United Kingdom

If Labour's boxed itself in right now, that's Labour's problem. (Sorry if that sounds bitter, but I support a party that's consistently been principled and responsible and detailed in its reasoning about this issue, immigration and all, and saw a drop in its still overwhelming majority of MP seats in Scotland - losses to the Tories cheered on by Labour up here - partly as a result. I like some guts in my politicians.) It's all of our problem if it lets the Tories off the hook by continuing to buy into the same anti-immigration rhetoric etc. that's gained currency, as the author of the article points out very clearly.

Labour can't be all things to all people, and it's a cynical act of political cowardice to pretend that one can square, for instance, the interests of the generally idealistic, outward-looking, accustomed-to-being-European with all that entails "youth vote" (not monolithic, of course) with the insular, inward-looking, scapegoating "UKIP vote" (more correctly those who have voted UKIP in the past, but may have done so as an anti-establishment protest, for lack of appealing options, or from less laudable motives). It can't satisfy the far larger numbers of Labour voters who are still inclined to Remain (look at recent opinion polls, and even if you take them with a pinch of salt, the trend is not in Brexit's favour) and those who're committed to Leave, or have plain given up and are going along with it because of the constant media onslaught about "the will of the people" which you seem to have fallen for.

para. 1 - Despite the focus of the article, it doesn't all come down to settling old scores from past battles, as you seem to assume, it's about the future. And I can't be bothered fishing out polling evidence right now, but I believe you're wrong in your understanding "that the overwhelming majority of the UK population now accepts that Brexit can't be stopped". They've been fed contradictory lines right and left - we can have the single market without free movement. No, wait, that was last month. We can be Norway. Oh. There's those Four Freedoms again. The much-trumpeted Labour manifesto couldn't have been much clearer on leaving the single market (which would have lost them my vote if it had been up for grabs), but that got lost in the Tory implosion and all sorts of other electoral chaff. But I'm willing to bet that a fair proportion of those who cheered on Labour's unexpected relative success and then heard O'Donnell spell it out after the election (when strategically he'd have been better keeping his trap shut) would have been dismayed. They were probably hoping it was an electoral ruse.

para. 2 - Try floating anything like the idea of "devo max" in Scotland nowadays, and beyond the delusional uselessness of Scottish Labour, you'll be deafened by hollow laughter. We got bitten by that and Gordon Brown's strange interventions during and after the indyref. Labour representatives voted AGAINST the devolution of a whole range of essential powers that Holyrood needed to be able to conduct joined-up government. Since it lost its grip on Holyrood and its easy coalition with the Lib Dems in Scotland, Labour's largely lost interest in that assembly except as a forum for bashing the SNP on a weekly basis and a handy source of revenue because it's got no membership base to speak of up here any more. There's no way it will grant more powers to enable the SNP to show it up by running a country on more communitarian lines while being sneered at for "embracing Tory austerity" and not being "left-wing" enough (Corbyn's a real bobby-dazzler on his rare visits up here, when he comes out with this guff; you'll have gathered I've not been in the Corbyn-hater/basher camp in the long run, but he can be a barefaced fucking liar when it suits him, which came as a bit of a shock to me; he is a politician, after all).

"Devo max" or anything like it would not solve the problem anyway. Scotland would still be part of the UK, and so would be out of the EU. The problems of trying to negotiate let alone administer any sort of half-in, half-out deal (which neither Labour nor the Conservatives would countenance in any case, let alone the EU itself) are similar to those that will face Northern Ireland (without, so far, the threat of serious civil unrest if things go pear-shaped).

And fuck UKIP. You don't fight fascism by becoming more like the fascists. You argue the case, strongly and consistently. You join the dots where people can't or don't have the time to do so themselves, and you certainly don't go around whining "They're right - don't vote for them!"

para. 3 - Read the article in the OP about Labour's sketchy record on benefit cuts and listen to the statements in recent times from prominent Labour figures who bought into the whole "dole scrounger" mentality etc., despite the campaign rhetoric. And that's with the luxury of being out of power, nor expecting to come within long-range spitting distance of it any time soon. The EU isn't perfect, but it's doing a hell of a lot better than a lot of other trading blocs, for its people and as a whole. Pissing on it from outside the tent isn't going to do anything to reform it, and it will still be a very influential neighbour - and, heaven forbid, rival - even if Brexit comes to fruition.

para. 4 - If you define "democratic" as having our futures dictated by the whims of the Tory Party trying to cobble itself together and parley an advisory referendum into an unconstitutionally binding one, then we're not going to find any common ground. If you believe "Brexit means Brexit", and hence anything the party in power chooses it to mean, then you're no democrat. Labour's apparent abandonment of a "soft(er)" Brexit approach while still banging on about having its cake and eating it is shameful and - yes - pathetic.

para. 5 - I won't point out yet again that you don't live here. It's nice that you take an interest in our politics, but what you consistently fail to get is that this is actually an existential issue for many of us. The stakes are very high. If people had argued the way you're doing about previous social struggles, there'd never even have been a Labour Party.

At the moment, there's a window as the reality of just how weak and directionless in negotiation the Tories are and how divided the country still is on this issue becomes more and more obvious - remember, May called the election because she for some reason felt that parliament was divided on Brexit whereas the country was coming together and demanded people vote for her because "every vote makes me stronger", and suffered a major humiliation, if not an outright loss on that basis. My concern is that before there's another election, if Labour doesn't shape up its ideas, stop resting on the laurels of having unexpectedly avoided annihilation, and come up with a coherent approach that's not conning people, it's likely to face a very much rockier ride if the Tories do have to call another election any time soon, and have to explain where it actually stands and how it sees the whole thing working. It can't use current revenue estimates to finance the sorts of programmes it wants to without REALLY discovering a magic money tree, as the revenues won't be there.

This is the time to push harder, not throw our hands up and say nothing can be done.

And none of what you've written has answered my initial questions, so I'll repeat them:

Please explain to me how the hell Labour will be able to finance any meaningful public spending while the country weathers the decade(s?)-long hurricane that will result from the disruption to trade and consequent loss of revenue {from Brexit}. In fact, explain to me ANY coherent ideas Labour's come up with for the process of disentangling us from the EU that don't sound disturbingly like Tory "have our cake and eat it" wishful thinking.