Will Brexit save Corbynism?

In the immediate aftermath of an election, its meaning is established. Once this is fixed, it is almost impossible to shift. There are plenty of such mythical explanations for defeat. Most famously, in 1959 Hugh Gaitskell and his supporters claimed Labour had lost its third election in a row because of the party’s association with nationalisation. It soon became the conventional wisdom and, on that basis, Gaitskell tried to revise his party constitution’s Clause IV, which committed it in principle to the public ownership of industry. But it wasn’t necessarily true: Labour lost for many reasons, with Gaitskell in particular having made a terrible mistake over tax policy during the campaign from which he wanted to divert attention. And for Gaitskell, Clause IV had always been a bugbear and he seized his chance to be rid of it, using defeat as an excuse.

So it is in 2019. Even before any results had been declared but just after the announcement of the exit poll, John McDonnell stated that Labour had lost