CONFUSED? If you aren’t, then by the time you digest the latest news you will be.

Seven days have passed since second referendum standard bearer Chuka Umunna formed his alliance with disaffected Tories around an unspoken platform of privatisation and unapologetic austerity liberally laced with mendacious allegations of anti-semitism.

Labour opinion is united in condemnation. Even those who covertly commune with the defectors dress their real opinions in weasel words and inelegant code.

Even 70 per cent of respondents to the Corbyn-sceptical Labour List website want the turncoats to face by-elections, while 15,000 people instantly signed Momentum’s petition to the same end.

Two thousand people have signed up for a springtime offensive in Umunna’s Streatham constituency that promises to be a day to delight in the Labour’s tribe’s joyful pursuit of the apostate.

In a situation where the flagship policy of the defectors dovetails with what a substantial number of party members seem to prefer (and many MPs insistently demand), charting a course which protects party unity is a priority. An election may be at hand.

In truth the party leadership has played a poor hand with some skill with one eye on the millions of Labour Leave voters and another on the internal party dynamics.

The remorseless reality is that parliamentary arithmetic and the balance of opinion in both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the party membership constrains Jeremy Corbyn.

There is a splinter of truth in the sly suggestion that Corbyn is a hostage to this situation but it is an odd kind of hostage who can call upon great reservoirs of loyalty and affection from those who confirmed him in that position.

At one level Corbyn’s shift on a second referendum moves closer to the position of his most determined critics in the PLP.

This is a development which should give his ardent supporters a moment to reflect on what this might mean for Labour’s radical manifesto policies if a Labour government came into being still constrained by the EU’s neoliberal economic regime and tied into precisely the treaty obligations that voters thought they were rejecting.

However, there is no parliamentary majority for a Labour amendment for a second referendum. Theresa May may well lose the vote which could result in an election or, more likely — given the determination of the Remain matrix to subvert the Brexit vote — another period of profitless pirouetting around variations of a customs union, the Norway option and the deal the EU and May concocted over the last few months.

There is a measure of Labour unity around opposition to May’s deal which helps clarify matters for an electorate that, most especially in working-class areas which voted to leave, is growing increasingly frustrated at the unending manoeuvring.

Corbyn could be prime minister quite soon. The European Union establishment clearly think so.

It is highly unlikely that in their recent meeting the EU bigwigs said that the Withdrawal Agreement can be much amended. But they too are not completely free agents.

The EU is a very leaky ship. German growth is faltering. President Emmanuel Macron tells his closest confidantes that if the French were allowed a vote the majority for Leave would surpass even the majority who declined to vote for him.

Italy’s superficially euro-sceptic coalition have been forced again to bow to Brussels and Berlin.

A Labour government with a popular mandate would recalibrate Britain’s relationship with the EU to quite different ends to May. But only do so if it comes to office with an electorate clear in its collective mind that real change must come about come what may.