Corbyn’s ‘yes, but’ on Europe was right – we all think that too | Martin Kettle

All is not lost for the remain campaign, and the Labour leader could be its unlikely saviour

The panic in the governing class about the Brexit vote is palpable. Almost every pro-European one meets says they have a bad feeling about the referendum. “I take no pleasure in being the Cassandra of the pro-Europeans,” Labour’s former Europe minister, Denis MacShane, said this week, “but the point is that Cassandra got it right.”

On Thursday the most improbable potential saviour of the British governing class rode into town to calm the mood. Opposition to the European Union was a core part of the world view on which Jeremy Corbyn cut his political teeth in the 1970s. For 40 years he rarely deviated from that stern view, even though almost everyone else of his era on the left did so.

Related: Corbyn's EU referendum speech verdict: rambling but also rather special

Even David Miliband made similarly conditional points this week, taking Brexit apart as Project Fantasy

Related: Why Brexit would be nothing less than an act of political arson | David Miliband

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