Is Corbyn Moving `Crab-Like' Toward a Second Brexit Referendum?
With talk of a second referendum in the air, opponents of Brexit have decided to hit the road.
(Bloomberg) -- There are some in Jeremy Corbyn’s own Labour party who see him slowly shifting his position in favor of a second referendum on Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
One prominent voice is his pro-EU colleague Andrew Adonis. “My leader is moving crab-like in the direction of a referendum,” Adonis said in an interview. Another Labour lawmaker, Geraint Davies, predicted the main opposition party “will probably vote against the deal in parliament if it doesn’t match up to the test we have set against it -- to have frictionless trade -- and in that case it is quite likely there will be a general election.”
At that point the direction of Brexit -- or whether it will even happen -- is up for debate in a febrile political environment: there have been two referendums and two general elections in the past four years. Corbyn, a lifelong euroskeptic, has maintained a policy of constructive ambiguity on Brexit but that has started to give way to a more vocal support of a pro-EU agenda.
While it isn’t current Labour policy to call for another vote, Corbyn has kept his options open by being sufficiently vague in his language. On Tuesday, he conceded that the U.K. “will have to have a customs union,” a sign he’s moving toward a so-called soft Brexit.
Polls of Labour Party supporters show they favor remaining in the customs union and the EU’s single market.
Adonis and Davies were among a cross-party group of Brexit opponents launching a new nationwide campaign. They used a red bus in a deliberate echo of the 2016 campaign, in which Boris Johnson toured the country in a "Vote Leave" bus bearing the slogan “We send the EU £350 million a week let’s fund our NHS instead.”
The motto on their bus: “Brexit to cost £2,000 million a week says government’s own report. Is it worth it?”
“The campaign for the referendum on Mrs. May’s disastrous Brexit deal has essentially started and this is the opening salvo,” Adonis, a peer in the upper House of Lords, said at the launch of the U.K. bus tour.
A second referendum is “almost inevitable now,” Adonis said, “because of the huge controversy that is mounting over the likely Brexit deal and the parliamentary crisis that will result from that.” Adonis was referring to when the two houses of parliament will be called upon to vote on Theresa May’s final negotiated deal, expected early next year before the March 2019 deadline to quit the bloc.
May has ruled out a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. A spokesman for Corbyn’s office said the party has repeatedly said it isn’t its place to call for a second referendum and it is awaiting a meaningful vote in Parliament.
That reflects a desire by Labour strategists to allow any unpopular deal May strikes with the EU to usher Labour into office. Even so, while Corbyn claims his party is a government in waiting, he and May’s Tories are neck and neck in the polls.
--With assistance from Robert Hutton
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Andrew Atkinson
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