How can May coax Labour’s malcontents?
against those warnings, a draft deal agreed between the Government and the EU will be presented as vital to the national interest. MPs from all parties can expect to be told that it will be a question of patriotic duty to support the Prime Minister in a Brexit vote.
Senior Tories know Mr Corbyn and his hard-Left clique view the coming Commons Brexit debates as their best hope of toppling the Government and triggering an early general election.
Convincing anti-Corbyn Labour MPs to defy the party whip, risking poisonous abuse and deselection demands from Left-wing activists, will be a challenge for ministers.
THAT task explains Mrs May’s casting of the divide between the “decency and patriotism” of the traditional Labour mainstream with the brutal ideologues around Mr Corbyn. In her conference speech, the Prime Minister cited senior figures of Labour’s past including Hugh Gaitskell, Barbara Castle, Denis Healey and John Smith. Her words, effectively, asked Labour MPs to consider whether those titans would have put party or country first in a crunch vote on Britain’s place in the world.
Mrs May’s attempt to court sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party to her Brexit cause carries enormous risks. Most remain intensely tribal.
While her conference speech and Abba moves went down well with much of her own party, she will need more than fancy footwork to convince enough of the MPs she faces every week that the national interest means lending her their votes.