Aw, heebie, you're doing great. Unlike those wacky Brits.

I'm curious what the thinking is on Corbyn in the UK territory of the Unfogged Empire.

I've become increasingly disenchanted with Corbyn as a human being and a leader. (The gripe about anti-Semitism -- so often bullshit when aimed at critics of Likud -- seems justified as applied to Corbyn.) I also disagree with "Lexit."

But Corbyn's handling of Brexit, politically and substantively, strikes me as basically sound. He isn't in a position to reject Brexit outright. What he needs to do is either strategize to keep it from happening, or see to it that Labour isn't blamed when it happens. He seems to have pursued a course with those two things in mind.

But I don't actually know anything about this stuff, and would be interested to hear from folks who do.

I'm sorry but Josh Marshall is completely wrong and we are completely fucked.

Theresa May is going for a very short extension, the minimum we need to pass the bits of legislation necessary for any exit. She is not going to allow elections to the European Parliament in May, which would be a necessary condition for remaining. She is clearly going on with her only plan, which is to confront parliament with a choice between her deal and no deal (with no brexit made impossible by the de facto withdrawal from the european parliament). This choice will be presented three months later than the original plan, but it's the same choice.

Meanwhile Corbyn promises a referendum if parliament passes May's deal. But he can't deliver and in any case it wouldn't matter. It's just another sleight of hand to convince tribal labour remainers that he's on their side really. By now, Corbynism requires the same sort of intellectual flexibility as belief in Qanon.

Marshall's error is to suppose that anyone involved will do the right and obvious thing. No one with any power has done so up till now and that is not going to change.

(The gripe about anti-Semitism -- so often bullshit when aimed at critics of Likud -- seems justified as applied to Corbyn.)

My impression is the gripes about anti-Semitism are all directed at people who have been in the Labour party forever. Either just really old people who have a lot of prejudices because that's how old people are, or weirdos who are relics of the 1980s-90s leftist factionalism. And since these are people from the working-class/diehard activist part of the party that is now controlling the party after 25 years controlled by centrists, they've emerged blinking into the sunlight.

I might be offered a job in an academic job in the UK. This is partially enabled by the fact that Europeans are all angry and either don't want to move there, or if they're there they want out. I'm hoping to drag the process until after the Brexit deadline, just so I can see what happens.

If people are interested in brexit, they should read Nicholas Guyatt's various tweets on the subject. He's funny and has been right far more often than not.

But Corbyn's handling of Brexit, politically and substantively, strikes me as basically sound. He isn't in a position to reject Brexit outright. What he needs to do is either strategize to keep it from happening, or see to it that Labour isn't blamed when it happens. He seems to have pursued a course with those two things in mind.

I was recently reading something similar.

"Do you believe that Britain will be better off outside the E.U?" looks at first glance like a fair question. But it is clearly a trap. Corbyn knows it is a trap; and the interviewer knows that he knows. They stumble through all the standard steps of the "why-won't-you-just-answer-the-question/why-do-you-keep-interrupting-me" dance. The point of dramatic tension is not "Will Corbyn fall into the trap?" but "How elegantly will he evade it?"

If Jeremy says "Yes, I do think Britain will be better off outside the E.U" then follow up question will be "Then why on earth did you campaign for Remain?" and tomorrow's headlines will read "Even remonaner Corbyn admits it--we'll be better off once we leave the E.U". But if he says "No, I think we would have been better off staying inside the EU" the follow up will be "Then how can you possibly contemplate leaving?", and the headlines will be "Traitor Corbyn claims Brexit will make us worse off."

Once again, the substantive content of Corbyn's answer is by no means un-sensible. "There is no point in asking me what I think would have happened if we had stayed in the E.U, because the decision to leave has already been made. What matters now is ensuring that we are as well off on the outside as we can possibly be." To which we would expect the follow-up question "Why should the voters believe that you would run the post-Brexit economy better than Theresa May?"

But instead of challenging him on that substantive point, Channel 4 contracts full-blown Paxman-disease. It needs to hear the exact words "Yes, we would have been better off remaining in Europe", and only those exact words will satisfy it. It is happy to spend an entire interview relentlessly chasing the answer it is quite definitely not going to get.

I don't think Corbyn handles the pursuit particularly elegantly; but his judgement call is sound. Better for people to take the piss out of you for not answering the question than to offer the Tory press free ammunition.

