Labour's 'Brexit bind' will only get tighter
The party must work out how to keep pro-EU members onside without alienating the Eurosceptic voters needed to win an election.
Sunday 24 February 2019 23:50, UK
"Oooh Jeremy Corbyn. People's Vote now," reads a sticker glued to a signpost in the Labour leader's north London constituency.
It's meant to be a campaign message. Others may see it as a threat.
"I was very much behind him… but how he's dealt with Brexit has been really stubborn," says a young bespectacled resident, one of the tens of thousands who have swelled Labour ranks in the past few years.
"He doesn't seem to be listening to any of the people who made his success into a movement", he said.
From one of those on their way to the Arsenal game against Southampton, a similar message: "I would be tempted to vote for him in the past but I'm half-Jewish and I'm a Remainer, so it would be very difficult for me to vote for the Labour Party as it is."
I had, perhaps naively, expected nothing but praise for Mr Corbyn from those enjoying the winter sun in leafy Highbury Fields.
But while the Labour voters I spoke to were fully behind his left-wing policy agenda, on Brexit it was a different story.
As a German-born, long-time local resident put it, "if they don't have a better proposition [for Brexit], why don't they campaign to remain".
There's also frustration at Mr Corbyn's reluctance to back another referendum, even when other senior Labour figures seem warmer on the idea.
Writing online on Saturday night, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said he was "likely to be at the rally for a people's vote" in four weeks' time if the prime minister didn't sign up to his party's plan for Brexit.
He also confirmed he would be bringing together a group of centrist MPs this week to come up with policies to help broaden Labour's appeal.
With challenges like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking Mr Watson was more rebellious backbencher than loyal deputy.
I'm also told there's growing support around Labour's top table for a plan which would allow Theresa May's Brexit deal through, on the condition it was put to a public vote.
:: PM rules out meaningful vote this week
Those close to the idea say shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor John McDonnell are both "enthusiastic" about it.
Crucially though, Mr Corbyn appears not to be, playing down any idea that he could swing behind it when he spoke to Sky News last week.
These two faces of Brexit peering out of Labour's top team have helped paper over the cracks in opinion within the party for the last few years.
But last week's defection of nine MPs has thrust the Brexit bind at the heart of Labour out into the open.
And that bind will only get tighter in the coming weeks.
Put simply: how do you keep new pro-EU members onside without alienating the traditional Eurosceptic voters needed to win the next election?
The Labour leader has 32 days to answer that question.