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It’s surprising, in some ways, that Jeremy Corbyn thinks about the EU in less than glowing terms. Corbyn’s world view — Marxist and with a particular conceit about the inevitably of

“progress” — maps quite neatly onto the arrogance of the convenors and protectors of the EU project. We are repeatedly told that his equivocation over the right way forward is down to a

certain dislocation in his soul. When he was a close confidante of the great Eurosceptic and socialist Tony Benn, he was quite clear about what he thought. Now that the part-time lawyer Keir

Starmer has got hold of him, he has been bounced in a different direction. Let me help him out. The metaphysics of the EU project are quite straightforward, and add up to this: that its

enablers can, by stealth, engineer the eventual dissolution of the European nation states into a technocratic centre which, like Plato’s guardian class, has the right to tell us that it’s

all done for our own good. This, so the theologians of the project tell us (yes, Donald Tusk, we’re looking at you, there’s a “special place in Hell“ for you, mate) is a mere assertion of

historical inevitability: the fact that we were all fighting each other in 1943 (some harder than others) shows that the EU is the true guardian of European stability. If you’re a Marxist,

what’s not to like about all of the above? Oh, and let’s throw this in the mix: what must appeal to the grey interiority of the Corbyn types is that the EU has its own mirthless apparatchik

class — the worst sort of rulers. Never agree to be governed by people with no sense of humour: humour is the proper form of humility, the appropriate attitude to adopt against the cruelty

of the world. Where there is joylessness there cannot be truth. The world is a serious place: if you can’t laugh at it then you are not taking it seriously. Like the stuffed corpses atop the

Kremlin, waving at the military parade below, it is necessary, for the Corbyn types, it seems, to appear serious at all times. But to be serious at all times is to be serious none of the

time. We are, after all, quite a hilarious product of creation. Have you ever, at any point in the last few years, seen evidence that the Corbynista movement (which has infiltrated the

structures of a once great socialist movement) can laugh at itself? So why has Corbyn not attached himself to the high seriousness of the European project? He has, in the past, claimed that

the EU is a sort of “capitalist club”, to which the only intelligent reply is: huh? The EU is a capitalist club only in the sense that the Mafia is a business enterprise. Yes, it makes

available systems of transactions between people who live within its scope. But it also has a very protectionist scope. The EU is not a “capitalist club”. It is a “system of presence”. It

asserts its presence in a way that is democratically remote and yet managerially intrusive. Those who want to “remain” in this project, need to explain to those of us who don’t, why they

think there is any status quo. This club is evolving all the time, not in very pleasant ways. Try starting a small business and throwing yourself into the regulatory burdens of the _acquis

communautaire_. Ah, I hear you say, it’s not the overall context of the EU tyranny Corbyn objects to — it’s the fact that if he becomes Prime Minister, then the intra-protectionist

tendencies of the EU will prevent him from destroying the capitalist system altogether. The EU rules on state aid and renationalisation will prevent him from implementing his “radical” (back

to the ’30s) agenda. This election, more than most, has thrown up epiphenomena: shadows generated by the “deep story” going on underneath. This is how God keeps the rest of us interested

and the political class, to the extent it’s possible, humble. It is, when you think about it, hilarious that Tom Watson has decided that his political career amounts to little more than a

springboard into the kaleidoscopic world of the “Level 2 fitness instructor”. But this would be the greatest irony, the one which He has saved to last: that Corbyn wins on December 12 and

finds himself — due to an intrinsic cowardice, and an inability to follow through on his principles — legally incapable of implementing his vision. For us Leavers that would be a small

consolation, but a consolation nevertheless.