Beth Rigby, political editor

Elected as the leader who was going to recast Labour as a grassroots movement, you can see why Jeremy Corbyn's fudge on a second referendum on Brexit is hard to swallow for activists.

Nearly three out of four Labour Party members want another Brexit ballot and yet the Labour leader, together with his allies on the National Executive Committee on Tuesday, shrugged off that demand.

When the EU election campaign leaflets come out next week, there will be no big offer pitching Labour as the party of Remain or a second referendum.

There will not even be a hard promise to back a confirmatory vote on any Brexit deal drawn up under this government.


Instead, Mr Corbyn's Labour will maintain a policy of backing a soft Brexit, that keeps the "option" of a public vote on the table, if Labour is unable to secure changes to the government's Brexit deal, or force a general election.

It is nowhere near what deputy leader Tom Watson and shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer were hoping for.

Image: Tom Watson walked out of a shadow cabinet meeting this week

It is miles off what the People's Vote campaign wanted - at the very least the clear promise for a confirmatory ballot on a bad Tory Brexit.

It goes against the demands of a big chunk of the parliamentary Labour Party as well as the band of MEP candidates.

There was a bit of a backlash on Tuesday night.

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One activist cut up their membership cards and posted the pictures on Twitter. A councillor told me they might refuse to campaign in the impending EU elections.

But in the main, the equivocation gave those on each side something to spin to their respective audiences.

Pro-Remain Labour MP Wes Streeting took Labour's restating of its conference position as a confirmation "a public vote will be in our manifesto for the European elections".

Glad the NEC has made the right call and confirmed that a public vote will be in our manifesto for the European elections. We’re a Party for remain and it’s right that everyone - leavers and remainers - should be given the #finalsay on our Brexit future. — Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) April 30, 2019

Gloria De Piero, who is deep into Vote Leave territory in Ashfield near Nottinghamshire, tweeted the exact opposite, insisting that the party's position was not to hold a second Brexit referendum.

Labour's manifesto for the European Parliament will not contain a pledge to hold a second Brexit referendum.

The party's ruling national executive committee agreed that another nationwide poll should only be "an option" if it cannot force a general election. — Gloria De Piero (@GloriaDePiero) April 30, 2019

That two MPs can draw such different conclusions from the leader's position is a reflection of the shameless way in which Mr Corbyn is facing both ways on Brexit.

Many in his party are furious about it, but their leader has very good reason to be Janus-faced on the matter of a second referendum.

Because the equivocation is working. He has created a situation in which his MPs in Vote Leave seats can claim Labour will deliver Brexit while those in Remain areas can point to the prospect of a public vote.

Image: The ancient Roman god Janus is depicted with two faces

MPs, MEPs, councillors, members might be fuming but the outrage isn't shared by the public who don't see the Labour Party as being pro-Brexit.

In fact, a YouGov poll on Tuesday showed that more people believe Labour is an anti-Brexit party (42%) than Change UK (38%).

As long as that holds, it's hard to see what upside Labour will gain from becoming more avowedly pro-EU. It is already winning that support.

It is also hard to see Labour Remainers quitting the party and taking up with Change UK in big numbers after the breakaway political movement - which got off to a promising start - fails to really fire up.

That two MPs can draw such different conclusions from the leader's position is a reflection of the shameless way in which Mr Corbyn is facing both ways on Brexit.

So they will stay and fight from within for as long as they believe a second referendum is on the table, however tenuously.

There are plenty in Labour who mistrust Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership team on Brexit and see this self-proclaimed democrat as an autocrat when it comes to the EU.

They believe he is a lifelong Eurosceptic who views the EU as a capitalist workers' club with a neo-liberal agenda that he cannot accept, regardless of what his members might want.

But the more benign view of Mr Corbyn's tactics is this: that he is borrowing from none other than election-winning Tony Blair's playbook and triangulating on Brexit in a bid to maximise his chances of getting into No 10.

That means sticking to a soft Brexit as a way of respecting the vote to leave the EU, while also acknowledging the legitimate economic concerns Remainers have around quitting the club.

It's a position Corbyn's team hopes will hold together a coalition of Remain and Leave voters and maximise the chance of winning a general election if the Tories implode; which is why the Labour leader is doing the sensible thing by trying to keep riding those two horses for a little longer yet.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

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