NOW CORBYN IS CORNERED

After Labour poll humiliation he’s forced to back public vote ‘on deal’ – but closest allies insist it’s STILL not enough

JEREMY Corbyn was close to surrender over a second EU referendum last night after Labour’s electoral humiliation triggered a mutiny at the top of his party.

Mr Corbyn signalled he could be ready to commit to a second brexit vote after his closest colleagues said it was the only way to stop Labour haemorrhaging support.

John McDonnell and Diane abbott both told him the party must guarantee a new referendum under any circumstances in the wake of its European elections mauling.

Party policy has been to push first for a general election and then back a second referendum only to stop a ‘bad’ or No Deal brexit.

but after Labour was pushed into third place nationally by the pro-remain Liberal Democrats on Sunday night, Mr Corbyn’s colleagues demanded an end to the ambiguity. In a dramatic intervention, Shadow Chancellor Mr McDonnell said: ‘our only option now is to go back to the people in a referendum.’

Last night, Mr Corbyn made what his aides described as a ‘tonal shift’ to his position.

In a letter to his MPs, the Labour leader said: ‘It is clear that the deadlock in Parliament can now only be broken by the issue going back to the people through a general election or a public vote. We are ready to support a public vote on any deal.’

The statement moved the party closer to fully committing to a second referendum, but Mr Corbyn will still face intense Labour pressure to back a so-called ‘people’s vote’ without delay, in any circumstances – and to campaign on the remain side. The major

obstacle to this remains his hard-Left allies such as powerful union boss Len McCluskey, who is vehemently against a second Brexit vote for fear of Labour being wiped out in the North.

The party endured an appalling night on Sunday, finishing with just 14 per cent of the vote, losing control of London to the resurgent Lib Dems and seats to Nigel Farage’s newly created Brexit Party in its pro-Leave heartlands.

The Tory party was also humiliated by Mr Farage, finishing fifth in vote share and suffering one of the worst electoral nights in its history.

Leadership candidates warned yesterday that the party must deliver Brexit by October or face oblivion.

As both main parties were engulfed by the fallout from Sunday night’s political earthquake:

Mr Farage said he was ready to reshape politics at a general election, and would contest every seat, as his party demanded a place at the Brexit negotiating table;

Tory leadership contenders scrambled to promise to deliver Brexit ahead of the October deadline, with Dominic Raab making clear he was ready for No Deal;

Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the party ‘absolutely needs to deliver Brexit’ and it would be his first priority if elected, while Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there was an ‘existential risk to our party’ of not getting ‘Brexit done’;

The Liberal Democrats said they would use their second- place showing in the European elections to ‘stop Brexit’;

Change UK’s future was thrown into serious doubt after the newly created party failed to gain a single MEP;

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon signalled she would push for a second independence referendum after winning in Scotland;

A row broke out over whether proRemain or pro-Leave parties had collectively won more votes in the elections.

Both main parties have hit the panic button after Sunday night’s mauling, but Mr Farage said: ‘In some ways, the Labour Party today are in more trouble than the Conservative Party.’

Until yesterday, Labour demands for a second referendum had been led by proRemain frontbenchers such as Sir Keir Starmer, Tom Watson and Emily Thornberry. But yesterday the calls came from two of Mr Corbyn’s closest hard-Left colleagues, Mr McDonnell and Miss Abbott.

Mr McDonnell acknowledged that Mr Corbyn wanted a general election rather than a referendum – but said the reality was that this was unlikely.

He said the country was facing the prospect of a ‘Brexit extremist’ becoming the next prime minister, meaning the UK faced the prospect of No Deal. ‘ Of course we want a general election,’ he said. ‘ But realistically, after last night, there aren’t many Tory MPs who will vote for an election – it will be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

‘Our best way of doing that [stopping a No Deal Brexit] is going back to the people in a referendum – I think that’s what our members want.

‘We’re saying quite clearly, if there can be a deal, great, but it needs to go back to the people.

‘If it’s a No Deal, we’ve got to block it and the one way of doing that is going back to the people and arguing the case against it because it could be catastrophic for our economy.’

Mr McDonnell added: ‘It’s not just me saying that, it’s Philip Hammond the Chancellor, it’s others across the parties, and independent economists – and I’m not willing to stand by and let my constituents lose their jobs and have their livelihoods undermined by this.’

Asked if Labour now supported a referendum under any circumstances, he said: ‘I think it is, yeah.’

Miss Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary, also weighed in, saying: ‘ When we come in third after the Brexit Party, that is a clue something is wrong with our strategy. We need to listen to our members and take a clearer line on a public vote.’

But other hard-Left allies – including Mr McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union – last night demanded that Mr Corbyn stick to his existing position of trying to keep Leave and Remain supporters together.

‘We need to listen to our members’

AS the first results of the European elections began flooding in, I was reminded of one of the most famous headlines of the past halfcentury. It came in the spring of 1973, in the days of crippling rail strikes.

One memorable evening, London’s commuters were confronted by a stark headline in the Evening Standard. It read: ‘Absolute Chaos Tonight: Official.’

That just about sums things up — not just here in Britain, but across the Continent.

Indeed, although the headlines in this country naturally belong to Nigel Farage’s victorious Brexit Party, the resurgent Lib Dems and the unprecedented collapse of the Tory and Labour parties, the European picture is no less extraordinary.

