I have argued
in an earlier post that it is highly unlikely that Labour could get
Brexit through parliament after winning an election, because the
Tories will unite to oppose it, and they together with Labour Remain
MPs would defeat it. The NEC recently agreed they want a People’s
Vote on any Brexit that the Labour leadership disagree with. So the
only way that Labour’s current policy might allow Brexit without a
People’s Vote is if the Labour leadership come to some accord with
Theresa May and her government.
The general
expectation
has been that a deal between May and the Labour leadership on Brexit
is pretty unlikely. With many senior ministers focused on who will
succeed May as Prime Minister, any deal with Labour is likely to see
May’s cabinet collapse. The same should apply to the Labour side.
The Tories are suffering because they are totally split and take the
blame for not delivering Brexit. Why would Labour want to take joint
ownership of this toxic project? Even if May and Corbyn could agree,
the chances of any deal getting through parliament without a People’s
Vote also attached are slim.
But May has nothing
to lose, and unfortunately the reality as a result of Tuesday’s NEC
decision is that Labour Remainers cannot trust Corbyn over Brexit.
The argument before the 2017 election that Corbyn’s stance was just
triangulation, or an attempt to shift the debate on to ground where
Labour have an advantage, no longer holds because opinion has shifted
to Remain, and a recent UCL study shows the switchers are predominantly
Labour voters. The same study shows that for Labour, at least a fifth
of their voters in every region say they are going to vote for a
different party – and in every region defecting voters are
overwhelming plumping for parties holding a definite Remain position.
As Peter Kellner points
out “Labour voters in Leave areas now back Remain by
a margin of more than three to one.”
The excuses for
Labour’s equivocation have therefore melted away. It looks more and
more that Corbyn wants to avoid an unqualified commitment to a
People’s Vote because he wants the path clear to do a Brexit deal
with the government. That is obviously not in the interests of Remain
voters. It is also a huge hit to his brand: the leader of principle
who will give power back to Labour members. Remain voters' obvious response
is to vote for one of the clear Remain parties. This is what seems to
have happened in the local election today, and it will happen again in the
elections for the European parliament.
There are two
objections to Labour voters doing this. The first, and more powerful,
is that seats in the European Parliament matter, and the more left
leaning MEPs there are the better. If Corbyn is unsuccessful in doing
a deal with the government, or if that agreement collapses, then this
is a real cost. The second argument is that not voting Labour makes
it more likely Farage will win the election. But as I have argued
elsewhere, its votes not seats that matter
in that election. Labour voters are going to keep forsaking their
party as long as their commitment to People’s Vote is less than
100%.
