Corbyn Comes Out For Brexit

The surprise for me was that it took so long.  Corbyn has now explicitly said that the UK can prosper outside the EU and that immigration controls are necessary.  This is basically where Labour was always going to end up.  The Labour left have never liked the EU.  In fact in many ways they were the only people who had really thought the issue through and could point to real things they didn't like about it and what they were going to do differently.  They were never able to really win the rest of the Labour Party over to their viewpoint though.  I remember when Corbyn finally came around to campaign to remain in, despite a long track record of opposition to it, thinking that it would be ironic if the vote went for out.  He would have compromised on one of his long held beliefs at just the point when it might have been expedient to stick to it.


Well we now know that the voters backed Brexit after all, and it is fascinating to imagine how the aftermath would have turned out if Corbyn could have put himself forward as its champion.  But it would not have been easy sailing for him if he had.  The maths is cruel for anybody leading the Labour Party at the moment.  The majority of Labour Party members back the EU - some with great enthusiasm.  The majority of Labour voters back the EU.  But the majority of Labour seats are in areas where Brexit voters are in the majority.  But some of the most pro-EU seats are also in Labour hands.  The voters Labour most needs to win back are pro-Brexit.  But the voters Labour needs to keep are against it.

There is no obvious solution to all this.  There may not be a non-obvious solution.  Putting off taking a position for as long as possible is probably the best option, but time is about up on that now.

The least worst approach is to simply say you are going to do what inevitably you actually will do.  By the time Labour gets back into government we will be out of the EU. Nobody will really know whether we are better off or worse off out, but there will be plenty of people who don't like immigration.  Being soft on immigration will lose Labour votes.  So they won't be.  There isn't much to be gained by saying any different now.

But that doesn't mean that there won't be internal repercussions over this issue which make the Labour Party appear divided and incompetent.  It isn't a recipe for a revival.  None of this is Mr Corbyn's fault of course.  He didn't win the role he now has on any kind of false prospectus and all the problems were created by factors totally outside of his control.  But that is not how politics works, so he may well find himself being reviled by people who up until recently were his strongest supporters.

I'd much rather be in the Tories' position right now.