Overall, I've mostly stopped following the details of Brexit because the whole thing seems too depressing. To the extent I have an opinion I'm holding on to faint hope that the Irish Question will end up being the level to block Brexit.

Obviously the problem is that Brexit doesn't go far enough. England also needs to leave the United Kingdom.

That'll take care of itself. It's not completely implausible to imagine that the territory currently making up the United Kingdom will, within a decade, be divided among at least three independent states (more if you're including the Overseas Territories).

I dunno, it seems like the job of an opposition is to say things like "this shit idea of the government's is a shit idea."

more if you're including the Overseas Territories

The Overseas Territories getting kicked out of the EU is a pretty big deal for them. For places like BVI and the Caymans, loosing the UK's ability to protect them from the EU's financial blacklists is going to be a big blow.

Of course, that's actually good news for those of use who aren't with the .01%.

I hate the "Corbyn is smartly playing politics!" takes. Sometimes you just have to forthrightly say a bad idea is a bad idea. The US would have been better off if more Democrats had said the Iraq War was a bad idea.

I also fundamentally don't believe them. Corbyn wants the UK out of the EU, and he's doing the bare minimum to prevent the party from splitting.

I could and perhaps should expand on this, but my basic take on Corbyn is that I like the position he occupies but very much think he's the wrong man to occupy it. For one thing, he does not strike me as a particularly bright fellow.

Antisemitism is the socialism of not particularly bright fellows.

On topic? Cryo-Judaism.

7 Is daft. It is not the job of the Leader of the Opposition to avoid at all costs ever committing to a position on the most important political issue of the 20th for fear that the Tory press might disagree with him.

10: I have been generally mystified by Corbyn's behavior all the way though this. I can't work out at all what he thinks, and it's unclear to me if his actions match up with his murky, unknowable views. I agree he should just say that this terrible, awful, no-good, very bad idea is terrible, awful etc.

5: All the Europeans wanting out might be an important data point to consider. The deadline may turn out to be something of a moveable feast, too.

Regarding Corbyn, it's almost as if all of the shadow ministers and MPs who said he would be terrible as party leader had gained some insight from working with him over the years. Who knew?

As for Brexit: Thirty days. Tick, tick, tick.

The link in 7 makes a fair general point about the degeneration of political questioning into a spectator sport. And it is notable and important that almost all the horrible debating behaviour that we see online had its origins in offline journalism. Everyone arguing on twitter secretly thinks they are the sneering superior bully Jeremy Paxman and that there's an audience which applauds them for it.

But in the particular context of Corbyn and the EU it is, as ajay says, bullshit. Corbyn is a man with a stubborn belief in own propaganda and not much else in the way of intellectual equipment. The reason he can't say Brexit is a disaster is that he doesn't believe it is. He really thinks that if Britain cuts loose from the capitalist / neoliberal / Rothschild machinery of the outside world a radical Labour government will build a socialist country like, er, Venezuela. So he can't say that Brexit will be a disaster.

I know there are party management reasons for ambiguity. Lots of Labour MPs represent Leave seats. But he's a fucking awful party manager: large chunks of the parliamentary party are longing to leave. 80% at least of the membership are passionate Remainers. He's not going to compromise with them because he thinks they're wrong.

There is a deeper, personal problem. The Leave vote was informed by English nationalism and by patriotism too; Corbyn is the epitome of the unpatriotic lefty type lampooned by Orwell. He and his clique are rootless metropolitans. The working class Leave voters are never going to trust him, nor he them.

How was he elected leader? By what mechanisms may he be ousted?

20 Joyce, right? From 'Ithaca.'

If you say so?

I mean that's a weirdly specific place to exile someone, even by British standards.

He was elected leader by the votes of the members in the teeth of the parliamentary party. They are the only people who can get rid of him. It will take a catastrophic election defeat for that to happen. Which it will.

Cornell is a good safety school.

The original has better weather.

I like snow and trees.

I know there are party management reasons for ambiguity. Lots of Labour MPs represent Leave seats. But he's a fucking awful party manager: large chunks of the parliamentary party are longing to leave. 80% at least of the membership are passionate Remainers. He's not going to compromise with them because he thinks they're wrong.

To clarify here: note the lower-case L on "leave". Large chunks of the parliamentary party are longing to leave (the party), not Leave (the EU).

Moderation in all things, young Hick.

She is not going to allow elections to the European Parliament in May, which would be a necessary condition for remaining.

