Labour is no longer ‘for the many’

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech today in which he confirmed that a Labour government would keep Britain in a Customs Union with the EU was about so much more than trade. It was about the future of the Labour party itself. It sent a clear message about what, and more importantly who, Labour is for these days. It confirmed that Labour has finally made its choice between which of its two, quite conflictual support bases it will represent in public life: the better-off ones, the middle-class ones, the Southern ones.

This is what Labour’s cosying up to the idea of a Customs Union — which is a betrayal of Brexit, whatever Labourites say to the contrary — really tells us. That Labour has decided to veer away from its working-class backers in the old industrial heartlands, who tend to be Brexiteers, and instead to do the bidding of its better-educated, better-connected supporters in the South and other plush parts of Britain, who tend to be Remainers.