Corbyn letter offers unexpected way forward

OFTEN it is hard to separate the noise from the message.

But let’s park Donald Tusk’s superb “special place in hell” jibe and look at something else: that letter from British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, which might hopefully open a Brexit escape hatch for the UK – and more importantly for all of us in Ireland.

That ‘Punch and Judy Show’ was at least diverting, depending on your political tendencies.

When Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was in Brussels on Wednesday, the European Council President Donald Tusk, also a former prime minister of Poland, made his rather Catholic-sounding but accurate comments about how many pro-Leave British political leaders hopelessly led their followers towards economic carnage.

Reaction in Britain was shrill and Theresa May, in Brussels yesterday, solemnly talked of “disappointment”.

But sod all of that: the real Brexit action came in a surprise letter from Mr Corbyn to Mrs May.

Mr Corbyn – never, ever an EU fan – was talking up the softest-of-soft Brexits. Were such a thing to emerge, it would be a great outcome for Ireland.

In the dreary Brexit jargon we are talking about mimicking the EU-Norway relationship.

It could obviate export tariffs and minimise product standard controls in North-south trade and commerce between Ireland and Britain.

In London, the Corbyn letter signalled that Labour MPs may soon get a “pass” to cross the floor and back a version of Mrs May’s much-maligned draft EU-UK divorce deal agreed by a special EU leaders’ summit on November 25 last.

These suggestions will dismay Conservative Party ultra-Brexiteers. But ideally they should not alienate the Democratic Unionist Party’s 10 MPs who prop up Mrs May’s minority government.

Mr Corbyn is most unlikely to vote with his visceral Tory rivals.

But he could well potentially look the other way as his MPs back Mrs May on Brexit. His bigger, but unlikely, goal of a general election might be parked for the moment.