This really strikes me as an overblown fear. We are not going to get into a position where the EU says, in early June, with everything set for a second referendum in which Remain is likely to win, "ooh, sorry, you didn't elect any MEPs so we're kicking you out". The rules would be bent.
Remember that the EU is the only actor in this drama whose objectives are entirely clear: 1) Keep the UK in the EU. 2) If that can't be done, achieve a Brexit that causes as little distress as possible to the citizens of the rest of the EU.

Compare that to the others. I have no idea what May wants. She doesn't really want to Leave; she campaigned for Remain before becoming PM. She doesn't even want to be Prime Minister particularly - she's already said she'll resign in the next couple of years.
It seems like she just wants to win something - anything! - to for once defeat all her many opponents in the ERG, TIG, the Remain Tories, Labour, the EU and so on.

dsquared is making a lot of efforts on twitter to basically present Corbyn as doing about as well as he could be doing in the circumstances -- vis a vis the number of parliamentary votes for each of the key positions on Brexit. I'm not in camp Corbyn-is-to-blame-for-everything. I think, over the past three or four months, it's pretty hard to see what else could be being done that could genuinely stop Brexit altogether, given the position of the bulk of the Tory party who are, lest we forget, the government.* Even if the Labour party was led by a strategic genius gifted, I think there's increasingly clear evidence, there's not much different that could be done.

But ... that assumes the positions as of November 2018 as some kind of set in stone fact of nature. Whereas ...

I do think he has done a really shit job at managing dissent within his own party, and I think his handling of the early post-referendum position, could have been done differently. There's been a couple of years since the referendum in which to basically push (in the Overton window sense, and in the negotiating position sense) a much stronger and clearer more moderate position on Brexit. And, to make a much stronger case for the Tory party as the owners of this fucking catastrophe. I don't think, and have not really thought for a long time, that Brexit could have been stopped in its tracks, but solidifying the positive case for either a second referendum, or a Norway+ style deal, could have been done, but only with consistent and clear party messaging, and strong Labour party unity from the start. So, we needn't necessarily have been starting from the fucked position at the end of last year.

FWIW, I think Corbyn's position over the past few months has been fairly consistent with the official party policy, as per the last conference, and those who claim that he's mysterious and vague are not quite right. But, I think it's true that he was exactly that mysterious and vague for an amazingly long time, and that tactically and strategically, that's back-fired.

* and who don't give the slightest fuck about doing the right thing, ethically, morally, economically, whatever.

FWIW, I think Corbyn's position over the past few months has been fairly consistent with the official party policy

Lots of people have been saying this - "why are you so surprised Corbyn supported a PV? It's party policy! He's always supported it!" but that doesn't address why pro-Brexit Labour types like John Mann thought it was such an awful and sudden betrayal for him to come out and say so.

and who don't give the slightest fuck about doing the right thing, ethically, morally, economically, whatever.

In this context it's worth remembering the under-reported fact that the Tory party membership - unlike the MPs - is overwhelmingly in favour of a no-deal Brexit. (Because they are insane. 47% of them think there are sharia-imposed no-go areas in major UK cities.) Labour has a lot of problems with Momentum, but the Tories have their own issues.

Corbyn as doing about as well as he could be doing in the circumstances -- vis a vis the number of parliamentary votes for each of the key positions on Brexit

"I must follow them; I am their leader."

Norway+ was never an option, Norway probably isn't an option. You could get Norway-, but Norway- would hit the same problems May's deal has: its obviously worse than remain.

To 30 -- I've not been paying attention, but doesn't the EU have a goal (3) that leaving be unpleasant enough that no one else is tempted to try it? Obviously subordinate to goal (1) and (2) but still there?

If you guys are right, it really is exquisite that the Labour leader deep inside wants to Leave and the Tory leader deep inside wants to Remain. We wouldn't know who it is now, but some bard or other is surely writing stuff about this that'll still be entertaining 400 years hence.

36: well, not really. Brexit is already unpleasant enough for no one else to want to try it, and it hasn't even happened yet. That doesn't have to be an EU goal because the EU's sincere position is that the EU is a good thing to be in, and therefore that leaving it will inevitably not be good. The EU doesn't have to actually exert any effort to make that happen.
The contrary is a common Brexit-supporter argument: that the UK has been exploited by the devious cosmopolitans of Brussels, who therefore don't want the UK to leave for zero-sum reasons, and are making the process unnnecessarily painful.

Thinking of it as a zero-sum game is how many of the Leave votes happened, to be honest. They weren't able to understand that it might be true that the UK was a net contributor to the EU and that the UK was better off in the EU than outside it. Their brains just couldn't handle that.

