Corbyn and his fanboys have spent so much time ‘democratising’ things they’ve forgotten they know nothing about Brexit

Let’s forgive the casual obliteration of everything they claim to stand for and focus instead on the sheer mind-bending mess that would be the McDonnell referendum

Corbyn’s Labour Party and its fanboys cannot stop “democratising” things. Anything they don’t like can be “democratised”. Local parties can be “democratised” so that the floods of new, pro-Corbyn members, with all of two years’ service to the party, and in many cases decades of service to another, like the Socialist Workers Party or the Communist Party, can turf out those with decades of service to the actual Labour Party, and to its core values, none of which they share.

People like Momentum’s Laura Parker breezily describe this as a chance for the “parliamentary party to catch up with the membership”. If it gives you goose flesh, that’ll be the dim recall of history lessons at school on Europe in the 1930s. It’s straightforward majoritarianism. A popular tactic of the Nazis was to hold referendums on near countless aspects of constitutional reform. Once “the people” are on board, all can be swept away.

“Democratisation” is everywhere at the Labour conference. A Momentum fringe event wants to “democratise” the newspapers, because it has had enough of the “relentless attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.” The most generous reading of this is that these people are merely thick rather than profoundly sinister. Corbyn also mentioned “democratising the newspapers” in his eve of conference rally.

But one thing they’ve made clear they do not want to democratise is the most important question facing the country in decades. Eighty-six per cent of Labour members want a “people’s vote” on Brexit. So after Labour Party officials locked themselves away late into the night, they eventually came out, at midnight, with a plan for a “people’s vote”, which we discovered via John McDonnell’s appearance on the Today programme on Monday would be a referendum, but without the option to remain in the European Union.

Let’s forgive the casual obliteration of everything they claim to stand for and focus instead on the sheer mind-bending mess that would be the McDonnell referendum.

His position is that, should Theresa May return from Brussels with a deal, whatever the deal is, even if it is, say: you can have absolutely whatever you want and we’ll pay you £350m a week for your NHS just because we’re nice, Labour will then vote that deal down in the hope of bringing down the government and forcing a general election.

If they fail to get a general election, they will then campaign for a referendum, in which the choice facing the public will be either Theresa May’s deal, or no deal at all. In that situation, having voted down whatever deal Theresa May has negotiated already, they would then campaign for no deal, on the basis that they could then go to Brussels and negotiate a new and better deal themselves.

To do that though, they would have to be in government, and to be in government there would have to be a general election, and if there had been a general election, there would be no referendum, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

Let’s just imagine the day of John McDonnell’s referendum, the campaigns that would go alongside it, and the choice it would force on the public.

Campaigning for no deal would be Jacob Rees-Mogg, Bill Cash, John Redwood and all the other hard Brexiteers, alongside John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Bill Cash, John Redwood and the rest have already made clear they think no-deal Brexit would be worth £1.1 trillion to the economy, a 7 per cent rise in GDP per year. So they would be telling people to vote no deal on the basis everyone would get rich. Meanwhile John McDonnell would be telling people to vote no deal on the basis that it would be so disastrous it would bring down the government, and he could then go and negotiate a better deal instead.

Why he would be able to negotiate a better deal is not immediately clear, though it must be said, on the thorny issue of the Irish border, a chap who has been known to praise the “bombs and bullets” of the IRA, might at least have some new ideas here.

And then on the “take the deal” side, well, who knows, because we don’t know what the deal is. In all likelihood, however, the deal will be what has come to be known as a “blind Brexit”, i.e. a fudge on all the key issues to be negotiated on during the transition period.

So the choice before voters will be: “Vote No Deal – It’ll either be Great or Apocalyptic” or “Vote Deal – We’ve Still Got Absolutely No Idea What It Means”.

As someone once said, Vote Leave. Take control. What larks.