As Keir Starmer heads into the Christmas break desperately trying to keep his beleaguered Government on track and his mutinous party together, the last thing he needs is to become embroiled in an internecine battle over one of the most divisive issues of the modern age: Brexit.

He may find he has no choice. On Sunday, Wes Streeting became the second Cabinet minister (after David Lammy earlier in the month) to break ranks and distance himself from Starmer’s position by backing the idea of the UK rejoining the EU customs union. Streeting will not be the last to do so.

More and more senior Labour politicians who have long believed that Brexit was a complete catastrophe that continues to cripple the UK economy are being open about their opinions in public.

While neither has gone as far as Lammy or Streeting, both Starmer and Rachel Reeves have stepped up their criticism of Brexit in recent weeks. Our leaders no longer feel the need to pretend that anything other than a complete severing of Britain’s ties to the European Union would be a betrayal of the will of the people. Politicians who campaigned ardently for Remain in 2016 have felt able to drop the pretence that they had since undergone a miraculous conversion to the Eurosceptic cause.

This is mostly because public opinion on Brexit has shifted so significantly since the Leave vote. Most voters now recognise the damage that has been done and that the promised sunlit uplands that have failed to materialise. Fewer than one in three Britons now think the UK was right to leave the EU; more than half think it was the wrong decision. Only 11 per cent think Brexit has been more of a success than a failure – quite something, given that 52 per cent of the country voted for it.

If there was another referendum now, 56 per cent of people would vote to rejoin the EU, compared to 34 per cent who........

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