The real Brexit panto villain? He’s behind you!
HOW they cheered. As the tellers formally announced the Government’s humiliating defeat in Wednesday night’s Brexit vote, Labour MPs punched the air and broke into a spontaneous – and unparliamentary – round of applause.
Around the country the cries of triumph were echoed by the bloodied but unbroken army of Remainers. This was the turning point they had been waiting for. The moment Her Majesty’s Opposition and a handful of brave Tory rebels raised the prospect of stalling, and then reversing, Britain’s exit from the European Union.
They should have saved their breath. Those same voices will soon need to be raised again, this time in condemnation. Because Labour is about to betray the 48 per cent – or rather, Jeremy Corbyn is about to betray them.
The most significant political moment of the week did not come in the House of Commons, but in a briefing delivered by the Labour leader’s office to The Guardian newspaper. The paper reported on Tuesday how attempts by Shadow Ministers to firm up their party’s stance on Brexit would be rebuffed – ‘Corbyn’s team believe Labour’s General Electi on s t r at egy of appealing to both Leavers and Remainers worked well and that spelling out a more specific position now would risk alienating key groups,’ it explained.
YOU have to admire the chutzpah of Corbyn and his apparatchiks. They are not even bothering to mask their mendacity any longer. The days of lauding the Absolute Boy’s supposedly inviolate principles, and his unerring ability to position himself ‘on the right side of history’, are over. Now they shamelessly flaunt their ability to triangulate on Brexit in a way that would make Tony Blair blush.
Though in truth Corbyn’s strategy is not built around triangulation, but upon nurturing false expectation. To spell out a clear position ‘now’ would be foolish, is the line. It would unnecessarily antagonise one of the two warring Remain/ Leave factions. The implication to the Remainers is that all they have to do is wait just a little bit longer, at which point their hero will sally forth and put the Brexit dragon to the sword.
But he won’t. Corbyn has absolutely no intention of getting his hands dirty slaying anything.
A definitive position from Labour will be no less politically perilous if unveiled in seven or eight months’ time than if it were unveiled tomor- row. Corbyn is not nudging Labour’s Brexit position along. He’s simply stringing the Remainers along.
And he’s doing it very successfully. Partially that’s because of the sterling work Keir Starmer has been doing in his role as his leader’s useful Brexit idiot.
Every couple of months Starmer will emerge with a new, beautifully nuanced position. That position is then lauded as a ‘game-changer’ that proves Labour is dropping its policy of Brequidistance.
Right up until the moment Corbyn himself is asked to endorse his Shadow Minister’s stance. At which point he demurs, and Brequidistance reasserts itself.
Corbyn is also being ably assisted by the Remain lobby itself. Their passion is matched only by their capacity for self-delusion.
They still allow themselves to believe that Corbyn is one of them, despite the evidence of the referendum, where he acted as a poorly disguised fifth columnist for the Leave campaign. Despite the haste with which he urged the Government to trigger Article 50. Despite hi s r e peat e d c o mmitment to respecting the referendum result. Despite his banning a debate and vote on Brexit at the Labour Party conference. Despite statements from lifelong friends such as Tariq Ali that he was ‘completely opposed to the EU’ and would have openly campaigned to leave if he hadn’t accidentally found himself leading the Labour Party.
But paradoxically – with last week’s Government defeat – the Remainers are about to be wrenched from their fool’s paradise. Parliament has seized back control, and a showdown is coming.
A binary vote on the deal – or nondeal – that Mrs May is about to negotiate as we enter the second stage of talks will be held. And at that point Remainers will expect Corbyn and Labour to unambiguously commit themselves to stopping Brexit in its tracks.
BUT he has no intention of doing that. I’m told there is already talk within Corbyn’s team of seeking to t able amendments to whatever deal May negotiates – thereby ‘improving’ rather than wrecking Brexit.
But as the EU made clear on Friday, that option will not be on the table.
‘No,’ Luxembourg premier Xavier Bettel told reporters when asked if a deal could be renegotiated.
Downing Street officials also confirmed to me that any deal would effectively have the status of a treaty, and therefore could not be amended without the whole agreement being invalidated.
So Corbyn will fudge again, at which point the scales will finally fall from the eyes of the hardcore Remainers. And their cheers will turn into howls of rage.
But it will be too late. Corbyn has played them. He suckered them into believing a vote for him was a vote for derailing Brexit. Then he pocketed those votes, and said: ‘Yeah, about that stopping Brexit stuff… it’s tricky.’
Wednesday night was a great moment for the Remainers. They should enjoy it while they can – because Jeremy Corbyn is about to betray them.
AS THERESA May returned from a successful Brussels summit, relieved members of the Cabinet raised a glass to one of the unsung heroes of the recent knife-edge Brexit negotiations. Baron Caine of Temple Newsam worked as an adviser to six Tory Northern Ireland Ministers and Shadow Ministers, and is renowned for his close links with the Ulster Unionists. ‘It was Jonathan who smoothed them over and saved the day,’ a Minister told me. Caine was also instrumental in negotiating the confidence and supply motion that secured May’s premiership after the Election, feats of diplomacy which earned him a new nickname within the Northern Ireland Office. ‘Around here we call him the DUP Whisperer,’ an official tells me.