Brexit that respects the result of the referendum but actually does so with an agreement that the 48 per cent who want to remain will be happy with”. Which is rather like saying that he’d like for Liverpool to do the treble next year, but in a way that Everton fans will be happy with.

McCluskey isn’t satisfied, then, with any old Brexit unicorn. Len’s is a phantasmagorical three-horned unicorn, more a triceratops – a Brexit that doesn’t exist, cannot exist and, even if it did or could, there is no time for it to be enacted anyhow.

Ah! But what if there is a general election? What do Labour want then? The policy? In Len’s view? We still Brexit, albeit on his unrealistic soft terms. No change from the 2017 manifesto, broadly.

I quote him precisely: “The second public vote I’d like is, if Labour win the election and they are able to negotiate a deal to take us out of Europe, which I believe will satisfy both the 48 per cent and the 52 per cent, I’d like that to go back to a confirmatory vote, to the public”.

He even blames “a well-funded Remain lobby that has turned the nation into a toxic situation”.

McCluskey, to be fair, regards no deal Brexit as a disaster for his members. True – but so will any Brexit be. The time to act, if not panic, for their sakes is now, and for the labour movement to lead a Remain Alliance. If it was right in 2016 it is right today. Sad to say, though, it may already be too late.