In his essay on the 1951 Festival of Britain, Michael Frayn drew a contrast between the carnivores and the herbivores. Carnivores were the better off: those who looked after themselves even if it meant preying on the weak. The herbivores were the gentle ruminants of the middle classes, guilty about their advantages and with eyes full of sorrow for the less fortunate.

Although founded to give a political voice to the industrial working class, the Labour party has always had its herbivore wing, and when enough white-collar workers and intellectuals have lined up alongside the party’s blue-collar contingent it has proved a winning formula. Labour’s big election victories – 1945, 1966, 1997 – were all examples of successful coalition-building.

But the marriage, never entirely comfortable, has come under increasing strain in recent years and looks like breaking down irrevocably over Brexit. The partners have not really been talking to each other, have taken to sleeping in separate beds and are now heading straight for the divorce court.

Quick Guide Peterborough byelection: constituency profile Show With one of the country’s fastest rising city populations, at almost 200,000, Peterborough ranks slightly below the UK average on many social and economic measures. Median annual pay of £27,238 is more than £2,000 lower than the national average, unemployment is 1.4 percentage points higher at 5.7% and the proportion of 16- to 64-year-olds with no qualifications is 22% greater. Life expectancy is lower and rates of premature death from cardiovascular disease are higher.

Skills are a problem. Only 12% of the city’s educational institutions were ranked as outstanding, compared with 20% across England, and the council has cut spending on children’s and young people’s services over the last five years by 55%. The council’s overall budget has fallen 14% in actual terms over that time as central government funding shrank from £55m in 2013-14 to £10m in 2019-20. Productivity is lower than the rest of the UK and more of its working age people have no formal qualifications than the national average. In the last 15 years there has been considerable migration from eastern Europe, including the Baltic states, joining longer established British Asian groups that make up almost 12% of the population, above the average of almost 8% for England. The extent of eastern European immigration is reflected in the nearly 11% of the population that identified as “other white” in the 2011 census, compared with 4.6% for England. Since the May 2019 local elections, the council has been in no overall control, but is led by the Conservatives, which retain the most seats. The last parliamentary election in 2017 was won by Labour with 48.1% of the vote, beating the incumbent Conservatives by just 607 votes. The Lib Dems were on 3.3% and the Greens on 1.8%. Ukip did not put up a candidate.

Robert Booth Sources: Resolution Foundation, Opportunity Peterborough, Peterborough City Council





Jeremy Corbyn has been doing his best in the marriage guidance counsellor role, but the limitations of his approach were illustrated in the European elections, where Labour performed poorly. The party’s share of the vote was less than half what it secured in the 2017 general election, with Labour-leaning remainers opting for the Liberal Democrats, the Greens or nationalist parties, while Labour-supporting leavers went with the Brexit party. His tactics will be further tested today in the Peterborough byelection, where Nigel Farage’s startup is expected to emerge victorious.

Corbyn has edged closer to backing a second referendum in certain circumstances, but it is clear that he still has reservations about going “full remain”. That’s not a particularly comfortable position, and it is strongly opposed by plenty of Labour members. However, it is still a defensible one.

Jeremy Corbyn canvassing in Peterborough with Labour candidate Lisa Forbes. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Labour will never form a government if its remainer and leaver wings become permanently estranged. While it is certainly true that the majority of Labour voters back remain, a significant minority voted to leave the EU. It is not enough for Labour to pile up votes in the pro-remain big cities: it needs to win marginals in the north, the Midlands and south-east as well – constituencies that voted leave in June 2016 and for the Brexit party last month. Labour’s remainers believe departure from the EU will make those who voted to leave worse off. Labour’s leavers think the remainers are subverting democracy.

In these circumstances, Labour is right to try to move on from the referendum and focus on healing the country. There has been plenty of armchair psephology since the results of the European elections, designed to show that remainers won when all their votes were added together. All that can really be said is that a second referendum would be as close as the one in 2016 and confirm that Britain is deeply riven along age, class and geographic lines. London, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, is a separate country.

It’s worth noting that Corbyn’s Euroscepticism – for which he takes a lot of stick – was widespread on the left before the referendum. There was opposition to the pro-banker austerity imposed on Ireland and Greece; to the pro-employer and anti-trade union judgments handed down by the European court of justice, and nobody was especially impressed by years of sluggish growth and high unemployment. None of this seems to be relevant any more to Labour’s hardcore remainers. To the extent that they admit to any problems, it is with the euro rather than the EU, and since Britain is not part of the single currency it can have the best of all worlds.

Even putting to one side the fact that many of today’s remainers were gung-ho for the euro in 2003, this is still a curious argument. Because if you’ve got doubts about the euro you should have doubts about Europe’s entire direction of travel. The euro is Europe’s single biggest project. It was intended to be a symbol both of progress towards ever-deeper union and the means of achieving still further integration. This is not some add-on extra, it is what Europe is all about.

Yet the design flaws that were obvious from the outset have become ever more apparent, and there’s no immediate prospect of fixing them. French president Emmanuel Macron thinks more integration – a banking union and a European finance minister – is what’s needed to make the euro work. This would mean German taxpayers writing cheques for the rest of Europe, and there is not the slightest possibility of that happening.

The 1951 Festival of Britain in London: Michael Frayn wrote that ‘the herbivores were the gentle ruminants of the middle classes, guilty about their advantages and with eyes full of sorrow for the less fortunate’. Photograph: Davis/Getty Images

The reality is that Europe has a currency that doesn’t work, an economy that doesn’t work and a political process that doesn’t work. Corbyn is often accused of being starry-eyed about the possibility of creating a socialist utopia in Britain and forever harking back to his formative years in the 1970s. But he is not nearly as starry-eyed as some of his critics, who seem to think either that an earthly paradise already exists on the other side of the Channel, or that with a few judicious tweaks there will soon be one.

On most issues, Corbyn is clear about what he supports: renationalisation, extra borrowing for public investment, higher taxes for companies and the better off. On Brexit it is different. Labour is now more a party of the gentle ruminants than a party of the industrial working class, and over Brexit the gentle ruminants are proving anything but gentle. They should, however, cut Corbyn some slack. From the Maastricht treaty onwards he has got the European Union a lot more right than they have.

• Larry Elliott is the Guardian’s economics editor