Don’t listen to Jo Johnson, listen to Jeremy Corbyn: he doesn’t want to stop Brexit

Supporters of a second referendum should pay closer attention to what the Labour leader says

Everything about Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with Der Spiegel yesterday was fascinating, including the publication in which it appeared. The leader of the opposition believes his relations with the British press are so poor he has to go to foreign journalists for a fair hearing.

The most important thing he said was picked out by Der Spiegel for its headline: “We can’t stop Brexit.” It was published just two hours after Jo Johnson resigned as transport minister in order to argue the opposite, which rather took the shine off Remainer optimism that Johnson’s resignation was the start of something big.

Der Spiegel asked Corbyn: “If you could stop Brexit, would you?”

He didn’t answer the question, but his reply is worth quoting in full: “We can’t stop it. The referendum took place. Article 50 has been triggered. What we can do is recognise the reasons why people voted Leave.”

Not only did he not answer the question, he failed to rehearse the party’s carefully crafted policy. Remember all the fuss at the annual conference in Liverpool about how, if Labour couldn’t force a general election, all options would be on the table? Well, one option not on the table on which Corbyn was photographed, in the leader of the opposition’s office overlooking the Thames, was the option of staying in the EU.

That lends some clarity to the uncertainty that lies ahead. It has become fashionable to say that there is no majority in the House of Commons for any of the Brexit options. But that cannot be true, because on any vote there are only Ayes and Noes, and one number must be larger than the other.

If Theresa May strikes a deal, then I think any attempt to postpone Brexit – to allow for further talks or a referendum – would be defeated. Then my view is that MPs, faced with a choice between a deal or leaving without a deal, would vote for the deal.

What is harder to predict is what happens if May cannot reach agreement. In that case the choice becomes leaving without a deal or seeking an extension of the Article 50 deadline.

That is where Corbyn’s words are so significant. He really is a Eurosceptic. He was prepared to make an unenthusiastic case for the social side of the EU during the referendum, but he is quite excited to be leaving. I do not believe he will support a new referendum (as long as remaining in the EU is one of the options), or indeed any delay to Brexit beyond 29 March. Which means that we are likely to leave on that date.

This is not just a matter of his long-held beliefs. It is a matter of the surprisingly Blairite strategy of his inner team in wanting to maintain the broadest possible coalition of voters, on the Leave and Remain sides of the divide.

That inclusiveness is the surprising theme running through Der Spiegel’s interview. In it, Corbyn started off by attacking Tony Blair for wanting to turn “traditional social democracy into what he called a third way”.

This prompted Jorg Schindler, his interviewer, to say: “Which led to him winning by a landslide in 1997.” (Even the foreign press turns out to be “unbelievably hostile”, the phrase Corbyn used to describe the British “mainstream print media”.)

What was interesting, though, was that, although Corbyn criticised Blair for moving Labour to the right, he didn’t describe his own policies as a turn to the left. Instead, he spoke about how popular his policies are, and about the values that lie behind them. Which is a rather Blairite thing to do, especially when the values, “that you work for the entirety of society and don’t blame minorities, that you invest in education, but above all, that you give people hope”, are ones with which Blairites – and most Tories – could agree.

When he was asked about his opponents among Labour MPs, Corbyn said: “I reach out to all – all the time.” And he rejected the idea that it would be easier for him if his adversaries left to set up a new centrist party: “No, I don’t want the party to be split because any split would be dangerous for the future of all of us. I want them to stay together and recognise that, unless we offer an inclusive radical alternative to what this Tory government is doing, we’re not going to win the election.”

Vote-getting pragmatism rather than ideological purity? Whatever next?

As I say, there was a lot in that interview. But the most important part, over the next four months, was the bit where Corbyn said that Brexit cannot be – that is, will not be – stopped.