Why is Labour just letting the Brexit party win the European elections?

Why is Labour making such a historic mistake? To judge from public statements, the leadership believes that Labour’s poor showing in this month’s local elections proves simply that the public wants us to “get a deal done” on Brexit: the leadership also argues that their ambiguous approach to Brexit in the 2017 election helped them win voters. Actually, Labour’s 2017 success depended on people believing that it was fundamentally a remain party despite tactical ambiguity on Brexit. And regardless of the suggestion that the public simply want the political class to get on with Brexit, polling shows that a large portion of the public now wants to stop Brexit. There are, of course, hardcore voters who want to leave no matter what, but they have mostly already shifted to Farage and his Brexit party.