Many people predicted that the EU would try to screw the UK, but it really hasn't happened. Their only red line is that they are not going to screw one of their own members (Ireland) either.

Relevant to 33 is this short, exquisite clip of the bloke explaining that he has nothing against immigrants from Europe: he voted Leave to keep the Africans out.

This is a more widespread attitude that most respectable opinion will acknowledge and it is yet another way in which Brexit will go on poisoning Britain for years to come. Voters like this are going to discover that leaving Europe will mean more of the sort of immigration that they really hate.

Voters like this are going to discover that leaving Europe will mean more of the sort of immigration that they really hate.

Why is that?

It's remarkable to think of this whole thing from the point of view of historical British foreign policy. After centuries of having its main goal to be stopping ever having Europe unified because it knew it couldn't stand up to a unified Europe, the UK decided to get behind unifying Europe and then chose to leave it. It's stupefying. Centuries of foreign ministers are rolling in their graves. Of course, as we're finding out now, in deed Britain isn't big enough to matter when it's in opposition to a unified Europe.

My view on this is basically a product of projecting US xenophobia and political strategery onto the UK, so I'm operating from a place of ignorance and humility, but ...

The UK is a place with many of the attributes of a democracy, and its leaders have to be responsive to that. Leaders of both parties are operating in a media environment that is ridiculously sympathetic to Brexit -- partly because the media, too, is subject to democratic pressures.

How do you govern in a country where the popular will is an important consideration and the country often has a working majority of boneheads? Ajay mocks that dilemma in 34, and it is a ridiculous situation, but just because political efficacy is ridiculous doesn't mean it's a non-issue. David Cameron and Theresa May navigated that dilemma poorly, but even their fuckups were, in important ways, shaped by their constituencies. Something like a third of the membership of Corbyn's party is pro-Brexit. In a country with democratic tendencies, that can't be ignored.

I have no idea what May wants.

Part of the confusion about that issue is, again, wishy-washiness dictated by her constituency, much of which disagrees with Brexit. She, like Corbyn, has trouble taking a coherent stand because her voters are, as a group, incoherent.

Corbyn wants a second referendum and politically, it's hard for me to grasp how he could have come out much sooner or stronger. He's the leader that Labour requires in this moment, just as the political environment in the UK labored to produce someone like May.

(I blame the media.)

ttaM's 31 is about where I am, too. D^2's twitter feed is good on this, as is Phil Ed/wards' feed and his blogpost here. 95% of what I read criticizing Corbyn from a Remain perspective seems to be coming from an alternate reality where he's Prime Minister, or would magically attract 10+ Tory votes net of the Leave Labour + SNP + LD + other MPs who'd defect, and doesn't grapple at all with the reality that no matter what the various Tory MPs' first-place preferences are w.r.t. May's deal, no-deal Brexit, Norway-ish, or remain, *all* the Tories would prefer *any* of the options under Tory leadership over *any* of them under Labour leadership. A "remain vs no-deal" Commons vote might *possibly* get a Remain majority, but precisely because of that, and because that would be a government-ending disaster, *such a vote won't happen*, because the governing majority controls the agenda (and again, because it would be such a grassroots-demoralization disaster for the Tory party, even if it were explicitly untied from any question of confidence, it might not garner enough Tory Remainer votes). So: there's simply no way for Labour to use minority Tory remain-sentiment force an election, or to use the threat of one to break party loyalty enough to push a backbench rebellion that would put Remain on the parliamentary agenda.

So I don't see any better moves for even a committed Remainer Labour leader, at least tactically. Strategically, though--Overton window, all that--yeah, who knows what might have been possible. The thing is, there really was a referendum, and Stupid won!. It's kind of hard for a would-be party of government to explicitly, openly, boldly say, "The people had their say, and they were wrong, as we've now seen, so our official policy is to aim at overturning that decision by any means necessary." It's particularly hard for someone with Corbyn's background as a populist backbencher (e.g. that video that turned up recently of him congratulating Ireland for rejecting the Lisbon treaty, and mocking the EU elite's habit of repeatedly calling referendums until the proper result is reached).

Can we at least agree that The Independent Group is ridiculous and in no way helping matters?

Co-sign all of 44, especially blaming the media. But the media, too, is the media that the politics and economy produced: tabloids are only a profitable business under certain structural conditions; we (at least 'people of my end-of-history generation') are used to thinking of private media ownership as a bastion of free expression rather than as oligarchical control of the means of public opinion production, etc.

