To be a Brexit pragmatist has become an increasingly dispiriting and lonely experience. The middle ground on Brexit has been systematically torched from both ends. To desire a compromise was, in the aftermath of the referendum, a position shared by a large majority. During the horrorshow that was the referendum campaign, the likes of Nigel Farage hyped up Norway – which is a member of the single market – as a shining example of how Britain could thrive outside the EU. Two years ago, polling suggested that a very narrow majority of remain voters believed that “now the British people have voted to leave the government has a duty to carry out their wishes and leave”. There is a historical revisionism fashionable among some, which claims that Labour’s 2017 surge was down to remainers lending their votes, rather than the party’s radical prospectus; but as polling found after the election, just 8% of Labour voters named Brexit as the most important issue behind their vote.

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In large part because of the Tories’ calamitous handling of Brexit, both leavers and remainers have polarised. No deal – which was never offered as a serious proposition in the referendum campaign – is increasingly held to be the only true Brexit by leave voters. “Stop Brexit or bust” has become the default position among growing numbers of remain voters. A “soft Brexit” is no longer regarded as real Brexit by most leave voters, but is regarded as full-blown Brexit by most remain voters.

Compromise has become toxic: surely the diminishing number of us advocating it are only motivated by partisan loyalty to Labour, rather than genuine conviction, or so the narrative has been spun. So let me make the case for it one last time as its funeral rites are read, with few mourners bowing their head to mark its final passing. “You champion the middle ground here, but attack it elsewhere!”, has been the obvious retort. But we all have our red lines in politics: things we are willing to compromise on, and other things we are not. For a socialist like myself (who also voted remain), replacing a broken economic and social order is a red line in a way that EU membership simply isn’t. Was accepting that we lost a referendum, but that because the loss was narrow we should leave with the closest possible relationship with the EU, really that unreasonable? Was wanting to unite people based on their shared interests – such as living standards, public services, housing – rather than how they voted in a referendum three years ago really that outrageous? Was trying to defuse an ever-escalating culture war, and seeking to avoid another referendum that risks being even more poisonous and bitter than the last, and in which leave has every chance of winning all over again, really so unprincipled? Is seeking to build a winning electoral coalition that straddles the divide on the EU – when the left for so long has been accused of putting principle ahead of power – really so morally bankrupt?

If Labour had previously passionately backed a second referendum, Theresa May would have got her deal through and we would now be out of the EU. If it had been Labour’s position in the general election, the Tories would have secured the increased majority they craved. If Labour had shifted after that result, May’s desperate claims that Labour was seeking to overturn the result – and that therefore voting against her deal risked no Brexit at all – would have resonated with her otherwise recalcitrant hard Brexiteer faction, and they’d have voted accordingly. Demands for the scalps of Jeremy Corbyn’s top team – such as his chief of staff, Karie Murphy, and director of strategy, Seumas Milne, formerly of this parish – are therefore entirely wrongheaded.

Yes, drawing sweeping conclusions from an election in which 63.3% of eligible voters didn’t take part is problematic. Here was a temperature test where you can express where you’re at on Brexit: I’ve met numerous voters who opted for the Greens or Lib Dems purely to send a message, but would instantly return to the Labour fold in a general election. Equally, in Labour strongholds such as Wigan, Labour suffered huge losses to the Brexit party. Those looking at results in which hard Brexit parties – in which you must include the Conservatives – won 44% of the vote (and that’s without including Labour voters who desire a rupture with the EU) and thinking a second referendum is there for remain to easily triumph are deluding themselves. The Lib Dems have nothing to say that resonates other than Brexit: their surge in support is profoundly shallow. Labour invariably fares terribly in European elections – William Hague’s Tories battered Tony Blair’s Labour with a seven-point lead in 1999, two years before suffering another landslide defeat in a general election, and in 2004 Labour secured less than 22%. If confronted by a no-deal Boris Johnson-led Tory party, wouldn’t remainers suck it up and flock back to Labour?

And yet, and yet. Labour’s triangulation on Brexit may have solid foundations, but triangulation on what – depressingly – dominates all other issues inevitably saps the energy from an insurgent political project. While “stop Brexit” and “no deal” are simple and easily digestible messages, Labour suffers from a problem once aptly diagnosed by Ronald Reagan: “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Brexit has increasingly reduced Labour’s leaders from fighters against the system to the status of “just like other politicians”. Morale among the party’s activists has been sapped. Relying on increasingly angry remainers to plump for Labour – regardless of what the alternative is – can no longer be depended on. In any case, after the Tories’ utterly catastrophic showing, any new Conservative leader who risked a general election has detached themselves from reality. A no-deal Brexit may beckon under Johnson or Dominic Raab.

In a sense, Labour already does back a second referendum. It whipped its MPs to back one in parliament, not once, but twice: there simply isn’t a majority for one. If there was an election this year, Labour would put a confirmatory referendum with the option of remain in its manifesto, and on The Andrew Marr Show last week, Corbyn himself publicly more or less said the party would back a public vote on any deal. It’s just not painting this message in primary colours: it’s hoping that remainers and leavers hear messages on different frequencies. But many remain voters – understandably angry about the turmoil their country has been plunged into – want the message spelled out loudly and with gusto.

And so it does seem that publicly backing a second referendum becomes unavoidable. If I sound depressed, then my heartfelt emotion is showing: what I’d give to never live through another referendum campaign. Neither do I write these words with the fullest of confidence: anyone expressing certainty over Brexit is either naive or a con artist. Labour should offer a free vote to its frontbench team – as Harold Wilson did in 1975 – and thereby allow some shadow ministers to campaign for leave. It should combine its declaration with a reinvigorated, bold transformative agenda. It should say it did everything it could to make the referendum result work, but the Tories have utterly bungled it. It should link its commitment to a full democratisation of the Labour party. But Corbyn himself will have to lead this charge: the post-results messages coming from Labour are merely sowing confusion.

A plea to dogged people’s vote supporters. Sideline those voices who, by virtue of their establishment credentials, or their utter contempt for those who voted leave, achieve nothing but boosting Farage; and those who use Brexit, above all else, as a wedge issue to attack the Labour leadership. Another referendum can’t be a rerun of the first. If your wish is granted, you may well come to regret it. There are no good options here. But if a second referendum is the only way out of the current turmoil, and as a means to eject a Tory party that has brought only ruin from power, then needs must.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist