1) Is Jeremy Corbyn slowly softening the path to Labour backing a second referendum? He's obviously under great internal pressure to do so from membership, unions, and quite a lot of his Parli party. Theresa May asked him to rule it out today at PMQs and he dodged the question.
2) Second time she asked him, he used a curious formulation saying "A majority of people might have voted to leave but they expected the negotiations to be handled competently, and they certainly are not". Didn't sound like a clear answer.
hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-0…
hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-0…
3) Is it too cynical to wonder if Labour will eventually back a second referendum at a point when they know it could not really be delivered before the exit date? That way they know that Brexit will be delivered but can show to their members they are pushing for something softer?
4) It's very high risk though as Labour could easily alienate a lot of voters in the process. So far Labour have avoided doing anything which really allows them to be accused of directly betraying Brexit. But they want to be able to be seen as soft to one side and hard to other
5/5) So perhaps it's most likely that Labour will continue to dance on a Brexit tightrope with lots of fantasy fudge policies - demanding a Brexit which delivers the "exact same benefits", a customs union with control over trade policy and so on.
