Corbyn is right. Labour must force a general election to unite Leavers and Remainers against austerity

Brexit is not a crisis of Jeremy Corbyn’s making. It was David Cameron who called the referendum; the aftermath of which has brought political chaos to the country. And it is him who is relaxing in his countryside manor as the nation tears itself apart. Yet many progressive Remainers believe that it should be down to Corbyn’s Labour to block the Brexit that Cameron’s overreaching hubris created.

But Corbyn has always valued the democratic voice of ordinary people, and was therefore right to have accepted the result of the referendum after 52 per cent of the country voted Leave, including at least 35 per cent of Labour voters. But Labour’s strategy has never been to give the Tories a free-hand when it comes to Brexit.

Labour was right to prioritise protecting employment and environmental rights when considering any Tory Brexit deal that was put on the table. And when May’s deal offered no such protections, Labour was also right to have opposed May’s deal all three times it was brought to parliament. Labour’s soft Brexit plan was clearly a sensible compromise between Leavers and Remainers – while the Tories ignored the 48 per cent completely.

But there is clearly no denying that the EU election results were a blow for Labour, with many Labour-supporting Remain voters going to the Lib Dems and Greens, and Leave voters moving to the Brexit Party. However we should be cautious about extrapolating too heavily about what this means for Labour in a general election.

After all, Ukip won the largest majority in the 2014 EU elections, but not a single seat in the general election just a year later. In the 1999 EU elections, while the Conservative Party doubled its vote and Blair’s Labour lost almost half its MEPs, just two years later the Labour Party achieved another landslide election victory.

EU elections have always been seen as a protest vote, and there is no greater protest issue for voters in the UK today than Brexit. But the important question facing Labour now is how does it ensure that Labour voters, on both sides of the Brexit divide, continue to believe that Labour is the party that best represents their interests?

There is clearly no simple answer to what Labour should do over Brexit. But perhaps the answer can be found in the one thing that unites Labour voters, both Leave and Remain: their opposition to this Tory government and all the damage it has caused.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies’ recent Deaton review spoke of how the inequality that has deepened as a result of a decade of Tory austerity has made a “mockery of democracy”. Britain has been hollowed out, and people know it. Those who have suffered the ravaging blows of this economic and political crisis, or who work on the frontlines and see it for themselves, deserve to express their despair in the only way that can help to solve both our political malaise and the country’s economic misery: a general election. A vote on Brexit alone isn’t good enough.

John McDonnell is of course right to say that in their current state, the Tories are unlikely to vote for one in parliament. But this has been the case for the last three years, and McDonnell would do well to remember that a general election will not be willed into existence solely by politicians in the corridors of Westminster.

Instead, Corbyn should draw on his extensive experience of protest and call for mass mobilisations across the country to demand a general election. This is where Corbyn’s strengths lie – and he should utilise them.

Similarly, Labour should be actively mobilising millions for the protests against Trump’s state visit next week, highlighting the Conservative government’s complicity in his presidency in the process. Labour must also encourage trade unions to support the call for an all-out general strike this September in solidarity with the inspiring student climate strikers as well.

We must not have our actions dictated to us by the stifling “political arithmetic” of Westminster. The left should instead force the issue by demanding a general election and a vote for Labour as the only way to stop a Boris Johnson-led no-deal Brexit being inflicted on the country. A Labour Party manifesto in this context may well include a second referendum with an option to remain, in order to stop Johnson and his cabal of hard Brexiters. But even then, the Labour Party would not solely be the party of Remain, or the party of Leave either.

Corbyn’s leadership has consistently shown that Labour will be the party of nurses, carers and teachers like me. It will be the party of call centre workers, Deliveroo drivers and Amazon factory pickers. It will be the party of those who no longer want to work 60 hours a week and pay half their salary in rent to unscrupulous landlords. It must become the party of migrants, refugees and all those fleeing persecution.

Corbyn’s Labour is the only force that can challenge Britain’s rampant inequality, the existential threat of climate change and the demise of our crumbling social welfare system. The Labour Party leader correctly understands these tasks are equal to, if not greater than, navigating our way out of this Tory Brexit mess. A short-sighted focus on Brexit as a political process will do nothing to resolve the injustices at the heart of British society, many of which underpinned the referendum result. Corbyn is in fact our only hope – we’ll need him as prime minister if we have any chance of plotting a route through the misery of austerity and the mayhem of Brexit.