Tuesday’s announcement that the Labour Party will support Remain in any second referendum will signal the end of Labour’s chances of winning the next general election. Jeremy Corbyn’s email to Labour members and supporters will have delighted those who have been seeking to overturn the referendum result, but in vast swathes of the country, it will go down like a lead balloon.
In the 2017 General Election, Labour made a direct and explicit promise to the British people that it would accept the outcome of the referendum and take Britain out of the European Union.
It was on that platform that Labour were able to deprive the Tories of a majority and hold onto the 70% of its constituencies which voted to leave the EU.
All of those seats have now been put into jeopardy.
On the biggest issue in British politics, Labour promised one thing before the election and then did the complete opposite afterwards. The last party that performed such an outrageous U-turn was the Liberal Democrats over tuition fees, and they were rightly destroyed in the following election.
Labour is now possibly facing that same oblivion.
As of this morning, just under five million Labour Leave voters are homeless. I’m sure The Brexit Party will be delighted.
There is, of course, a wider concern following this announcement. Cynicism and disbelief in our political system is at an all-time high, and confidence in our parliamentarians to deliver Brexit is at an all-time low. This huge breach of trust between Labour and the electorate has the capacity to unleash political forces which this country never seen before.
History has shown us that when a political class betrays their electorate, those people no longer hold any affinity and loyalty to the institutions operating in their name. The electorate will never be able to trust us sincerely again.
Labour MPs representing leave seats have their ear to the ground. Most of these seats are marginals, and the message from those heartlands is that backing a second referendum will be disaster for the Party.
Labour was always going to eventually have to pick a side in the never-ending Brexit debate, but it has chosen the wrong side of the argument. A majority of the marginal seats we need to win at the next General Election voted to Leave and a majority of the marginal seats we already hold voted to Leave, too.
Majorities in Bristol and London will rise from 40,000 to possibly even 50,000 as a result of this announcement, but seats such as Stoke, Ashfield and Dudley – the beating heart of Labour – will be lost.
Labour canvassers in Hackney, Islington, Camden and Brent will campaign with palm leaves laid before them, but with the Tories and the Brexit Party either side of us our heartlands where a majority voted to Leave, Labour has charged into the valley of death.
Labour canvassers are in for a rough ride on the doorsteps of the estates in those small towns in England and Wales. Our sympathy should be extended to them in their fruitless and suicidal task of selling this most unpopular policy to an already alienated audience.
Brexiteers in the Labour Party must now launch a ferocious and firm campaign to save our Party from the prevailing lunacy of Remain. Those who originally campaigned to Remain, but who now accept the result, must coordinate and unite to defend democracy and take control of the Party in the interests of working people.
Middle-class sociology graduates working in SW1 are not the Labour Party. Labour is the party of hard-working people such as shopkeepers, factory workers, railway drivers and builders. Labour is the party of the working classes, and now is the time for the working classes to reclaim their party in the interests of democracy.
If we do not do this and seek to reverse this policy, then Labour is finished.
Brendan Chilton is chair of Labour Leave