by Atul Hatwal

If one thing in modern politics can be guaranteed, it is that Labour will find a way to form a circular firing squad, whatever the situation.

That’s the only way to describe the last minute intervention of Labour’s old right with Ed Balls, Tom Watson, Tristram Hunt, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper, running a freelance campaignlet, within the overall Remain campaign, raising the prospect of ending EU free movement while remaining in the EU.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the policy, to intervene like this at such a late stage betrays an utterly incredible level of political incompetence.

Four points are salient.

First, it was never going to cut through.

In the words of Lynton Crosby you can’t fatten a pig on market day.

To introduce an entirely new policy, at odds with Remain’s focus on the economy is campaign idiocy that confuses the message at a critical juncture.

Second, the story was always going to be concussively knocked down.

It may not have dawned on this group, but in the modern world of communications there is a thing called the telephone.

A few calls by journalists to the relevant media contacts in the French foreign office, the German foreign office and EU Commission, brought an inevitable rubbishing of the Labour right’s plan.

Even given the deluded logic of those that flew this kite, the public and categoric response of our EU partners was going to make Labour’s politicians look impotent at best, incompetent liars at worst.

Third, the legacy story was always going to be about Labour splits.

It was obvious that Jeremy Corbyn was going to defend freedom of movement. He’s spent decades doing it.

It was obvious Hilary Benn wasn’t going to sign up to a change in party policy of such magnitude on the spur of the moment.

It was obvious that Alan Johnson, leader of Labour’s IN campaign wasn’t going to suddenly switch strategies and cut across everything he had been doing.

How could the story be about anything but Labour splits?

Fourth, this little operation obscured Jeremy Corbyn’s most effective and full-throated endorsement of the EU.

Here’s what he said yesterday,

“Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are wolves in sheep’s clothing, using their fake concern for the NHS to mask their real agenda. If you care about the NHS, as I do, as Labour does, as NHS staff do, then vote Remain. The risk to the NHS if we vote Leave is the damage to public finances caused by a hit to our economy, and the risk to our NHS by a victory for those who would scrap a universal NHS – free at the point of use.”

But the lead item on the news reports was about freedom of movement.

After so many calls for Jeremy Corbyn to engage in the campaign properly, the old right chose the moment Corbyn actually made a useful intervention as the time to blunder in. Brilliant.

The net result of this quixotic episode was to demonstrate that Labour could not be trusted at the controls of the EU referendum campaign, which is why George Osborne came crashing in with his Brexit budget story.

Now, 24 hours since Ed Balls et al made their move, it already feels like a peculiar footnote in this campaign.

However, the epic lack of judgement demonstrated in this manoeuvre raises questions that will last beyond June 23rd.

These are meant to be the sensible Labour politicians.

The ones who will be there to pick up the pieces after the Corbyn experiment collapses in on itself.

Given their demonstration of their competence over the past twenty four hours, if the right actually tried to pick up a shattered fragment, they’d most likely slip, bang their head, cut themselves on said shard and require urgent medical attention.

In the very early days of New Labour, during the mid-90s, the first generation of Blairites viewed the old right with varying degrees of professional contempt.

Part of this was because the old right was at odds with New Labour’s social liberalism on women’s issues, LGBT rights and race.

In part though it was because many of the old right had helped preside over the descent of the party into madness in the 1970s, trodden water in the 1980s and then hankered after some form of proto-Callaghanite restoration in the 1990s.

One wonders how the generation of politicians that do ultimately take Labour back to power, years from now, will regard the scions of Gordon Brown, these lieutenants of Ed Miliband, this latest manifestation of Labour’s traditional right.

Atul Hatwal is editor of Uncut

Tags: Atul Hatwal, EU referendum, freedom of movement, immigration, incompetence, old right, Tom Watson, Tristram Hunt