The most important statement by Jeremy Corbyn in today’s Sunday Mirror interview is not that Labour’s leader will embrace a so-called People’s Vote if that were what Labour’s conference backs this week. It is that Labour is “not happy” with the PM’s Chequers Brexit plan “and we would vote against it”.
This is Labour’s strongest and least ambiguous attack on Chequers. And – as if that were needed – it underwrites the view of many Tory MPs and ministers that the PM’s attempt to sell Chequers to Brussels is even more fatuous than dead-horse flogging, given that some 50 odd True Brexit Conservative backbenchers are adamant that they would vote against it.
Which raises the stakes again for tomorrow’s cabinet meeting – at which the PM faces a hugely difficult decision whether to buckle to the Brexiter pressure and shift from Chequers to the more orthodox free trade proposal wanted by her erstwhile Brexit secretary Davis and former foreign secretary Johnson (both of whom will support an Institute of Economic Affairs iteration of the Canada-style free trade deal at lunchtime tomorrow).
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