Love socialism, hate Brexit? Labour's position is crumbling

Jeremy Corbyn's policy on our imminent EU departure is nothing more than a checklist

There are few clearer windows into the hopelessness of Labour’s Brexit position than through the events occurring in a dark room in the bowels of the Palace of Westminster, hours before the latest round of voting on impenetrable House of Commons amendments.

In Committee Room 11, next door to where their Tory colleagues recently decided they did have confidence in their prime minister after all, then smashed her Brexit deal to pieces, an event is occurring called “Love Socialism, Hate Brexit”.

For most of the Labour Party’s recent history, say the last 40 years, loving socialism and hating Brexit would not be seen as a juxtaposition. Loving socialism and loving the European Union is the party’s DNA. But now the socialism loving and EU hating Jeremy Corbyn is in charge, and so there is a conflict there that he and his acolytes must seek to triangulate away.

It’s more complicated than that, of course. The country voted Brexit in a referendum the Tories gave them, and now the Tories are fighting to dip Labour’s hand in the Brexit blood, to do what they can to make sure it is Labour, not them that takes the electoral consequences for something that has split both parties. Jeremy Corbyn, like any other Labour leader would, is doing his best to have absolutely none of it.

But the party’s efforts to do so are about to move beyond breaking point. The party’s Brexit position emerged from a papal style enclave at conference last year. But it has not proved to be infallible. This morning, Clive Lewis spoke at “Love Socialism, Hate Brexit”.

This is a man who resigned from Labour’s front bench in order to vote against triggering Article 50, but has now returned, and claims he has only done so because part of Labour’s Brexit policy involves the possibility of a second referendum, which now looks unlikely to happen.

Clive Lewis warned the Love Socialism, Hate Brexit crowd that the Liberal Democrats were “utterly, comprehensively destroyed for facilitating austerity,” and that the Labour Party risked the same fate by “facilitating a Tory Brexit”.

He told them a new Tory leader would come in, after Theresa May. “And they will say ‘you know what, she was a disaster for this country, she betrayed this country, but so too was the leader of the opposition. He was part of this sorry debacle and I’m now going to move forward to try resolve this situation in the best way I can.’

“And I tell you what, the Tory right-wing mainstream media will get behind that narrative and it is us, the Labour Party, that will pick up a lot of the flack for what happens.”

Labour’s policy is essentially a checklist. It moves down in preference from a general election, to a second referendum, to a Brexit that involves a “permanent customs union”. None of these outcomes now look likely, and quite where on its checklist Labour thinks it is is not clear either. Large numbers of Labour frontbenchers are threatening to resign unless Corbyn backs a second referendum. Even if he were to do so, it is anything but clear that he would win.

All it seems to be able to do for now is to accuse Theresa May of running the clock down. But it has a reckoning of its own that it is just as desperate to avoid.