I don't get why so many people are ignoring the fact that Corbyn is pro-Leave, and has done the bare minimum necessary to stay the leader of a party that majority pro-Remain. He campaigned half-heartedly for Remain. He made Article 50 invocation a three-line whip vote. He only agreed to a referendum when multiple MPs actually quit the party. He has done everything he's could to accelerate Brexit short of splitting the party, and he almost went too far.

45: Corbyn's Labour is the party of never-government, so the strategy of triangulation wracks up another success. The referendum was sold with a pack of lies. It's the easiest thing in the world to run against something sold as a pack of lies, especially an election that was so close. They could have called for delaying Article 50 invocation, they could have all along demanded that any deal with the EU be approved by referendum, they could have highlighted actual breeches of law by the Leave campaign and Russian involvement. Corbyn's strategy was the opposite of clever, in that it almost completely destroyed Labour's ability to slow down Brexit. Except of course that was his goal.

Something like a third of the membership of Corbyn's party is pro-Brexit. In a country with democratic tendencies, that can't be ignored.

Yes! Yes it can! A third of the membership of Corbyn's party is probably pro-capital punishment, for God's sake. That does not mean that Corbyn has to pick some sort of insincere middle ground between hanging and not-hanging (perhaps public flogging?)

re: 47

He only agreed to a referendum when multiple MPs actually quit the party.

Isn't true. it's widely reported to be the case, but it's crap. His current stated position, is exactly the same as the Labour position 6 months ago. FWIW, I don't agree with the official party policy, but he's been broadly consistent with it. Basically, let's do Brexit, but in a nice soft way and remain in the nice bits of it, and if we can get it by winning power in a general election, so we are the negotiators on the UK side, great, if not, let's see if we can get it by winning the relevant votes in parliament, and then, if not, let's put it to a public vote.

On the other hand, I agree, he personally is ambivalent about the EU, and that's definitely a factor, and he comes from a wing of the Labour party that has traditionally been antithetical to Europe (as a political construct). That's certainly/probably a factor in why he hasn't been successful, or even made a really good attempt, at driving forward the kind of Overton window shifting thing I was talking about in 31. Also, that sort of window shifting thing would be genuinely hard to do, because it has to be done in a way that doesn't come across as "Morons, here's why you are wrong." Corbyn's not that guy, and, it'd have been great if the leader of the Opposition, had been that guy.

Heck, a referendum on bringing back hanging would have succeeded in any year from 1965 (when it was abolished) to 2015 (when it finally dropped to 48% popularity). Still a very good thing that it didn't happen. (Also of course incompatible with EU membership. But that won't matter soon.)

His current stated position, is exactly the same as the Labour position 6 months ago.

Why then are Labour Leavers seeing his current stated position as such a betrayal?

For places like BVI and the Caymans, loosing the UK's ability to protect them from the EU's financial blacklists is going to be a big blow.

Good point. Also Jersey and Guernsey.

Gibraltar might seriously reconsider its status with respect to Spain, and a rump UK might decide it's not worth protecting the Falklands. (England on its own, using Wikipedia data that overestimates the future, only has about 4/3 the GDP of Argentina.) Or maybe it'll go hyperpatriotic, holding on even harder to its zombie empire.

As for Corbyn, I agree with Walt.

Walt@47:

It's the easiest thing in the world to run against something sold as a pack of lies

Here is our point of irreducible difference, I think. I don't see how anybody who lives in the US could say this.

Calling Corbyn "pro-Leave" is inaccurate, but your point is well-taken that part of the problem with Corbyn is that he believes a satisfactory Brexit could exist in a different political environment. It's unfortunate that he seems to be sincerely ambivalent on the issue.

ajay@48:

A third of the membership of Corbyn's party is probably pro-capital punishment, for God's sake.

Banned!

You have to consider the salience of an issue. I'm guessing, but I suspect that Brexit is an issue that causes people to vote or not vote in a way that capital punishment does not. We have a small minority of gun nuts in the US, but they vote the issue, so we have nutty gun laws.

Socialist always want to punish capital.

I think it's kind of important to maintain a distinction between "critical of specific EU policies" and "wants not just to cut all institutional ties with the EU, but actively wishes for its dissolution, and indeed argued that this was a reason to vote Leave". Anyone who took part in protests about TTIP/CETA, the upload filter, numerous rounds of copyright wars, Mediterranean refugees, third world debt, or a host of other issues that attracted cross-European activist mobilization is in the first group, and they were usually right next to JC while they were doing it. (Often physically: the guy goes on a lot of demos!)

