It’s hard to see anything but darkness in Theresa May’s future. She’s behind in the polls, her party is badly divided, and her job security is shaky. Her government is, by all accounts, adrift. Realistically, the only reason she remains PM today is the lack of an obviously better alternative.
Imagine now, if you will, that you’re Jeremy Corbyn. You don’t really love the EU, which you essentially view as a club of big capitalists, but circumstances have made you the leader of the battle against Brexit. What do you do?
If I were Corbyn, I would promise a second referendum on the basis that the public has much better information on which to make a decision than they had in 2017. It would split the Conservatives even further, and what does he have to lose? If he doesn’t win the election that has to be coming in the next year or so, he’ll never have to deliver on the promise. If he wins the election, and the referendum is approved, the biggest problem on his plate will disappear, and he can get on with the nationalizations and the other stuff that really interests him. If he wins the election and the referendum fails, the country won’t be much worse off than it is today, and he can just accept the will of the voters and move on.