Jeremy Corbyn won’t be forced to campaign for a second referendum

A concerted attempt by Labour MPs and MEPs to engineer that their party would campaign unambiguously for a ‘confirmatory’ Brexit referendum in the EU elections looks set to flop.

Instead Jeremy Corbyn’s preferred position of characterising a new public vote only as an option is likely to prevail, because he seems to have retained the backing of most of the leaders of the big trade unions.

The decision on how strongly to push for a referendum, and how Labour’s position on it should be worded in its manifesto, will be taken at a crunch emergency meeting of the party’s ruling NEC on Tuesday.

I am told by senior party sources that in talks last Tuesday with the leaders of the so-called five big trade unions – Unison, Unite, the GMB, Usdaw and the CWU – only the GMB signalled a strong preference for a confirmatory referendum to be upgraded from an option to a clear policy preference.