This is excellent (as usual) from @sjwrenlewis and touches on a trap Labour are in danger of falling into. Thread. Labour figures keep saying that the election of a Corbyn government will "resolve" Brexit. I am unpersuaded this is true.
mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/09/would-… 1/9
mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/09/would-… 1/9
If a Labour government is elected and strikes an exit deal with the EU, Labour will at the point take ownership of Brexit. Currently, Brexit is a Tory mess through and through. If Labour agrees to implement it, then it agrees to accept responsibility for its implementation. 2/9
There is no good Brexit. The choice between soft & hard is a choice of whether the damage is principally political or economic. I assume, as does @sjwrenlewis, that Labour would head for a soft Brexit. It will therefore own the political damage. 3/9
All future unpopular EU directives (whether real or imagined) imposed on the UK, now with no EU Council or Parliament vote or opt-out, will be the consequence of "Labour's botched Brexit". Rule-taker Britain. Britain: the EU's bitch. Britain humbled. EUnuch Britain. 4/9
It doesn't matter whether or not that's a fair description of the EEA+CU-like arrangement we'd likely end up with. That will be the popular narrative. All the benefits of Brexit* will have been thrown away, for a humiliating half-Brexit. (*No, I don't believe in them either.) 5/9
Meanwhile the Tories will rapidly re-unite, from Soubry to Mogg, around the proposition "We may have disagreed over Brexit, but we can all agree that Labour have made the most appalling mess of it". 6/9
This will, of course, be extraordinarily unfair. Labour may well make the best of a bad job. But it will be Labour's bad job, and the proper cake-filled Tory Brexit we might have had will live on the national imagination. ("Even Chequers would have been better than this".) 7/9
But - while it will be extraordinarily unfair - you will not find me speaking out in Labour's defence. Because they have the chance - right now - to avoid the whole situation. If they choose not to do so, then they choose to accept the consequences. 8/9
TL;DR: Brexit will eat its parents. So Labour should think very carefully before filing adoption papers. 9/9
