What goes around, comes around. Less than a year ago, the three Labour Coventry MPs had come to the city’s university to hear Gordon Brown campaign on their behalf during the general election. Not once in the course of that hour-long event was Jeremy Corbyn mentioned. The name was considered just too toxic. Now those same three Labour MPs were back at the same university to give the Labour leader their undivided attention and support as he made his bid to become the next prime minister.
Also in the front row were the shadow international trade minister, Barry Gardiner, the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey and the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer. They too must have had mixed feelings about Corbyn’s upcoming speech, though for very different reasons.
Gardiner because he had just spent months campaigning against the core argument Corbyn was about to make and was now going to look like a bit of a dick. Long-Bailey because she had never really held a firm opinion about anything – whatever Jeremy said was fine by her – and she was genuinely excited to find out what she would be believing next. And Starmer because he had spent months and months nudging the Labour leader toward this position and still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t going to back out at the last minute and deliver an entirely different speech.
After a slight misfire – he initially appeared to head in the opposite direction away from the lectern positioned in front of three miniature hydrogen cars – Corbyn quickly got into gear. He still struggles with reading from an Autocue and his attempts at jokes invariably fall flat, partly because they’re not funny and partly because he isn’t sure which bits are the punchlines. “You’re supposed to laugh at that,” he said plaintively at one point, but there was at least some commitment in this speech. Certainly more than in any other Brexit speech he had ever made.
He began by calling out the Tories for being in disarray, and keeping the country in the dark about its intentions and wanting some kind of bespoke fantasy Brexit. The irony that this also perfectly described the Labour party up till now escaped him. But then opposition parties always allow themselves a little more leeway on such matters. After a bit about Labour backing a jobs-first Brexit – has any party every backed an unemployment-first Brexit? – Corbyn got to his big sell.
Britain would be staying in a customs union. Better than that, a bespoke customs union. Though obviously a very different kind of bespoke from the Tories’ bespoke. One that would not only protect the Good Friday agreement by allowing frictionless trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but would also allow Britain to do other trade deals because the EU would be happy to let us do so.
How that was going to work, he didn’t elaborate. But he was sure it was going to be OK. Not least because it put clear blue water between Labour and the Tories and would give Theresa May a major headache. Better still, he almost sounded as if he believed in the idea that only a few months ago he had been totally against. Maybe the EU wasn’t quite as bad as he had previously thought. Especially if it was going to open the door to Number 10.
Having negotiated the tricky bit of principles versus pragmatics, Corbyn moved on to his favourite subjects. Refugees and Iraq. Not that they had anything to do with Brexit, but he had insisted he be allowed to have a short rant about them in return for all the dreary EU stuff. Here we got Corbyn at his most passionate.
After fielding a few questions from the media with vaguely non-committal answers, Corbyn took a question from an activist. Could he just hurry up and become prime minister? For the first time, Corbyn truly relaxed. He was among his people and he wandered off into the crowd to pose for selfies. Starmer meanwhile breathed a sigh of relief. Corbyn had kept to the script. Labour was back in the game. Now to work on the single market. That might prove trickier, but if Corbyn could be made to smell the furniture in Number 10 he might come round. Baby steps and all that.