Labour's Brexit policy is as deliberately clear as the rules of Mornington Crescent

Remain voters will work them out in the end, but will they then work out who Change UK - The Independent Group even are?

There are, potentially, reasons that Leon Trotsky came up with a thing called “entryism”, and chose to leave “exitism” uninvented, at least until now.

Entryism is the kind of thing that can allow a curious cabal of hard-left weirdos to transform one of Britain’s two major political parties into a Jew-hating troll farm with personality cult attached, and still look like winning the next general election.

Exitism, on the other hand, would appear to be the kind of thing that can lead a curious cabal of ex Tory and ex Labour MPs, and a handful of medium fish from the small Remain Twitter pond to set up an explicitly pro-Remain political party with two names and a redacted zebra crossing for a logo, and still somehow end up less popular in pro-Remain London than Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

That is the current fortune of Change UK – The Independent Group, whose unlikely black branding, and all it’s unfortunate associations with the far right, can now be found on the far right of all sorts of polling charts, far to the far right not just of the Brexit Party but absolutely everyone bar the Lib Dems.

Yes the early signs are that Change UK – The Independent Group’s various dramatic exits from their various political parties appear to have more than a touch of the Jerry Maguires about them. Who’s with them? Well, no one, really. But that’s surely nothing that a decent rally can’t sort out, and that is what drew upwards of eighty people to a small pre-booked hotel conference suite in central London.

As rallies go, this was only marginally less aggressive than anything contested between the late Sir John Betjeman and Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. Former BBC man turned Change UK – The Independent Group’s Gavin Esler was there to inform his audience that he has named his dog Nigel Farage, because it “doesn’t go out in the rain”, and “expects someone else to clear up its mess”. All very well, but stolen, clearly, from the French Ambassador to the EU, who recently claimed to have called her cat “Brexit”, because it howls to be let out, and then when she opens the door it won’t leave. Which does rather beg the question – has Gavin acquired this dog in the last few weeks, solely for this rather lame gag? A dog is for life, Gavin, not just the European Parliamentary elections.

Still, what Change UK – The Independent Group really needs, apart from a name that doesn’t already take up half of the vanishingly small amount of air time that might be assigned to it – is for Remainers finally to work out that the Labour Party isn’t on their side.

And the Labour Party is, to their credit, doing their level best to make sure that doesn’t happen. Jeremy Corbyn and co like to credit their success in not losing the 2017 election by anywhere near as much as everybody predicted to having an extremely popular manifesto. But it’s 2019 now, and they’ve worked out the secret to success in the upcoming European Parliamentary elections is to have a manifesto that no one can possibly understand.

At the end of an all day meeting of their National Executive Committee which is best understood as a kind of six hour Brexit Mornington Crescent spectacular, they are, don’t panic, still backing a second referendum. But only if they can’t have a general election or a customs union, and if there isn’t a R in the month or the day ends in a Y.

Still, voters aren’t stupid. They’ll work out this a load of rubbish soon enough. The question then is whether they’re then smart enough to work out who on earth Change UK – The Independent Group actually are and not just decide to sod it and vote for The Brexit Party instead. At least they know what that actually is. The early signs are not encouraging.