Jeremy Corbyn’s support for Brexit could be exploited by Owen Smith

I have been reading The English and Their History by Robert Tombs. One of the many wonderful things about its great sweep is the way it shows how big ideas shaped party politics in the past two centuries. It is striking that in the 19th century free trade was the conventional wisdom of all classes. The word hadn’t been invented then, but globalisation was something we British did to the rest of the world, rather than something that was done to us.

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union came too late for the book, which takes the story up to “c.2014”, but it will no doubt be the subject of a further chapter in subsequent editions. Indeed Tombs, who himself voted to leave, has already written about how the Brexit vote had roots in our – and especially in England’s – past.

One of the questions for that chapter will be whether our attempted disengagement from the EU will force a realignment of parties. Which is why the struggle between Owen Smith and Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership, which otherwise might seem like a minor affray in an opposition party that is a long, long way from power, could be significant.

One of the first things Smith did was to advocate a second referendum on EU membership. This was astute, because 90 per cent of Labour members with a vote in the leadership election voted Remain. The question of Europe is the biggest fracture between Corbyn and his supporters.

In fact the biggest cause of disappointment with Corbyn among his former supporters was his equivocal support for Remain in the referendum campaign. When he said, “Article 50 has to be invoked now,” at 7.30 on the morning after the referendum, he may have been making a loosely phrased observation rather than a demand that Brexit happen as soon as possible, but he certainly did not sound like someone who wanted to keep open the option of reversing the decision if the British people were to come to regret it.

There is, in fact, no sign that the British people do regret it, despite pious wishing to the contrary. A YouGov poll on Thursday found that 52 per cent thought the Brexit decision was the right one, and 48 per cent said it was wrong – exactly the same percentages that voted to Leave and to Remain in June.

If there are many people who Bregrexit (sorry), they are balanced by a roughly equal number of people who voted to stay in the EU but who are happy to leave. They may have been persuaded by the economic argument, but now that it is decided they are looking forward to having their dark blue passports back.

But these are early days. The economy is not even in recession yet. That will take two whole quarters. And it will take just as long to get into the deep small print of negotiating the balance between access to the single market (the free trade of our day) and control of immigration. Then people might start to have second thoughts. Even if they don’t, you can see the temptation, for a party currently exploring whether 27 per cent is the lowest its level of national support can go, of a pool of support as large as 48 per cent.

It is a temptation that has already persuaded Tim Farron and the Liberal Democrats to go for “get us back in the EU” as their pitch for the next election. Smith has calculated that his call for a second referendum could be a way not just of chipping away at Corbyn supporters’ doubts but of giving Labour a defining issue against the Tories.

There is some force to this argument. With the Bullingdon boys overthrown by the grammar-school girl and the Conservative Party making a greater than ever rhetorical pitch for the blue-collar vote, Labour’s pitch as the working-class party for those on middle and lower incomes has just become even harder. Smith might think that the party needs some of the support of those who believe access to the EU single market is in their economic interest to make up the difference. (Just as in the late 19th century the working classes believed free trade made them better off.)

Smith doesn’t look likely to beat Corbyn – this time – but the Europe question might help him to secure a big enough vote to ensure that Corbyn will be challenged again next year.

But is Smith right to try to make Labour the Remain party? Or is Corbyn right to accept Brexit as a better way of holding on to Labour’s existing voters and attracting new ones? He was asked in an interview with Huffington Post on Saturday if he felt it would be possible to reverse the result through a second referendum or general election and said: “I think we’ve had a referendum, a decision has been made, you have to respect the decision people made.”

It is interesting that two thirds of Labour MPs represent constituencies that voted Leave, according to estimates by Chris Hanretty of the University of East Anglia. But it may be more relevant that two thirds of Labour voters voted Remain, which means that putting the party behind an attempt to reverse the referendum could drive away the one third of Labour supporters who voted Leave – with no guarantee that pro-Remain Tories or Lib Dems would make up the difference.

Many Labour MPs who were ardently in favour of staying in the EU are also worried about the inroads that Ukip might make into their vote, even if the post-Farage party may seem almost as dysfunctional as their own.

The Brexit vote is one of those junctions of British history, one of those points like the Great Reform Act or the repeal of the Corn Laws when Tombs pauses to survey what has changed and what has stayed the same. Much depends on how Theresa May handles the EU negotiations. But much also depends on how Labour reacts to the deal she secures.