But Michael Gove, who is supposedly one of the less crazy Leavers although I for one don't believe it, literally said during the campaign that he hoped Brexit would bring about the collapse of the EU in a second springtime of nations!

Brexit is an issue that causes people to vote or not vote in a way that capital punishment does not.

Salience is not an inherent property of the issue but a property of the political climate at the time. EU membership had very low salience as an issue until recently; it was never listed high on polls of voters' concerns, except for a very small number of voters.

Don't forget that Corbyn is not only pro-Brexit but pro-hard Brexit. Immediately after the referendum he called for the UK to trigger Article 50 and for the UK to leave both the Single Market and the Customs Union (with some nonsensical fluff about how the UK should have full access to all SM benefits but not actually be a member, which he either knew was impossible or didn't know was impossible, either of which is bad in different ways).

They could have called for delaying Article 50 invocation, they could have all along demanded that any deal with the EU be approved by referendum, they could have highlighted actual breeches of law by the Leave campaign and Russian involvement. Corbyn's strategy was the opposite of clever, in that it almost completely destroyed Labour's ability to slow down Brexit.

This is just wrong. Labour's ability to slow down or alter Brexit exists because of the 2017 election result. It has more of it than it did before the election, because it has more votes. Also, actually-existing MPs and shadow cabinet members have stood up in the Commons to highlight, yadda yadda, and they make up half of the parliamentary investigation committee.

56: I still have no idea why he said that on Brexit morning, given that party policy ever since has been to rejoin the SM and CU via a new treaty.

53: Have the Democrats ever, in the last 25 years, ever tried running against Republican lies? The Republicans lie, change the political reality on the ground, and then the Democrats accomodate themselves to the new reality, and it never does them any good. They pursue the exact strategy that people are attributing to Corbyn now.

The Republicans have managed to keep Chappaquidick alive as an issue, while the Democrats dropped the fact that the entire case for the Iraq War were lies almost immediately. Christ, they barely bring up that Trump conspired with the Russians, and we're still in the middle of people going to jail for it.

58: No. This is absolutely not the case.

-- The 2017 manifesto (which they have to stick to! otherwise they deserve to be deselected!) did not say "we will rejoin the SM and CU". It said "We will scrap the Conservatives' Brexit White Paper and replace it with fresh negotiating priorities that have a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union".

Starmer said that the UK should stay in SM/CU during the transition period only and "leave the option on the table" for after transition.

Corbyn reiterated that he did not want the UK to stay in SM in 2018 at the Scottish Labour conference, and said that any deal on SM access would have to allow substantial derogation to allow state intervention and restrict immigrant labour.

If you've got a link to Corbyn, or anyone senior, saying "party policy is for us to rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union after Brexit" then I would really love to see it.

Happened to attend a pollster event on Brexit this morning. Don't disagree with much of the thread here, but does seem pessimistic. On the plus side ...

Remain now has a demographic advantage: the make up of the electorate is inexorably changing. Leavers have not had a polling lead since the end of 2017 and are now about 7-8 points behind.

At the same time, attitudes are not volatile: very much the reverse. Leavers have hardened into a lump comprising about 40% of the population. Remainers are also ossified; it's just that there are now more of them. 16 year olds who were Remain are now 18 year olds who are Remain, and can vote. And a chunk of EU27 nationals have converted into British nationals. (Don't know how many, but potentially in the 1-3 million range.)

JC is widely disliked for his apparent lack of substance on the issue. But so is May. By contrast, Keir Starmer is thought by voters to have performed well (along with EU27 negotiators such as Barnier).

Yes, the ERG will continue to machinate, but there is a context to whatever they try to do, which is that Leave has lost momentum and voters now dislike it, and what's more, this dislike is entrenched.

I still have no idea why he said that on Brexit morning

He's made it perfectly clear why he wants to leave the Single Market. Here are his reasons, based on his remarks at the conference:
1) The Single Market allows employers to bring in cheap immigrant labour to undercut the wages of British workers, which he is opposed to
2) Single Market rules would restrict the ability of the UK to nationalise industries (this isn't true btw)
3) Single Market rules on state aid would restrict UK ability to subsidise key industries

Don't forget that Corbyn is not only pro-Brexit but pro-hard Brexit.

