Labour leapt into Brexit’s fires – and now the party is burning | Martin Kettle

The party’s supporters voted two to one to remain, so why does Jeremy Corbyn kowtow to the leavers?

If you are unfortunate enough to be standing on a burning drilling platform in the North Sea, you face an unenviable choice. Stay on the platform and the blaze will kill you; leap into the sea and, if you are still alive after you hit the water, you risk a rapid death from exposure.

This dramatic image has become fashionable in the world of management theory, where it crystalises the obligation to take radical action in dreadful circumstances. Yesterday the chief inspector of England’s hospitals, Mike Richards, invoked it when he said that the National Health Service “stands on a burning platform”. The need for change is clear, he said, but finding the resources and energy to make the necessary changes without harming patients seems almost impossible.

Related: I was wrong to defend Jeremy Corbyn. He has betrayed us over Brexit | Ed Vuilliamy

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