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There is no right moment for Jeremy Corbyn to break his silence on Brexit

In his career the Labour leader has never followed in the slipstream of public opinion. This would be a hell of a time to start promoting narrow political calculation over political integrity

Matthew Norman
Tuesday 12 December 2017 17:20 GMT
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Corbyn has refused to firm up Labour’s Brexit plans
Corbyn has refused to firm up Labour’s Brexit plans

The Brexit seesaw begins to swing again.

A week ago, Theresa May was so far down, you could hear heels scraping the concrete, and Jeremy Corbyn was grinning wolfishly from on high. The DUP had detonated the pre-deal deal, and Tory MPs mused aloud that Santa might find her gone when he nips down the Chequers chimney.

After the deal, May has seemed more secure than at any point since her kamikaze election (though appearances deceive), and the spotlight of doom edges towards Corbyn.

If it seems absurdly previous to speculate about the Labour leader being vulnerable to the kind of putsch long anticipated against the PM, it is. Corbyn’s control over his party’s sentiment and levers of power is enviable, if not absolute.

Ever since May’s crash-landing in June, he has been gleefully treasuring the debris like a small boy collecting hot shrapnel during the Blitz. But while picking up detritus from someone else’s disaster is great fun, it is not an omen of victory. Avoiding electoral slaughter was as delightful a shock to Corbyn, one assumes, as to most Labour voters. But how long can he coast surely on the assumption that his personal Dunkirk is a guarantee of VE day ahead?

Keir Starmer: Brexit deal means UK will be tied to single market 'in perpetuity'

After weeks of audible moaning that Labour’s poll lead is much slimmer than any opposition to a chaotic, semi-anarchic government should expect, the volume is rising.

That narrow lead has turned into a deficit in the latest poll. But Theresa May’s own dramatic escape has done more than that. It has brought Brexit into sharper focus, and infused a depressingly familiar question with new urgency.

When will Jeremy Corbyn reveal his position on Brexit? Or if not that, when will he develop the Brexit policy he might then consent to share with the rest of us?

Amazingly, it is still uncertain that he has one. Of course, he’s a very busy man, and you wouldn’t want to badger him. But time presses. So if he could spare a few hours from nurturing carrots on the allotment, thanking you, guv’nor, we’d be most awfully obliged.

Keir Starmer would be relieved. Labour’s Brexit spokesman has done as well as he could at turning the Government’s scattergun cluelessness against itself. But to inflict real damage he needs serious ammunition of his own, preferably in the form of Corbyn-endorsed official policy endorsing the softest available Brexit and closest post-Brexit relationship with Europe.

Starmer, who will confess to yearning for no Brexit the second Wonder Woman gets him round the midriff with her Golden Lasso of Truth, said on Sunday that to secure tariff-free trade, Labour would accept “easy movement” of EU nationals.

Meanwhile, the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, traditionally no more gushing an EU fan than Corbyn, talks of the potential for Britain staying inside a “reformed single market”.

Put the two together, and the combination might placate strident Leavers among Labour’s core vote. It would constitute the divorce they want, but not one that forces Britain out of the house with not a bean and nowhere to go. With Donald Trump less likely than ever to offer Britain the stained sofa in the US basement, a demi-Brexit should appeal.

Whether it appeals to Corbyn is still not clear. It has been rumoured that he, like McDonnell, has shifted his anti-Brussels stance – or had it shifted by a visitation from the Spirit of Hard Brexit Christmas Yet To Come; the impoverished, sub-Cratchit yuletide in which the plump, juicy bird is replaced by processed turkey slices; when without any Romanians left to pick any, you’d need an allotment to lay hands on a carrot for Santa.

With projections about the annual cost of no deal to the average family ranging from £900-£1600, and a new report predicting that any deal will make us poorer, there is every chance of public opinion continuing to inch towards the marshmallowiest Brexit, or none at all.

If Corbyn is patiently waiting for the numbers to liberate him from the perceived need for “creative ambiguity”, perhaps he is being smart. Few of us have looked like a genius by underestimating him before.

But the danger is that by giving an impression of game-playing at a moment of history, he restricts his opportunity to shape it. The later he leaves an intervention, the more likely the electorate is to dismiss it as a tactical ploy from yet another charlatan – a retro model from the warehouse of opportunists whose opinions need refracting through the prism of personal ambition.

In his career Jeremy Corbyn has never followed in the slipstream of public opinion. This would be a hell of a time to start promoting narrow political calculation over political integrity.

It’s long odds-on that the Tory schism, negotiating complexities, and David Davis’s belief-defying incompetence will move the seesaw again before long. What Theresa May achieved last week could soon be revealed as a blink-and-you-missed-it false dawn.

But Labour will still need a leader who is prepared to lead, and in his absence the grumblings won’t cease. With every week that passes, as an authority on time like Stephen Hawking would concur, March 2019 is a week closer. If Corbyn is holding out for the perfect moment to break his omerta, that cannot exist. If he is looking for the right moment, about now seems as good as any he is likely to find.

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