I don't think Corbyn is anywhere near as coherent as you make him out to be. In the first referendum, he was a public supporter of Remain. He favors a second referendum with an eye toward overturning Brexit. Taken as a whole, you'd have to suppose that his ordering of priorities is something like this:

1. Fantasy Leftist Brexit
2. Remain
3. May's deal
4. No-deal Brexit

I wish he didn't have a history of promoting fantasies. Worse still, I don't think people should share his fantasy in the first place. But it's a mostly harmless fantasy.

I was told once that the leader of the Labour Party should be John McDonnell, but he didn't run as the leftist protest candidate because he has health problems, so Corbyn ran instead. How would the world be different if the former were the case?

he was a public supporter of Remain.

But a really lackluster one.

He favors a second referendum with an eye toward overturning Brexit

FINALLY he does, yes. I haven't forgotten the time that a few weeks ago he sent a letter to May laying out the conditions under which Labour would vote for the deal. And Keir Starmer said "oh are you going to put in there that you want a people's vote, as per party policy?" and Corbyn was all "yes totally going to include that sentence" and then SOMEHOW that sentence vanished mysteriously from the letter that was actually sent.

59: I see Democrats calling out Republican liars all the time, but you and your fellow citizens get your news through a glass darkly, and fantasy is given equal or greater time than reality. Certainly that's the story of Brexit.

Hillary crushed Trump in three debates by promoting reality over falsehood. But that is only possible when the media are disintermediated. The rest of the time it's emails, emails, emails.

re: 63

I think that ordering of priorities 1 through 4 is basically what he thinks, yeah.

64: health, yeah, right. McDonnell has tried for the leadership before, twice, and didn't get enough nominations either time. Corbyn was just ignored by the PLP; McDonnell was actively hated.

62: "Leave has lost momentum and voters now dislike it, and what's more, this dislike is entrenched."

But as I noted above, no-deal arrives in thirty days.

I know less than nothing about JC and his thinking, but it wouldn't be unheard of for our silly leftists to have a thought process that roughly translates to 'the best way to get to Fantasy Leftist Brexit is to first have No Deal Brexit, driven by the other guys, over our objection.' Bad projection and bad analogies go together, obviously.

Oh, sorry, the computer apparently thought that comment was so lame, it refused to remember my name.

The real question is whether Corbyn would prefer Remain to No Deal under all circumstances, especially if the options are

"No Deal, but you get to blame it entirely on the Conservatives, who will have been destroyed by their own right-wing loons and will be held liable for a generation for causing huge damage to the country"

and

"Remain, but you have to give up forever on fulfilling your the vision of lots of nationalised industry and restrictions on Polish workers taking jobs in Labour seats, and you'll have to line up and go into the same lobby as a lot of Tories, and Lib Dems, and Labour defectors, and you probably won't get to be prime minister ever".

Because those are likely to be the actual circumstances.

"No Deal, but you get to blame it entirely on the Conservatives, who will have been destroyed by their own right-wing loons and will be held liable for a generation for causing huge damage to the country"

Can we be sure that the Conservatives are held liable for the bad effects of Brexit? Won't the press just blame outside forces for stabbing Brexit in the back? The Conservatives had a noble dream... a dream that could have lived if not for the VINDICTIVE PUNISHMENTS inflicted by the EU. And who are the stooges of the EU, who wanted us to stay in bed with the hated EU that hates us so much? That would be the peoples who aren't the Conservatives.

42: because places like India will demand freedom of movement, more or less, in exchange for those wonderfully easy trade deals we're going to strike with them. This has already come up in the context of student visas, which May was determined to make more difficult when she was Home Sec.

73: Cryptic Ned is obviously a reader of the Daily Telegraph. That is exactly how the debate will go. Follow, eg Alison Pearson (wife of the wonderfully subtle and clever Anthony Lane) for the voice of a full-on foreigner-blaming harpy.

74: Interesting! Thanks!

Which is just so emblematic. Harpies would literally starve without foreigners.

As a general point, you have to remember that MPs face two electorates now, in both parties. They have to satisfy not only the general election voters, but the party members who got to decide whether they will face the voters at all. This isn't the theory but it is increasingly the practice. And the members of both parties are increasingly deranged. It is hostility from Labour and conservative members which has driven out the members of the independent group.

