JEREMY CORBYN, Labour’s egalitarian new leader, appears to favour a balanced distribution of cake-eating and cake-having. One of the great questions looming over his young leadership of Britain’s opposition is that of the country’s membership of the EU, which will go to a referendum by the end of 2017 (probably next year). In his long years on the back benches he was one of the few Labour MPs to keep the flame of left-euroscepticism—once a dominant force in the party—alive. In the just-finished leadership campaign the MP for Islington North, who would probably prefer that Britain quit the EU, was studiously vague about which side he would favour in the upcoming plebiscite; refusing to rule out campaigning for an Out vote while “clarifying” that Britain should “stay to fight together for a better Europe”.

The first 48 hours of his leadership have done nothing to clear up the matter. In a meeting with Chuka Umunna, the now-former shadow business secretary, yesterday Mr Corbyn said that he might yet back Brexit (though probably would not). Yet this morning on the BBC’s Today programme Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, said that Labour would certainly support Britain’s EU membership. It appears the party’s new boss is telling different people different things—which does not bode well for his leadership in the weeks and months ahead.

His quandary is thus. Labour ditched its old hostility to the EU in the late 1980s and early 1990s; indeed under Tony Blair enthusiasm for European integration became a byword for moderation and open-mindedness in the party. Most of its MPs still hold the broadly pro-European attitudes of that era. Yet much of Mr Corbyn’s base in the party and the union movement exhibits the sort of left-euroscepticism previously considered vanquished. The RMT union, not formally affiliated to Labour but strongly supportive of its new leader, has committed to opposing EU membership. The GMB, one of the country’s three largest unions, one of Labour’s most generous funders and a vocal supporter of Mr Corbyn, has flirted heavily with joining them: tomorrow it will place before the Trades Union Congress in Brighton a motion urging comrades to back an Out vote if David Cameron’s renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership undermines workers’ rights. Quoted in the Morning Star today, Paul Kenny, its leader, welcomes Mr Corbyn’s antipathy to the EU while Dave Prentis, his counterpart at Unison (one of the other big three unions affiliated to Labour) adds: “How could we (ask Unison members) to support a Yes vote if we’d be voting for worsening workers’ rights?” Some in Mr Corbyn’s inner circle of advisers are known to share these views.

On the EU, then, Mr Corbyn can either side with his large, loose and as-yet untested base within and outside the party, or he can align himself with his MPs and most of those members of his party who joined before the May election. It seems Labour’s new leader is trying to bridge its EU divide by changing his message according to his audience (his speech to the eurosceptic-tinged TUC tomorrow afternoon may further illustrate this strategy). Will the same prove true of questions like Britain’s relationship with America, the role of markets in the economy and the future of Britain’s armed forces? He can try to reconcile the different parts of the Labour movement, or he can side with one over another, permanently or case-by-case. But inconsistency is a recipe for chaos.