Corbyn’s speech: savvy politics and impossible promises

Twenty months after the referendum, and the Labour Party has managed to cobble together a coherent line on Brexit. Well, sort of. Speaking in Coventry today, Corbyn delivered the policy shift Westminster had been waiting for. Labour’s vision for Brexit is now of the UK in a permanent customs union with the EU. He said, “Labour would seek a final deal that gives full access to European markets and maintains the benefits of the single market and the customs union… with no new impediments to trade and no reduction in rights, standards and protections,” adding that “Labour respects the result of the referendum and Britain is leaving the EU. But we will not support any Tory deal that would do lasting damage to jobs, rights and living standards.”

To anyone who still doubted Corbyn’s political savviness, today was an eye-opener. Corbyn may play the befuddled and ‘pure’ granddad part to endear himself to his young fans, but he is an opportunist. He is speaking now because he knows that with the hardline Tory backbench group (the ERG) producing increasingly demanding ransom notes on one side, and pro EU Tory rebels becoming ever more active on the other, embattled Theresa May is in a difficult spot.‎

On Saturday, Tory select committee chairmen and three former ministers put their names to an amendment tabled by Anna Soubry that would force the prime minister to put Britain’s membership of a customs union back on the negotiating table. Eleven of the so called “Tory mutineers” have already said that they will back it.

Given today’s speech, it looks likely that Labour MPs would be whipped into supporting it too, meaning potential defeat for the government – although there are a handful of Brexiteer Labour rebels who would vote with May against the Customs Union.

A defeat would be a massive blow to the Prime Minister, and could catalyse the fall of the government – perhaps triggering a snap election which Corbyn might win.

But if the speech was clever politics, policy wise it was anything but.

The leader of the opposition began by mocking the government’s contradictory and vacuous Brexit “strategy” (an easy hand to play, but it must be said, he played it well) before launching into his own strategy – which it turned out was just as riddled, if not more riddled, with contradictions and vacuities.

You can read the whole thing here, but the long and short of it is that Corbyn would introduce a customs union with the EU, but only one in which the UK could negotiate its own new trade deals and wouldn’t have to accept the EU setting its rules. He wants a bespoke Brexit deal “that includes tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections” but also seeks to secure “protections, clarifications or exemptions” to the Single Market directives relating to privatisation, public service competition, state aid and procurement. He added that he would “not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others”.

For a Marxist opposition leader who wants to appeal to the young Remainers but secretly hates the EU because it would prevent him nationalising left, right and centre, and turning the UK into Venezuela, it is a clever bit of fudge. But for a politician claiming to be providing the country with a practical and workable alternative to the Tories’ Brexit strategy, it is a ridiculous line.

As multiple experts have pointed out – including Labour’s own Frank Field – it is extremely likely that the European Union would say a hypothetical ‘no’ to what he is asking for: a say in future trade deals alongside this new proposed customs arrangement. And Corbyn has no back up plan whatsoever. The government is negotiating hard to cherry pick certain aspects of European Union membership – and as we are all aware, it is having limited success. To anyone who understands the EU and its treaties, the suggestion that Jeremy Corbyn would have any more success by simply choosing different cherries won’t go down too well.

The problem for the Prime Minister, of course, is that lots of people don’t understand the EU and its treaties. Many hardcore remainers will listen to today’s speech and hear only that Jeremy Corbyn wants to be closer to the EU. Business – which inexplicably seems to be more worried about Brexit than a Marxist Corbyn government – seems impressed with Corbyn’s talk about the benefits of Single Market, and even ex Tory Chancellor George Osborne has indicated in the Standard today that he thinks Cobyn’s speech is a move in the right direction.

On the face of it, it looks like Corbyn has achieved the unachievable. He has delivered a speech explaining how his Labour Party would use Brexit to achieve his nationalisation agenda, while appearing to give a speech celebrating the EU and the UK’s relationship with it.

It seems unlikely that such a cynical strategy filled with impossible promises can work for long, but unless Theresa May can discipline her rebels and prevent her government falling, Jeremy Corbyn may not need very long to see it through.