Revisiting Brexit and Corbynism

While we're on the subject of marking Brexit's five year anniversary, an interesting story appeared in The Times on Friday night. We learn that the self-proclaimed genius of Brexit, Dominic Cummings, had a line into Jeremy Corbyn's inner circle during the first half of 2019 - when the UK's exit from the European Union was in the balance. Contacting former Corbyn spox Matt Zarb-Cousin, Cummings went out for dinner with him and James Schneider, then in the leader's office, and laid out Labour's path to victory. I.e. Rescue Theresa May's Brexit deal by whipping the PLP in favour of it, and sit back and watch the fireworks as the hardcore remainers in Labour - who were mostly opposed to Corbyn's leadership - deflated and the Tories irredeemably split for years to come. As we know, this was not to be. May was forced to resign, Boris Johnson became Prime Minister under the slogan "Get Brexit Done", and he won a crushing victory on that basis.

The piece argues that Cummings had seen the focus group data for the Midlands and what trouble Labour were storing up for themselves if they refused to go along with Brexit. But, by the same token, Get Brexit Done voters would look afresh at Corbyn and support Labour on that basis. Was this is a missed opportunity? I don't think so.

The problem was that by this point - early 2019 - Labour was split on Brexit and had become entrenched. The big mistake took place two years earlier when Corbyn was basking in the glow of Labour's unexpected surge in the polls and the torpedoing of May's Commons majority. That was the moment for not just getting through mandatory reselection for all Labour MPs and making the left's revolution permanent in the party's structures, but to also consolidate the position around leaving the European Union. Making it clear this was the line to be held, was part of why Labour performed so well in the election, and that the party would be developing its own negotiating position on the basis of the kind of Brexit deal that was least damaging. And, crucially, our class wouldn't pick up the bill for Dave's folly. After 2017's conference season, and particularly following the Skripal poisonings in early 2018, sections of the Labour right latched on to the second referendum position as a means of undermining Corbyn's leadership and winning back control of the party.

This isn't to say everyone who took this position were so motivated. At the time, it was obvious to some that the second referendum campaigns were not primarily motivated by campaigning for a second referendum. The vast majority of those turning up to the huge pro-EU marches were entirely genuine in their desires, which in the main was a mix of liberal internationalism and well-founded fears for the economic and political consequences of leaving. The problem was that not only was the majority of Labour's membership aligned with these views, so was the bulk of the party's base. There was a tension then between about two-thirds of Labour's constituency, and the position of the leadership which remained signed up to seeing Brexit done. It would have been remiss in light of the Labour right's eternal quest against the left not to have employed this to drive a wedge between the leadership on the one hand, and the membership and its support in the country on the other.

This is something few if any Labour's mid-late 2019 opponents of the second referendum appreciate, unfortunately. The EU elections that the UK had to take part in that summer annihilated the Tories, but dealt Labour a comprehensive drubbing too. Its constituency was prised apart by the Liberal Democrats and Greens on the one hand, and to the Brexit Party on the other. The last hurt the Tories the most, and so when Johnson came to office his strategy was clear. Champion the ending of the political paralysis by sorting Brexit once and for all, and he set about demonstrating his single-mindedness of purpose. Labour needed to bring its coalition together too, but theirs was a more difficult task. The hard remain positioning of the Lib Dems and Greens and firmed up enough support that were never going to vote for any party that kept Brexit on the table. But more numerous than this relative sliver were Labour leavers and who, as we saw, punished their party in significant numbers by either voting Tory or the Brexit Party - letting some Tories sneak through the middle.

The Labour leadership's difficulty was that if by this stage they had taken Cummings's advice, a much greater catastrophe would likely have been in the offing. Yes, sure, the Labour leavers by and large might have stayed on board. But with Brexit through, why would the Tories have split? We saw Johnson easily dispose of his remain-supporting back benchers prior to the election, and there's little suggesting they would have been in a stronger position had Labour whipped the PLP to support May's deal. No, it was much more likely that Labour would have split. More MPs would have walked out of the parliamentary party, finding succour with Change UK (remember them?) or the Lib Dems. But even more damaging would have been a likely mass desertion of Labour's support. The battlelines were drawn by 2019. Labour could only choose a second referendum or Brexit and all the consequences that flowed from that. Despite Corbyn's best efforts, there was no third way.

Returning to that dinner, what Cummings was pointing to on the menu was not salvation and victory, but the sort of ruin Labour experienced in Scotland in 2015. A terrible gutting defeat that might have put the party's existence as the Tories' primary competitor in jeopardy, and rejuvenated the Lib Dems far beyond the renaissance they enjoyed last year. In the end, because of the way politics played out between the summer of 2017 and the winter of 2019, the terrible result inflicted on Labour was, in all likelihood, the least worst outcome.

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