Last night was a watershed moment for Lewis – but will Labour now use Brexit to re-emerge as a robust opposition?

Last night three quarters of Labour MPs followed Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership through the division lobby to vote to trigger article 50. The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill passed with a huge majority in the Commons by 494 to 122, despite a small Labour rebellion of 52, up five on the last reading. The article 50 bill will now go to the House of Lords.

Following the historic vote, the UK is now well on the track to departing the EU, although the vital question of whether notification served under article 50 is in fact revocable is yet to be answered – that question is currently being tested in the Irish courts.

Yesterday Theresa May repeatedly avoided addressing the issue of the impact that trading under World Trade Organisation rules would have on the UK economy, a question put to her in different guises by both Owen Smith and Angela Eagle.

This is hugely relevant as the failure by Labour and other opposition parties to secure any amendments to the article 50 bill has given the prime minister a blank cheque for her Brexit negotiations. It allows her to position herself such that she need only put to a vote the deal she brings back from the negotiating table, with the alternative being a so-called “cliff-edge” exit from the EU and a reversion to WTO trading rules and tariffs, in effect putting a gun to the heads of MPs. The “concession” of a vote, and which was hailed as such by shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer, in a LabourList article, was in fact no such thing. Some MPs spoke of having been “duped”.

While May has emerged strengthened by the overwhelming passage of the article 50 bill, where does this leave Labour? Aside from the 52 Labour MPs – representing roughly a quarter of the PLP – who broke the three-line whip and voted against the article 50 bill on its third reading, there have been several shadow cabinet resignations during the course of the process, the latest and most high profile being that of Clive Lewis, the shadow business secretary.

Lewis’ resignation in order to allow him to break the three-line whip may transpire to be a watershed moment in Labour’s long overdue reshaping and re-emergence as a robust opposition to the incumbent Tory government. The younger left-wing MPs, such as Cat Smith and Rachael Maskell, who have thus far formed a vanguard around Corbyn, appear to be questioning – to some extent at least- his philosophy and strategy with respect to Brexit and his apparently lukewarm attitude as regards Labour’s official Remain policy.

Having failed to secure any amendments to the article 50 bill, it is somewhat unclear where Labour go from here over the next few months as May seeks to begin her negotiations (noting however that nothing may happen until after the French presidential elections in May and the German elections later in the year). Of course for Labour going forward there will be many things to oppose and to campaign on, from social care policy – for which see Corbyn’s coup in PMQ’s with the leaked Surrey county council text messages – to NHS funding, to housing policy, to industrial strategy. But the defining, overarching issue over coming months and even years will be Brexit and until that is resolved all else will be overshadowed.

Some are suggesting that Lewis’ departure from the shadow cabinet will happily provide him with the opportunity, if not to launch a leadership challenge, then to be waiting in the wings to be involved in a “peaceful” transition if and when Corbyn were to decide to stand down in advance of the next general election. There are stirrings of discontent in Corbyn’s largely young base of pro-Remain supporters, something Lewis himself has been receptive to. Whether article 50 will turn out to be a watershed moment for Labour, we shall have to wait and see.