The left are trolling, I reckon, and who could blame them. All things being equal - I.e. abstracting from the history of cynical manoeuvring and duplicity - Starmer’s right and Corbyn’s wrong.
Anyway, good article here from David Edgerton on what Labour should do now, in broad strokes. Voting for the deal fits rather better with this picture than taking a symbolic stand, IMO.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-national-illusions-labour-alternative-future
“Yet the ideological maelstrom of Brexit gives Labour the opportunity to abandon old nostrums and re-energise itself with a new national mission and a new history of its own. The left needs to disabuse itself of the cosy and outdated notion that Britain’s ills are caused by imperial hangovers and a consequently incompetent upper-class elite. Labour needs to wake up and offer an alternative future to contest the Tory narrative – one that amounts to more than just better welfare and more administrative competence.
Labour could start by being nostalgic not for a Tory past, but a Labour one: of greater equality, of common purpose, of strong trade unions, of rising wages, of meaningful work. Labour could embrace the idea of a refreshed democracy, of really taking back control – of an anti-elite politics rather than a reheated technocracy. It could once again become the party that offers a national, collective critique of the elite and its power – as it was from the 1930s into the 1970s – and propose a policy of national reconstruction and equality. Labour should be the party that speaks in realities, not in celebratory fantasies, and seeks to create a truthful democratic politics, which is essential to any real programme of progressive change.
The one good thing to come out of Brexit is the bonfire of national illusions which is about to rage. It would be tragic if Labour were to try to put it out. For in its own way, Brexit has forced some essential understanding of Britain’s place in the world.”