The downfall of Labour began with Ed Miliband. Now Corbyn's Brexit turmoil will lose them the Stoke by-election

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From the high summit of Mount Hindsight, it’s clear to see that Labour’s destruction has been assured since Cameron’s EU referendum-promising Bloomberg speech of January 2013. The question is only whether or not it is now terminal, and for how much longer it will be overseen and therefore exacerbated by the worst leader it has ever had.

Ed Miliband was never going to win the 2015 election, for no more important reason than next to David Cameron he just didn’t look or act the part. That much should have been clear long before a second after 10pm on election night. That the referendum would take place was all but certain, and the semi-inadvertent but equally certain consequence of that high risk gamble to heal Tory division would be to place a bomb under Labour.

As Jeremy Corbyn ties himself in knots over amendments to the Brexit Bill, none of which will stem the flow of Brexit induced rebellions and resignations that form the overture to two huge, simultaneous by-elections in two weeks’ time, many in the Labour Party simply wish the vote on 23 June had gone the other way. But it almost doesn’t matter.

You don’t even need the Scottish comparison to see it, but it certainly helps. Had the independence referendum been lost, the Scottish heartlands would be gone. But win and there’s a newly resurgent, emboldened and embittered nationalist movement to take them off you anyway.

With Brexit it is much the same. If Labour’s referendum strategy (yes, there was one), learned the hard way in Scotland, had paid off, the hopelessness of their position would now be more clear not less. Fight a half-hearted campaign to remain, and hope that a narrow victory won’t do to the Europhobic north of England what the independence question did to Scotland. Not a chance.

“The genie is out the bottle,” Nigel Farage warned at 11.30pm on June 23rd, when he thought the referendum lost. “Win or lose this battle tonight, we will win this war.” It was abundantly clear that he meant business. Now, as Clive Lewis has warned, mere perceived obfuscation and delay over leaving the European Union leaves Labour vulnerable to Ukip-induced annihilation –imagine what the consequences for Labour would have been if Remain had actually won.

Ukip’s Paul Nuttall has a big 5,000 Labour majority to overturn in Stoke Central. He may very well not do it. The bookies think it’s too close to call. But if Labour were not merely delaying Brexit, if they’d actually won a victory to prevent it happening, well there are around 40 ex Labour MPs in Scotland who’ll tell you how big a 5,000 majority is, and they’ve certainly got enough time on their hands to do so.

Cut across all this, however, is the question of leadership. The only thing that might have saved Labour from this misery is to have had a leader, in 2015 who looked and acted like a leader. Who people wanted to vote for. They did not. They have since more than doubled down on their madness.

This unfortunate saga does not end with Jeremy Corbyn walking into 10 Downing Street in three and half years’ time, two weeks shy of his 71st birthday. Even he, probably, knows that. Already there is jostling for his position, most notably from Clive Lewis and the even more dismal Rebecca Long-Bailey.

But by then, the first phase of Labour’s Brexit nightmare is at least scheduled to be over. If the likes of Lewis or Long-Bailey, who owe their prominence only to the Corbyn-induced Aventine Secession of their elders and betters, are to follow, there will be nothing inevitable about the next phase of Labour’s doom. This one will have been self-inflicted in its entirety.