Paul Mason writes:

[T]he officials who designed this fiasco, and ignored all evidence that it would lead to disaster, must be removed from positions of influence.

They include Seumas Milne, director of strategy, and Karie Murphy, who is currently juggling the roles of Corbyn’s chief of staff and acting general secretary. With an electoral fiasco like this, the buck has to stop somewhere, and it must stop with them – together with Ian Lavery MP, the party chair, who twice broke the whip to oppose the second referendum.

But Labour needs more than an office reorganisation. To go forward, the leadership needs to recognise facts it has become reluctant to face. The Labour surge of 2017 was caused by a mixture of Corbyn’s honesty, and the dire campaign waged by Theresa May, but above all by large-scale tactical voting among remain voters.

Last night’s results show what can happen when these conditions don’t apply. To renew Labour’s electoral alliance with progressive young voters, the salaried working class of the big cities and progressive working-class voters in the ex-industrial towns, the party needs to unite around the strategy of remain and reform in Europe. It needs to tell voters honestly: it’s time to scrap Brexit and rebuild Britain instead. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports:

Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to support a second referendum on any Brexit deal after the Labour leadership came under overwhelming pressure to halt the exodus of its remain voters who backed pro-EU parties at the European elections.

The Labour leader said he was “listening very carefully” to both sides of the debate after the party fell behind the Liberal Democrats and also lost ground to the Greens.

Labour’s preference would be a general election but any Brexit deal “has to be put to a public vote”, he said. Several Labour sources noted this was a shift from his previous position that a second referendum was being kept as an option on the table to stop a damaging Tory Brexit.

He later wrote to MPs: “It is clear that the deadlock in parliament can now only be broken by the issue going back to the people through a general election or a public vote. We are ready to support a public vote on any deal.”

Corbyn’s statement, after a day of frantic lobbying from senior party figures in response to disappointing European election results and recrimination against his senior advisers, moves the party closer to backing a people’s vote. But it does not go quite far enough to satisfy the demands of those in the party who want full backing for a second referendum to be held without delay – and a commitment that the party will campaign on the remain side. [Continue reading…]