Like football, politics is a game of space and movement. Whoever controls the space has room to move. As matters stand, the Conservative party has ceded control to Labour. The Tories, consumed by Brexit, have opened the door to the very thing they fear most: a ‘socialism for the 21st century’, as Jeremy Corbyn put it in his conference speech this afternoon. The laws of unintended consequence are sardonic statutes, right enough.
Who knows, if, at some point, Corbyn forms a government and if he then implements the agenda he hinted at today (an agenda better hinted at than stated openly, it is true) then perhaps, just perhaps, some Tories will look back on Brexit and wonder if it was really such a good idea; if it was really worth it.
Some, of course, will. The true believers perceive no possible downside to Brexit. For them it is both national liberation and national reclamation.
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