If Labour backs a hard Remain stance, it would risk abandoning the working-class voters who are too often left behind

It is the duty of Corbyn’s Labour to rectify the injustice of the past 30 years and to improve the lives of working-class people, many of whom voted for Brexit

As I write, Labour Party delegates are jostling and plotting on the conference floor with the aim of passing a motion that will mandate Jeremy Corbyn to back a second Brexit referendum.

Luckily for Corbyn, he is unlikely to be forced to make that choice: the sheer amount of motions put forward by different local parties (151 in total) mean that they’re likely to be muddied into something less clear cut than ardent Remainers would like. Ultimately, unless something dramatic happens, he is still going to be able to fudge it and keep open the option of a second referendum without binding himself and the party to it. This is unambiguously a good thing.

Labour’s electoral coalition is a delicate balance between Leavers and Remainers. The party has promised to honour the result of the referendum, while simultaneously distancing themselves from a hard Tory Brexit that has repeatedly failed to guarantee the rights of EU citizens and will feasibly see us crashing out of the EU without a deal. Leavers know Labour isn’t going to overturn the referendum result, and Remainers know a Brexit overseen by Labour cannot be more catastrophic than what the Tories are offering. Labour’s vote share hovering at just below 40 per cent is vindication for many that their tactic has worked. The party’s aim is to win a general election and implement its radical programme, which can only happen if it manages to maintain that balance.

For a vocal minority of Remainers, this simply isn’t good enough. They argue that it’s Corbyn’s duty to call a spade a spade: Brexit is sheer stupidity and should be put to a people’s vote”, or a Final Say as The Independent’s own campaign is called, where the result would hopefully be overturned and Brexit would be stopped. The trauma of the past two years would be forgotten and life could return to normal. And so when a YouGov poll released this week found that Corbyn could win potentially 1.5 million votes at an election on a platform promising a second referendum, many Remainers were quick to point out that Labour’s tactic of balancing two sides of the electorate was now unnecessary. A full Remain position could take them to the “brink of power”, the headlines read. The story is, of course, more complex than that.

For many in Labour, to chase the hard-Remain vote is fundamentally wrong on two counts. Firstly, from a tactical perspective, if the anti-Brexit Lib Dem vote was to prove as fruitful in the short term as the study suggests (although, importantly for Labour, to win a majority the extra 1.5 million votes would need to be spread out across all constituencies equally, which is fanciful), it would inevitably mean alienating the working-class Leave vote that has traditionally been its base.

Traditional Lib Dem voters who are keen to stop Brexit may vote Labour through gritted teeth to get a second referendum, but the party can’t bank on them coming back to Labour afterwards, and nor should the party be especially concerned about that. Of course, Labour should always seek to be popular in large swathes of society, but a radical, redistributive programme is inevitably going to put off parts of the middle class. Socialists shouldn’t be afraid of that. The offer to them should be that they may have to pay more tax to fund a programme of economic renewal, but the prize at the end is that they are able to live in a far less volatile, considerably fairer and more cohesive society.

Labour Leavers, however, are a section of society that the party should be able to bank on, because they are the most likely to benefit from a left-wing government. It makes far more sense to inculcate these people back into Labour’s electoral base, rather than seek a risky short-term gain of winning Lib Dem votes which are likely to fall away.

The second argument for avoiding a second referendum is a moral one. Away from the noise, Corbyn is preparing his speech for the Tuesday of the conference, pitched at the very areas that voted overwhelmingly for Brexit. The conference slogan, “Rebuilding Britain, for the many, not the few” is clearly an attempt to persuade those with whom the phrase “Take Back Control” gained most traction, that Labour is the insurgent party capable of restoring dignity and prosperity to their communities.

It is clearly not pitched at Lib Dem voters upset with Labour’s position on Brexit. And nor should it be. For decades, New Labour infamously directed their platform at a mystery swing voter in Nuneaton – middle-class, aspirational – who saw Labour as helping them to better themselves and improve their lot. But what about everyone else? What about the ones who weren’t so lucky? The ones who were left in the towns which were left to crumble, and were subsequently battered by austerity?

It is the duty of Corbyn’s Labour to rectify the injustice of the past 30 years and to improve the lives of working-class people, many of whom voted for Brexit. And if Corbyn is mandated by his own party to hold a second referendum if in government, or seeks to win Lib Dem votes for short-term electoral gain, he may just well lose the trust of those who need a Labour government most. The Tories, who are trying this tactic currently to no avail, would inevitably hammer it home that Labour has betrayed those who wanted Brexit. Faith in the Labour Party would plumb new depths. This must be avoided.