The Exact Opposite

"Yes, I could," Sir Paul Kenny replied when asked on The World at One whether he could imagine the GMB's campaigning for withdrawal from the EU.

Angela Eagle on Newsnight has also just refused to rule out the possibility that that will be the Labour Party's line.

Notice that opposition to the EU is now "Loony Left" again, since the media are once again being forced to pay attention to the historically consistent, and the factually based, version of that position.

Of course Labour and the unions are going to campaign for a No vote to any deal that David Cameron might reasonably bring back. Jeremy Corbyn is deliberately setting out the exact opposite of what that deal is bound to be.

What the exact opposite of that is instead presented to the all-but-unanimous applause of the Conservative Party and its Press, then it will be rejected all-but-unanimously by a Special Conference of the Labour Party, and with absolute unanimity by a Special Congress of the TUC.

But the only option on the ballot paper would be withdrawal from the EU. So that would be that. Thus would the serious Out campaign begin, in the organisational form of the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Against the In campaign, in the organisational form of the Conservative Party and its Press.

For such are the two sides of British politics: Blairite and Bennite, pro-EU and anti-EU, David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn. There is no Third Way.