If Jeremy Corbyn wants to be prime minister, the biggest battle he’ll have to face is with himself

Other than a cushy open prison for the criminally incompetent and an overpriced care home for the certifiably egomaniacal, God alone knows what British politics is right now.

But we know what it’s not. It isn’t simple. On a dating site, it would skip “it’s complicated” and search for the box headed: “it’s mind-blowingly confused”.

With no certainties and few likelihoods, anyone who claims to see the future is a rampant genius or a deluded fool. And there aren’t a lot of the former about.

So to write off Jeremy Corbyn, as many are doing with relish, is as much an act of misplaced conceit as wishful thinking.

Dunces like me did that when Theresa May called her election. Two years on, some of us haven’t learned caution and humility from such a colossal misjudgement.

But in so far as you can predict anything, it’s this: Corbyn has a few weeks to decide if he seriously wants to be prime minister. If he does, he will finally yield to the pressure, and move to unequivocally endorsing a second referendum. If not, he will stay wherever he is, at grave risk of snatching defeat from halfway down the digestive tract of victory.

But where precisely is he? Apart from the odd photo-op run in the park to deride those mischievous claims of frailty, the meme of the day finds him in a bunker. There, apparently, he is closely guarded round the clock by advisers every bit as obsessed with leaving the EU, on any terms or none, as the craziest crazies of the European Research Group.

Two of them, chief strategist Seumas Milne and chief of staff (or “gatekeeper”) Karie Murphy, are about to star on in a Panorama film on BBC One alleging the Labour leader’s office interfered in inquiries into antisemitism.

The leadership’s initial response has been mixed. Threatening whistleblowers with legal action for breaching non-disclosure agreements is never a good look, let alone for a party supposedly committed to transparency.

Hiring the law firm of Carter-Ruck, fabled for the aggressive use of libel law to stifle free reporting, and repeatedly hired by the Church of Scientology, is uglier still.

The counterattack against the BBC for anti-Labour bias, on the other hand, is sound. The corporation’s leanings are unmistakable, with known Conservatives occupying key news and current affairs positions which in a billion light years would never go to Labour sympathisers.

Andrew Neil may be the most effective political interviewer of the age, for example, but it is belief-beggaringly scandalous that a state broadcaster with a duty to be and appear to be impartial employs a Eurosceptical onetime Murdoch editor.

Labour is absolutely right to point out that the BBC has shown no interest in the recent polling findings that almost half of Tory members have racist and/or Islamaphobic views.

But the BBC’s systemic bias, however blatant, is as much an electoral side issue as antisemitism.

As if it needs stating, the true threat to Labour’s chances – and it’s even money about Johnson going to the country in the autumn – comes from you-know-what.

In a way, you have to admire Corbyn’s intransigence. It’s rank hypocrisy to regret the absence of front-rank politicians with unbreakable principles, and then whine about it when one refuses to bend on his.

Using advisers as lightning rods is invariably a mistake. If Corbyn declines to shift on Brexit, it isn’t because Milne, Murphy or anyone else is controlling him. It’s because he doesn’t wish to.

Being no more a complete imbecile than too frail for office, he appreciates that about 80 per cent of his (reportedly shrinking) membership craves a second referendum.

He’s seen the recent polls that show Labour drastically reduced to 18-25 per cent. He recalls the fiasco of the European elections. He knows his aversion to a second referendum has resurrected the Liberal Democrats.

He must understand that Labour cannot win a majority, or come close, with the same old-same old tactic of deliberate opacity that paid off last time, but is anathema to its natural supporters now.

The week ahead will be dominated by reports of shadow cabinet civil warfare, and speculation that serial assassin Tom Watson is about to launch another of his popular coups.

But with Corbyn’s grip on the party machine and the strong possibility of a snap election meaning he cannot be removed now, the only relevant battle is the one in his own head.

If he is tempted to quit, this would be the ideal time. He would leave a hero – the Moses who freed his people from the bondage of Blairite orthodoxy, reconnected Labour with the values it had mislaid, and bequeathed a real shot of leading it to the promised land to whichever Joshua succeeded him.

If he wants to stay, as it seems, he has less than a month before Johnson’s arrival in No 10 to ponder the choice, between dogma and compromise, that may be the most significant factor in deciding how long he stays there.

The law of unintended consequences is a brutal force in politics. Ralph Nader, another politician with unflinching principles, represented the Greens in the 2000 US presidential election to save the planet. His votes cost Al Gore, a Nobel Laureate for his environmental work, the White House.

After almost half a century in politics fighting the entrenchment of racism, corporate greed, privilege and poverty, Corbyn is on the verge of entrenching Boris Johnson – constantly embroiled in debates about racist comments, corporate shill, and son of privilege to whom poverty is somebody else’s problem – in power.

If so, that will be his choice. Advisers advise, as someone brought down by stubbornness once nearly said, and wannabe prime ministers decide. The decision cannot be postponed much longer.