Opposition politicians and commentators who point out that the public are alert to Johnson’s many character flaws seem to underestimate the allure of ending, once and for all, a negotiation that Britons – Leavers and Remainers alike – find mortifying. A hard-Brexit manifesto would help Johnson destroy the upstart Brexit party and reunite the Leave constituency for the first time since its June 2016 referendum victory.

Meanwhile, Remainers remain deeply divided not only between the Liberal Democrats and Labour, but also between UK-wide and Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties. Seldom before has a new prime minister, who took over a disordered government and a divided party, had such a clear path to potential dominance.

Despite opinion polls suggesting a Liberal Democrat revival, courtesy of their unambiguous pro-Remain stance, the only impediment to Boris Johnson’s bid for dominance is Corbyn’s Labour Party. Ardent Remainers have lambasted Corbyn for refusing to turn Labour into the electoral wing of the campaign to reverse Brexit. They cite his criticism of the EU’s inbuilt pro-austerity, oligarchic bias as evidence he was never serious when, in June 2016, he campaigned to remain in the EU while committing to reform the bloc.

But Corbyn was right to be nuanced in his support of Remain. It was not Vladimir Putin, Facebook, or the Leave campaign’s blatant lies that put Brexit over the top. And it was not the critical stance on the hustings of those of us (including DiEM25) who, like Corbyn, campaigned along the lines of: “In the EU. Against this EU!”

Civil war-like atmosphere

No, the best ally of the Leave campaign were establishment figures, from Tony Blair to Christine Lagarde. They oscillated between Project Fear (warning of post-Brexit Armageddon) and a rosy depiction of the EU that whitewashed its anti-democratic decision-making, its misanthropic handling of the euro crisis and its readiness to sign trade agreements with the United States that usurped parliaments and threatened some of the EU’s greatest achievements.

Since the 2016 referendum, a civil war-like atmosphere has made it increasingly impossible for Leavers and Remainers to hold a civilised conversation. Corbyn valiantly tried to keep Labour’s Leavers and Remainers together by seeking an honourable compromise: The UK would formally leave the EU, to respect the referendum’s outcome, while remaining in as many of the bloc’s structures as possible – including a customs union. Instead of applauding Corbyn for this tricky balancing act, his opponents within the Labour Party, together with a liberal establishment unprincipled enough to deliver all Leavers to Nigel Farage and Johnson, attacked him with extraordinary viciousness.

But that was then and this is now. With Johnson as prime minister, and his strategy crystal clear, Corbyn’s task is to expose the truth about Johnson’s no-deal Brexit – namely, that it means a Trump-deal Brexit – and put forward Labour’s plan to end the interminable Brexit ordeal immediately.


Corbyn must first show voters that a Johnson government will turn the UK into a vassal state of a Trumpian US and of the multinationals eager to usurp the country’s cherished institutions (especially the National Health Service). Johnson will bind the UK to a global alliance of populist/nationalist regimes and destroy Britain’s chances to lead Europe and the world with a Green New Deal that overhauls a failed UK business model based on low taxes, low wages, low investment, zero-hour contracts and unregulated finance.

Corbyn’s second task is to offer an alternative for ending the humiliation of the ongoing negotiations. That means committing to revoke Article 50 to allow a Labour government time to implement a green-investment, anti-austerity policy agenda in tune with the party’s progressive internationalism, while simultaneously organising a Citizens’ Deliberative Assembly to formulate the question(s) to be put to voters in a second Brexit referendum.

A general election fought over these two unequivocal alternatives, Johnson’s and Corbyn’s, would empower the UK’s people, at last, to determine their country’s future.

Yanis Varoufakis is a former finance minister of Greece and professor of economics at the University of Athens.

Project Syndicate