EU referendum: if you need reassurance, there are silver linings to the Brexit cloud

The vote to leave the EU might at least mean we see the back of Nigel Farage and an unelectable Labour Party

Few Labour MPs think that Jeremy Corbyn could beat the man most tipped to be the next occupant at No 10 (Getty)

Before the referendum, I tried to reassure nervous Remainers that an Out vote would not mean that the sky would fall. How bad could it really be, I asked myself.

I started well. We would not actually be leaving for at least two years, I wrote. Boris Johnson, if he took over as prime minister, is not some kind of right-wing monster. He was elected and re-elected mayor of a Labour city. Indeed, at the final debate at the Wembley Arena, he railed against inequality and the pay differentials between chief execs and their staff.

I pointed out that a vote to Leave would mean the end of Nigel Farage and his party. It didn’t feel like it early on Friday morning when the unpopulist who couldn’t even get elected in Thanet South gave a typically tasteless speech hailing victory “without a single bullet being fired”. But the truth is that he is finished.

There is no need now for a UK Independence Party now that the UK has voted to be independent. Supporters of that proposition – thankfully more liberal than Farage himself – are likely to be in control of the Conservative Party and Conservative Government shortly. Ukip may continue to be a working-class protest party against Labour in the north of England, but that’s not a role likely to keep Farage’s ego fed for long.

Talking of the Labour Party, another silver lining in the Brexit vote – for those of us who doubt Jeremy Corbyn’s credibility as an alternative prime minister – is that it makes a change of leader of the Opposition more likely.

What has concentrated the minds of Labour MPs is not so much that Corbyn was so useless at persuading Labour supporters to vote Remain, but that Johnson – or whoever takes over as prime minister – is likely to call an early general election.

Come to think of it, that’s another reason to be cheerful. For those of us who so enjoyed the festival of democracy over the past few weeks, what could be better than a five-week election campaign, billboards, leaflets, TV debates and all?

But for Labour MPs the prospect of facing the voters fills them with something rather different from joyous anticipation of the manifestation of the General Will. For them, the need to replace Corbyn with a leader who has some appeal to middle Britain has acquired some urgency.

Hence the leadership challenge, which is now a race against time. As I understand it, Labour MPs are likely to agree on Monday to hold a secret ballot on a motion of no confidence in Corbyn. The ballot would be held on Tuesday, and, because it is secret, is likely to result in a majority against the leader. The only reason it will not be 90 per cent, which is the approximate proportion who actually have no confidence in the leader, is that some of them calculate that, if the challenge fails, the vote would only further damage to the party’s election chances.

They would be right to be cautious. The problem for Corbyn’s opponents is that Labour MPs don’t decide who the leader is (by definition: hardly any of them voted for him). The vote of no confidence is designed only to create some momentum – yes, very droll – behind a challenge that can only be launched at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool at the end of September.

That means identifying a candidate who could beat him. The bookmakers put Dan Jarvis, Hilary Benn, Tom Watson and Lisa Nandy at the top of the list. One of those, or someone else, has to be nominated by 50 MPs and MEPs before conference.

Given that the Conservatives will hold their annual conference in Birmingham the following week, at which their new leader and prime minister will address the party, that doesn’t give Labour much time to organise a ballot of its 388,000 members before a possible November election. That is a reason for the new prime minister to go for the earliest possible election rather than waiting until the spring. Fortunately for Corbyn’s opponents, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act requires an extra two-week delay before an election can be called (because, under the Act, Prime Minister Johnson would have to resort to the strange device of asking Tory MPs to pass a motion of no confidence in their own Government in order to call an early election). But – and this is where the plan hits a speed bump – whoever the candidate is has to appeal to the 64 per cent of Labour members who last month said they would vote for Corbyn if there were another leadership election.

The Brexit vote makes it more likely that Corbyn will be replaced – the silence of his supporters on social media in recent weeks has been striking – but it doesn’t guarantee it.

Which brings me back to my original list of reasons not to panic in the event of a Leave vote. I said we would, in two years’ time, save the £180m a week that is our net contribution to the EU – the true figure that should have been on the side of Boris’s bus. But I noted that there was likely to be an economic slowdown first. And that the long-term loss of national income would easily be more than this figure. Still, at least we will probably all be affected roughly equally.

As I said, how bad can it really be?