In refusing to come out for a confirmatory referendum as the primary aim of Brexit policy, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies – Len McCluskey, Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, and Andrew Murray – have signalled they would not want to turn their backs on Labour’s traditional working class voters, many of whom are Brexiters and do not wish Labour to become the party of the lefty London middle classes.
So it’s a bit confusing that Labour’s leader has chosen not only to boycott the state banquet for Donald Trump tonight, but tomorrow Corbyn will be the most important speaker at the anti-Trump rally. Because in being the figurehead for the anti-Trump movement, Corbyn is playing explicitly to the metropolitan middle class gallery.
Even if Labour’s working-class voters don’t love Trump, they have traditionally been pro-America. In fact, it’s possible to see traditional Labour voters’ preference for the UK to maintain strong bonds with America as the flip side of their mistrust of the EU – with these North Atlantic leanings, in part, a legacy of WWII.
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