Jeremy Corbyn passed his first important test on Europe

The Labour leader pragmatically and persuasively made the case that Britain is better placed to meet the challenges of the future as part of the EU

For a leader who has renounced a lifetime's views on a central question of British politics, Jeremy Corbyn stayed remarkably true to his promise of straight-talking, honest politics in his speech about the European Union at the Senate House on Thursday.

He admitted that, "over the years, I have been critical of many decisions taken by the EU", but he likened his disagreements with it to his differences with the Labour Party in the past. "I have been sure that it was right to stay a member" of the party, he said, and pointed out that he had "even managed to do something about changing" the party's direction recently.

He skilfully applied that approach to the EU, saying that socialist governments and socialist Members of the European Parliament had made progress in using the EU to bring "investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment". He said that the challenges of the future would be better met together in the EU than outside under Boris Johnson as prime minister. If we voted to leave, he said, there would be "a bonfire of rights that Labour governments secured within the EU".

Mr Corbyn rightly pointed out that the EU was not the cause of the British steel industry's problems. He asked: "How is it that Germany, Italy, France and Spain have all done so much better at prectecting their steel industries?" And he made this part of a more general argument: "It is sometimes easier to blame the EU, or worse to blame foreigners, than to face up to our own problems."

This was refreshing – as was his answer to a question about free movement of EU workers: "I don't think too many have come."

The speech was a welcome relief to those, including The Independent, who worried that Mr Corbyn's paleoscepticism was holding Labour back from campaigning with conviction for Britain to stay in the EU.

He avoided denouncing the EU as a conspiracy by the capitalist elite to impose austerity on some of the continent's periphery, which is undoubtedly the view of some of those close to him, but made instead a pragmatic argument – all the more effective for being unexpected – for working to reform an imperfect institution from within.