I still see no obvious political route to such a referendum, especially since Labour is still split, but it would make an excellent proposal, nice and clear, an easy binary option, with the EC making it clear that no deal would be a disaster (supported by most liberal media of course, and maybe most politicians and business folk).
R Behr of the Graun summarises the issues for Labour:
Jeremy Corbyn’s attitude towards Brexit is not mysterious. He was a critic of the EU before the referendum, declared himself a tepid supporter of membership during the campaign and showed not a flicker of sorrow at the result....Some of Corbyn’s oldest allies then made it clear that a plebiscite should exclude the option of remaining in the EU on current terms. [They include] Len McCluskey, the leader of the Unite union, and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor...Much of Labour’s difficulty flows from the problem of appealing both to the current, pro-EU supporter base and a different, target electorate in constituencies that voted leave...There is a noxious hauteur in telling people the thing they wanted is not what they really needed....
Behr says that Corbyn and his allies are acting out an old agenda where major institutions developed to consolidate capitalist hegemony like the World Bank -- and the EU belongs in there. For the new generation,however, it is a different agenda: 'For many Labour people, Brexit was one of twin traumas in 2016, the other being Donald Trump’s election The most effective insurgency against the European status quo today is racist and nationalistic'
This is a good analysis. If only someone would deepen it and debate which of the two agendas is the most liberating, even whether the first explains the second. No chance of the Grudina doing this of course, and Behr has to bang on and on. For him, this makes for some symmetry between Old Left and New Right. Both might oppose the EU, but so do lots of people. There is something deeper:
there is between them a cultural affinity [ah yes -- that old weasel] in the romantic fantasy of creative destruction; a similar quickening of the pulse at the prospect of the old order crumbling. Tory Brexit-pushers and Labour Brexit-enablers both have an ear for the music of breaking glass and a shared secret: their plans require things to get worse for most people before anything would get better.
Deepening his own panic,Behr adds:
But there is also a looming scenario in which the UK crashes out of the EU, causing chaos and misery, for which the Tories get all the blame. Labour then scoops up the votes of the immiserated. It isn’t a position that anyone around Corbyn will express out loud because it sounds brutal and cynical: no one will trumpet a plan of complicity with Conservative no-deal maniacs to engineer a crisis in the hope of capitalising on public pain.
Sounds a good plan to me. Meanwhile, May has apparently urged her Cabinet colleagues not to panic but to keep their nerve.
Business itself seems ready to take whatever opportunities it can. In a typical move, the Gurdiuan quotes the CEO of Next with suitable ambivalence. The headline says :
Next warns over Brexit risks as it reports strong summer sales
But the subhead says :
Retailer’s shares rise by more than 8% as it says it is well prepared for no-deal EU exit
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