Tom HARRIS

There is something ironic – as well as cruelly cynical and profoundly dishonest – about Labour MPS’ criticism of their own party’s platform at the European parliamentary elections.

At the risk of intruding into a family feud, the party’s dilemma is this: the leadership of the party has tried to ride two horses at once, by claiming to respect the result of the 2016 EU referendum while remaining open to the possibility of supporting a rerun referendum on whether Britain should in fact remain or leave.

This position, as can be seen by the weekend’s disastrous results, was viewed by Leave and Remain voters alike as unclear and confused, so now many of Jeremy Corbyn’s MPS are insisting that he dismounts from the fence and campaigns unequivocally to give voters the right to revoke Brexit.

Much of Mr Corbyn’s parliamentary

party is doubling down on what they’ve been demanding for months: another referendum that will remove from them the responsibility for revoking Article 50. Their own dishonesty arises from their repeated insistence that they respect the result of the 2016 referendum when in fact the opposite is the case.

Already Mr Corbyn seems to have turned on a sixpence and has announced he supports a referendum on any deal that is finally agreed to leave the EU. Why didn’t he say so before the polls closed, you may ask.

His shadow chancellor, John Mcdonnell, told Sky News yesterday morning that Labour is already a “strong Remain” party. That will come as news to the party’s sitting MEPS who saw voters desert them in favour of genuinely pro-remain parties like the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

In reality, the leadership has just conceded a party-wide consultation on the issue with another debate at its annual conference to settle it once and for all. But why offer such a process if the leadership is now singing from the same hymn sheet as most of the rest of the party?

This goes beyond the usual debate over how Labour can hold onto both Brexit-supporting voters in the North and Midlands, and Remainers in London and the South. How will voters respond to a belated, grudging Damascene conversion by Mr Corbyn when it is clear he is being forced into a position in which he clearly does not believe? A big part of the leader’s attraction, especially to younger voters, is that he gives every appearance of being authentic.

By agreeing a policy dictated by his opponents within his party, a policy he has repeatedly opposed, a policy that we all know he still opposes, he would be resurrecting the ghosts of failed opposition leaders past. Great man though he is, Neil Kinnock blew his chances of becoming prime minister because of blatant U-turns on policies he had been known to support all his life – unilateral nuclear disarmament being the main one. The U-turns were vital for the party’s long-term success, but toxic to Mr Kinnock’s own.

It was Mr Corbyn’s 70th birthday over the weekend. Unless he can find a way to concede to his internal opponents while saving face with his voters, he may not celebrate many more as leader of his party.