As Labour Party splits over leaving the European Union intensify, can the party survive Brexit?

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Andrew Hawkins, chairman of ComRes, says Yes.

The Labour Party is setting new standards for “normal” and “shambolic”, the Article 50 farrago being merely the latest milepost in what for many Labour MPs is a living nightmare. The Party is in an appalling mess but ironically its refusal to implode is evidence that it is bigger than its leader.

The scale of Corbyn’s 2016 leadership win, and the fact that Labour has more members than any other party by a ratio of more than three to one, render him bulletproof. He is an immovable object so everything else, including niceties like collective responsibility, are forced to work around his shortcomings.

Labour’s defeat under Corbyn in 2020 is probable, but the bigger existential threat will arise if they lose in 2025. The Conservatives’ 1997 “Demon Eyes” attack on Tony Blair was unsuccessful then but that meme will be played out repeatedly for years after Corbyn’s replacement with a more moderate alternative. Article 50 will not kill the Party but losing four elections in a row might.

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, says No.

From the 1960s to the 1980s Labour was forever u-turning on whether the UK should join or leave Europe. But it seemed finally to have embraced Britain’s EU membership from the 1990s onwards.

That was certainly the impression that the party – if not its leader – created during the referendum campaign. And that’s precisely why so many Labour MPs don’t feel they can simply abandon their principles (or else their Remain-voting constituencies) and vote to trigger Article 50.

Presumably they’re hoping, once the legislation finally passes all its stages, that they can forget about what just happened by uniting with their colleagues to fight against a “hard Brexit”. But that might not be so easy. Labour has effectively given up its right to call itself pro-European and may soon find itself forced into becoming an anti-immigration party too.

That may or may not be a smart move electorally. But it means that Labour is no longer the same party that many of its members – both at Westminster and beyond – thought they’d joined.