Labour forced the Government to concede as much as possible on Brexit – which wasn’t much at all

The Government conceded little yesterday, but Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit Secretary, was entitled to claim success in forcing the Government to yield as much as possible. The problem for Starmer is that he was immediately cut down by MPs on his own side – Yvette Cooper in particular – claiming that the Government concession was worthless.

What David Jones, the Brexit minister, said that was new was that Parliament would vote on the Brexit deal that the Prime Minister is going to negotiate before the European Parliament does. A Downing Street spokesperson seemed to play this down by saying that he was merely “clarifying the timetable”, but it is an important clarification.

Under Article 50, the terms under which a member state leaves the EU have to be approved by the European Parliament. So if the UK Parliament demands changes to the deal it would still be possible, in theory, for May to ask other EU leaders for those changes before the deal is signed off by the European Parliament.

As this was what Starmer was trying to force the Government to promise, he was entitled to claim victory. Jones’s promise was hardly a cast-iron guarantee of a Westminster vote. But it was good enough: “We expect and intend that this will happen before the European Parliament debates and votes on the final agreement.” .

The trouble only really started later, when Jones “clarified” the position further, by saying that the vote in the British Parliament at that stage “will be the choice between leaving the European Union with a negotiated deal or not”.

This ought to be a statement of the obvious. The other EU leaders are not going to negotiate with Theresa May thinking that she might come back for more. Whatever deal is agreed – if a deal can be agreed at all – can only be agreed as a 'take it or leave it' proposal.

So Starmer and Cooper are both right. The Government’s concession is real, but it is a procedural nicety. Fundamentally, Starmer is more right than Cooper, because he realises that the House of Commons as a body cannot negotiate with EU leaders: that has to be a job for the Government.

What is more, and you can see why he doesn’t want to say this explicitly, Labour agrees with the Government’s basic position. The Labour leadership accepts the result of the referendum. It also supports – given that we are leaving the EU – the end of free movement of people. But it wants to avoid tariff (and non-tariff) barriers to trade with the EU. If Corbyn and Starmer were leading the British negotiations, they would be seeking exactly what May and David Davis are seeking, and can only squabble about details.

Starmer’s problem is that he is too reasonable and lawyerly for the crudities of politics. On the BBC Today programme this morning he got lost in the detail. He tried to make the point, which might be interesting in a 600-word article for The Independent, that the Government had conceded that the vote in Parliament would be not just on the arrangements for British withdrawal but on its future relationship with the EU, including a transitional deal.

He could simply have said that he had forced the Government to do what Labour wanted, which was to concede a “meaningful” vote before the end of the negotiations. It doesn’t amount to much, because it cannot, given that Labour refuses to try to obstruct or delay Brexit. But in politics you have to crow about your victories when you can.