Chaotic

Across the EU, the centreLeft and centre-Right took a fearful beating as voters turned to radical alternatives.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally grabbed first place. In Italy, Matteo Salvini’s far-Right League won a comfortable victory. And even in supposedly rock-solid Germany, the Greens soared to finish a strong second, ahead of the old-school Social Democrats.

All of this means the most fractured, chaotic EU parliament in history: a bewildering rainbow of socialists, Greens, liberals, conservatives, populists and nationalists.

In other words, the result will almost certainly mean years of paralysis: a gift to the extremists and the worst imaginable advertisement for European democracy. But, if you want to see real chaos, there is only one place to look.

Even after years of electoral shocks, the picture in Britain was simply breathtaking.

With a risible 9 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives — historically the most successful party in the Western world — recorded by far the worst result in their history. To have finished fourth would have been bad; to have come fifth, behind even the Greens, represents a disaster of mind-boggling proportions.

Yet, with an equally pitiful 14 per cent, that other great party of government, Labour, fared little better, recording its worst result in living memory. Not only did it finish third in Wales — historically one of its great emotional heartlands — it contrived to finish a pitiful fifth in Scotland.

As a result, the British political landscape now looks unrecognisable. You have to go back to World War I, when the Liberals last ran the country, to find an electoral map in which red and blue were so conspicuous by their absence.

And, while the Tories are obviously suffering from their parliamentary disunity and failure to deliver Brexit, Labour’s plight, as a major Opposition party, is arguably even worse.

Traditional working- class voters, who backed Leave in 2016, have deserted the party in their millions.

It is revealing, for example, that in Bolsover, Derbyshire, famously the constituency of veteran Dennis Skinner, Labour won less than half the vote of the Brexit Party.

Yet, at the same time, Labour’s reluctance to stake out a clear Remain position has also seen it haemorrhage votes in metropolitan areas. In Jeremy Corbyn’s own Islington backyard, for instance, Labour finished second to the Lib Dems, a result unimaginable only a few months ago.

No wonder the party’s senior figures were at each other’s throats yesterday.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry demanded that Mr Corbyn commit himself to a second referendum, while Labour’s union paymaster, Len McCluskey, accused Deputy Leader Tom Watson of behaving like a ‘poor imitation’ of the Italian political thinker Machiavelli, whose writings have been described as a ‘ handbook for tyrants’. So much for being a government in waiting!

So, where does this leave us? And if, as many political insiders believe, we are heading for an autumn general election under a new Conservative prime minister, could the two great parties of the past century really be facing electoral Armageddon?

In Westminster, the conventional wisdom is that it could never happen. Many MPs insist that voters in a general election would come back to their old haunts, as they did in 2017.

This strikes me to be selfdelusion. As political scientists always say, voters are creatures of habit. But, once a particular habit is broken, they find it hard to take it up again.

No political party has a right to last for ever. Both the Tories and Labour are essentially Victorian inventions. They have had a good run, but, under the pressure of Brexit, their coalitions have fallen apart.

Some politicians think that the only way they can survive is if, instead of sitting on the fence, they move towards the extremes, giving voters a clear, unequivocal choice.

Gamble

In this scenario, the Tories could become the party of Leave, targeting a No Deal Brexit in October, while Labour would wholeheartedly embrace Remain and a second referendum. For both parties, though, such a scenario would be fraught with danger.

An ultra-Brexiteer Tory prime minister might well neutralise Mr Farage. But they would face defections from Conservative Remainers, might lose a vote of confidence to a ‘Remain alliance’ of Labour MPs, Lib Dems and the Scottish Nationalists, and would alienate thousands of affluent, middle-class voters.

As for Labour, it would be a colossal gamble to risk throwing away dozens of northern constituencies to the Brexit Party in the hope of snapping up middle- class, Radio 4listening seats in the South.

In any case, is Jeremy Corbyn, an unreconstructed Marxist, who, at heart, has regarded the EU as a capitalist conspiracy, really the man to do it?

If there was an easy answer, the two parties would already have seized on it. Instead, by trying to appease both Leave and Remain voters, they have ended up satisfying very few.

That is precisely why so many voters, angry and frustrated, have turned to the Brexit Party, the Lib Dems and even the Greens. Yet it is worth remembering that chaos always brings opportunity.

Enticed

Instead of panicking, a canny strategist might see in the European results a once-in-alifetime chance to build a new coalition that could dominate British politics for decades.

If the 32 per cent who backed the Brexit Party, the 20 per cent who voted Lib Dem, the 12 per cent who voted Green and the 3 per cent who backed Change UK have one thing in common, it is that they could be enticed elsewhere. Not all of them, of course: not even a miracle worker could win over all the Brexit Party’s voters and all the Greens.

But, unless British politics is to sink completely into fragmentation and acrimony, one of the two major parties must find a formula that attracts as many of those protest voters as possible, adding them either to the Tory or the Labour Party’s total — thereby hitting the electoral jackpot.

In my view, the only way to do this would be to conclude Brexit as quickly as possible and turn the political debate to job creation, housing, the economy and public services — the issues that have traditionally dominated British elections.

It remains, however, that unless something radically changes, the two parties that have defined our politics for the past century are heading for oblivion. In the next few months, they probably have one last chance to arrest their fall. Either they take it, or they are finished. It’s that simple.