What the commentators said

Don’t believe anyone who says they know where Labour stands on Brexit, said Oliver Duff in the I newspaper. Labour itself has no idea. At the conference, delegates managed to fudge the issue by agreeing simply that “the option” of a second referendum should be kept on the table, only for Starmer to upset the apple cart by suggesting that the option to remain in the EU would be offered as a choice in that referendum. This was flatly contradicted by Mcdonnell and the union chiefs: they insist any vote should concern how we leave the EU, not whether. Then Corbyn pops up to side with the shadow Brexit secretary. You’ve got to hand it to Starmer, said Martin Kettle in The Guardian: his speech was a “zinger”, greeted with prolonged and surging cheers. That shows the polls were right, said Andrew Grice in The Independent: according to a Yougov survey, 90% of Labour’s 550,000 members would vote Remain. Brexit is the one issue on which Corbyn and Mcdonnell are out of step with them.

But Corbyn hasn’t really changed tack, and won’t any time soon, said Sunny Hundal on Opendemocacy.net. He knows few votes are to be won by backing Remain – just look at the Lib Dems. And he’s made no secret of his hostility to the EU. Instead, he’s craftily shifted the focus with his surprise offer to May, said the London Evening Standard. If she ensures that her Chequers deal were to include a customs union, no hard border in Northern Ireland and the protection of worker and environmental rights, he says he’ll back it. Of course, he knows she’ll never do that: it would mean trampling on one of her red lines – that the UK must quit the customs union. But it wrongfoots both the Tories and critics in his own party. Corbyn is also well aware, said Robert Shrimsley in the FT, that many Labour voters who voted Leave, particularly in the North, might switch to the Tories if the leadership appears to question the outcome of the 2016 poll. Fudging the Brexit issue may be “cynical”, but it is not “foolish”.