The next ERG-backed PM will try to tear up any EU deal – only a Final Say referendum can stop them

A confirmatory public vote can stop Brexiteers of all stripes from moving us to a harder Brexit down the line

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Never trust a Tory.

That’s an article of faith in large parts of the Labour movement.

You can recognise those who hold to it because they never use the word “Conservative” to describe their opponents, whom they characterise as demons spawned from the blackest pits of hell. Given the way the Tory party has been conducting itself ever since David Cameron took it into his head to open the Pandora’s Box of an EU referendum for the sole purpose of settling an internal argument, they have a point.

There are a lot of these people around Jeremy Corbyn, whose top team will go into the next round of talks with the government over finding a Brexit “compromise” today.

I know. That’s an oxymoron. It’s yet another unicorn searching for a bed of sparkle flowers. Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, who’ll be at the table, probably knows that.

Brexiteers of the clean break school certainly don’t believe in one.

Nor do the more moderate ones, who mostly keep their heads down because any sign of moderation in that tribe will get you branded as a traitor and packed off to the Tower of London.

But what if you put the word “temporary” before the word “compromise”.

Listen to the words of Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general who kiboshed Theresa May’s second attempt to get her dismal deal through parliament.

He doesn’t much like the idea of staying in the European customs union, or even Corbyn's idea of “a customs union” (hey the unicorn’s back). But he said he would be willing to accept one if it would secure the goal of getting Britain out of the EU.

Where it gets interesting is his thoughts on what happens next.

“If we decided, in some considerable years’ time that we wanted to review our membership of any such customs union if we signed it – and I'm not saying we will – that's a matter for negotiation and discussion,” he said.

With that he was singing from the same hymn sheet as Michael Gove, who has also suggested that whatever is agreed could be changed after the UK is out of the bloc.

People like Cox and Gove are a lot smarter than the zealots of the European Research Group, for whom nothing short of pushing Ireland out of the way and sailing off into the middle of the Atlantic will do.

They are arguably the more cynical members of a cynical tribe too.

Theresa May’s days in Number 10 Downing Street are numbered and her probably ERG backed successor could make her look like an accommodating moderate.

They’ll be in charge of the next phase, if we get to it.

It would be difficult to overturn a compromise agreed with Corbyn and codified in law. But Cox and Gove have prepared the ground for it, if not by the current parliament then certainly for a future one, and one can easily imagine a hard Brexiteer doing all in their power to harden Brexit using this potential loophole.

Only a confirmatory referendum (with an option to remain, otherwise it would be a nonsense) can change that dynamic. Gove, Cox and the smarter Brexiteers, would find it much harder to overturn a deal that had received the backing of “the British people”, particularly given what they’ve said about referenda, and the importance of respecting them. I wouldn’t put it past them to try, but they’d find it harder.

We may ultimately end up with one anyway because it’s really the only way out.

May and Corbyn’s conceptions of Brexit are miles apart. Their respective proposals have only two things in common: they are both worse than the deal we have and neither will satisfy hardcore Brexiteers. The best option is a Final Say referendum and, in my opinion, a vote to remain inside the EU.

If Corbyn won’t listen to the majority of Labour members, the majority of Labour voters, Unison, the GMB, his deputy Tom Watson, shadow cabinet members like Emily Thornberry, perhaps he should sit down and re-read his own holy book.