72. If those are his choices, of course he will go for Leave.

74. India's first priority, on the morning after Brexit, will be to agree the FTA with the EU that the UK has been blocking for years. At which point I imagine we can kiss goodbye to any further investment in the UK by Tata Group (a.k.a. Corus Steel, Jaguar Land Rover).

63: Corbyn does not favour a second referendum If ever there was a case for the Blink tag and class:endless-screaming, this is it.

He has conceded the possibility of a second referendum under intense pressure from Kier Starmer but only in circumstances where parliament has already voted through May's deal. That is a meaningless concession. It won't stop Brexit.

I would rate his priorities as

1) Fantasy Leftist Brexit
2 ... 10) Fantasy Leftist Brexit
11) No deal Brexit to be blamed on the Tories [leading to RADICAL LABOUR GOVERNMENT]
12) May's Brexit to be blamed on the Tories
13) Second referendum won by Leave
14) Second referendum won by Remain.

I may be wrong about the order of the last two.

80: have we? I ask out of ignorance.

So I understood, but I can't find where I saw it. I should probably retract, because all I can find is versions of

Negotiations for a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the EU and India were launched in 2007 and suspended in 2013 due to a gap in the level of ambition between the EU and India.

I'm still very worried about Tata, though.

I approach Brexit with the same humility that any sane American would, but it seems to me that Labour policy could be be aiming for any of several outcomes:
-stopping Brexit
-maximizing Labour's electoral fortunes in the short term
-maximizing Labour's electoral fortunes in the long term*
-mitigating the effects of Brexit.

It has not achieved any of these, and I personally struggle to find evidence that it aims to. It's very puzzling.

*when everything goes to shit

84: The same could be said of the Tories, and largely for the same reasons. Democracy is a problem.

I, for one, look forward to submitting to our new robot overlords.

I'm hoping for giant ants.

86: Not ants! They hate me! For good reasons...

I'm willing to rat you out in exchange for partial immunity.

89: That phrase will no longer be politically correct once the giant rats are in charge.

If, if the rats are in charge.

Agree with Chris about Tata. Once we're out there is no reason to invest here rather than in real Europe.

Rafael Behr is as usual lucid and forceful today.

Corbyn's immediate reaction on hearing that Ken Livingstone had said Hitler was a Zionist was to ask "What's the problem?"; I feel a post coming on about the racism/anti-semitism of inattention. No one could have said that who had a lively sense of Jewish people as human beings, who bleed, etc. Even if (in Corbyn's case doubtful) they could be brought by argument to see that it was in fact unforgivably offensive.

It reminds me very much, if I can toot my own horn for a bit, of what I said about Shearer in the thread linked earlier. It's not just that he has unusual and (to some) offensive opinions; those opinions seem so central to his personality that he is simply incapable of shutting up about them, whatever the social pressure on him to do so.

It seems that it is really important to him to be allowed to say very rude things about Israel, Zionists, etc. That's not how sane people think. Personally I can't stand Turkish food, but if I was in charge of a political party which depended on the Turkish vote I would simply stay away from conversations about kebabs.

Try a gyro.

That would be worse. Greek, you know. That would lose me the Turkish vote forever.

95: Next thing you know, you'll be staying away from the Armenian coffee, too.

How can you not like Turkish food? Armenian food is great too.

It's probably all the same to outsiders.

I have to work late and I'm very cranky about it. This is the 3rd Thursday in a row I've stayed very late. And I'm strongly unambitious.

Is pooping in the office of the person who made you work late an option?

I guess I'm just too old. I forget how cheap and easy DNA testing is now.

You mean pooping in my own office for not getting this shit done earlier that I committed to and now have to do, but originally no one was really making me do? I probably wouldn't bother with the DNA test.

A lot of ambitious people would demand a DNA test, quietly try to make sure it never happens, and maintain a pose of innocence until the end.

I'm finally home. No excrement outside of bathrooms.

I say this as shouldn't but most days the FT is the best left wing paper in Britain. Today's splash about how the US proposes to screw our agriculture and consumer standards in any FTA is a good example.

And, going back to the earlier point about Brexit and immigration, the Mail's coverage (and comments) of the news that EU immigration is down and net immigration up is very illuminating, much as the fires of hell are.

You say that like it's ironic.

I say this as shouldn't but most days the FT is the best left wing paper in Britain.

Reality has a well-known liberal bias, as Gnoled Darb is fond of pointing out. And, yes, it's great - some of their coverage of Grenfell, for example, was really excellent and their comment pieces on the subject much more biting and effective than the equivalent elsewhere.