I am writing this as Members of Parliament are gathered in Westminster, on the first Saturday since the Falklands conflict of 1982, for yet another “make or break” day of reckoning on Brexit. MPs have just voted narrowly to pass Oliver Letwin’s amendment, delaying a decision on Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and compelling him to request an extension of Article 50.
I’m a Labour man who voted wholeheartedly for Remain in 2016, but unlike many of my relatives and friends I’m not on the People’s Vote march today. If I was a Labour MP I might even cross my fingers, pinch my nose, and vote for Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
Why? Media coverage of Brexit tends to assume that the British electorate fall into three categories: ardent Remainers, ardent Leavers, and “repentant Leavers” who are now persuaded that the UK should stay in the EU, or at least that there should be a second referendum. But there is also a sizeable fourth category, whose views are rarely aired: those who voted remain, often for purely pragmatic reasons, but who now think the least worst option is an orderly Brexit, with a deal. Living in the east Midlands I come across people like these quite frequently, but although polling is beginning to identify them their voices are seldom heard in the media.
It is in this fourth category that I now find myself. I have never had any sympathy with ‘Lexiteers’, with their hackneyed prejudices against the EU for being a neo-liberal ‘bosses club’. Membership of the EU has been unquestionably good for Britain, and I deplore the little-England xenophobia, and in some cases outright racism, of the right-wing Brexiteers. In an ideal world, I wish that no referendum on EU membership had taken place in the first place. There was, after all, no groundswell of public demand for one prior to 2016. David Cameron only called a referendum to appease UKIP and the Eurosceptic right of the Tory party. A stronger leader would have resisted their pressure. Continue reading
News that the redeveloped London Bridge station 
Brexit, and the ongoing Conservative leadership contest, dominate. Other stories rarely get a hearing. The fact that despite her imminent resignation as Prime Minister, 
Holocaust denial at Labour party meetings. Jewish members being called “dirty Zionists”, or worse. Party staffers being made to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements to stop them speaking out against the lack of action against the culprits. Interventions by Jeremy Corbyn’s office, and the party’s general secretary Jennie Formby, to change the composition of disciplinary panels, apparently to thwart them from expelling those found to have been anti-semitic. The appointment of Thomas Gardiner as head of the party’s disputes unit, who downgraded sanctions against several anti-semites from expulsions to suspension, or from suspensions to warnings. 
Away from the noise of Brexit, Labour – and the British Left in general – is buzzing with new economic ideas more loudly than it has for decades. Moving the privatised utilities to a new form of mutual nationalisation is now Labour policy. So is a new Financial Transaction Tax. Universal Basic Income is entering the political mainstream. 
I’ve been following the Conservative leadership race with uncommon interest: I knew Rory Stewart quite well about 25 years ago. We were students a year apart at Balliol College, Oxford, in the early 1990s, and though we moved in different circles and were never friends, his idiosyncratic social status as a student may provide clues about 
