Might not take that long. Reports suggest quite a lot of the people in the grass roots of the Labour Party who are the base of Corbyn's support are/were Leavers and are utterly livid about the way he's handled the debate around Article 50. It would be too late at that point to stop Art 50 triggering, but if he carries on along this line he'll get slaughtered at the next party conference. You could even see ANOTHER leadership election (jesus wept...) and he would be in a far weaker position than he was the last time.

He's screwed whatever he does really.
If he goes through with the three line whip he shows that he respects the will of the people but pisses off a significant chunk of Labour voters not to mention giving his PLP opponents ammunition for another leadership challenge.

A free vote is possibly the best option as it lets MPs vote in line with the wishes of their constituents but quite a few may choose to oppose triggering article fifty which plays badly with the view that MPs think they know better than their constituents. It also means Corbyn again gets pilloried for flip flopping on the issue and it makes him look weak.

Telling all his MPs to oppose article 50 pisses off the general electorate who voted to leave and could do major damage to the parties electoral choices down the road (and may not stop the triggering of article 50 anyway).

It's yet another mess but given the divisions in the party it was almost inevitable.

Since it'll likely pass no matter what, surely a free vote makes almost everyone a winner in Labour? They can vote whatever way they like and Corbyn can fudge things as usual, while actually voting for Article 50 as he likely wanted to do... Nobody was gonna remember Labour's part in the debate until Corbyn's decision, far as I can tell.

Frankly, I think the intersection on the venn diagram of 'voted leave' and 'likely to vote labour' is pretty small. Plus the 'general electorate' didn't vote leave, it was roughly 1/3 did, 1/3 didn't, 1/3 didn't reply, so the large majority aren't actually leave voters. Opinion seems to be they're terrified they might lose votes to UKIP but their stance, it seems to me, will do little to attract those who were thinking of voting UKIP - frankly, if they're not going to vote UKIP they're going to vote Tory - while alienating those natural labour voters who were either remain or neutral.


Got nothing to do with the divisions in the party. This isn't some story leaked by a Progress member with the aim of sabotaging an otherwise popular Corbyn policy, this is Corbyn himself (IMO) completely misreading the opinion of the people in the party he's been relying on to keep him in office. It could backfire on him in a major way.

This is entirely separate to the argument as to whether triggering Article 50 and whatever the deal we get afterwards is good or bad for labour voters. As you say, Article 50 is going to be triggered. It's to do with whether a party represents the will of it's members. Corbyn got into office because he represented the will and opinion of more labour party members than Angela Eagle or Owen Smith did. If he forces through a major policy position in the exact opposite to the opinion of those same party members, he's asking for trouble. This isn't Corbyn & members vs PLP, this is purely Corbyn vs Members.