Why have pundits got politics so wrong since 2015?

I have just read a paper called “Political science, punditry, and the Corbyn problem’ by Peter Allen, a Reader in comparative politics at Bath. It reflects on how most pundits, including some political scientists, got Corbyn’s initial success and then survival completely wrong. I will not attempt to summarise the paper here. It is well worth reading. I am going to take it as read that many pundits did get Corbyn completely wrong in 2015 and 2017. This has nothing to do with whether the left ascendency is a good or bad thing, but just the failure of pundits to see why it was happening.

Allen notes a kind of epistemic snobbery “‘whereby people who do not meet the above criteria of political inclusion are not seen as worthy participants or contributors in political discussions, or whereby their political opinions are devalued in some way”. It was a kind of “othering” that I felt personally when I joined Labour’s Economic Advisory Council. I was told, by people who I respect, that my academic standing would be harmed if I joined the group. It was if I had decided to give economic advice to the BNP rather than the Labour party.

Part of this represented a longstanding dislike by the centre and centre-left of the left in the UK that stems from the political battles within Labour in the 1980s. Andy Beckett tells some of the story here. There was a lot wrong with the Labour left at that time, and Labour leaders from Kinnock to Blair found they could gain a certain credibility by attacking both the left and the unions. Indeed some of those who attack the left today were part of the left back then, and now see the error of their ways. The Labour left came to be seen as generically toxic.

As Allen notes, another element in this failure to understand Corbyn was a belief in triangulation. In the world that takes triangulation as the theory rather than just a useful model with limitations, moving sharply to the left when a party of the right wins an election makes no sense. But why were the same pundits not already noting that the theory of triangulation had broken down, because the Conservative party from 2010 to 2015 had moved sharply to the right and yet had won a general election? This is what the rest of this post is about.

Allen does not mention austerity specifically, but I think misunderstanding austerity plays a large role in failing to see how far right the Conservatives were moving, and therefore Corbyn’s rise in 2015 and Labour’s gains during the 2017 campaign. If you look at what the Coalition did collectively there can be no doubt about what was going on. The hostile environment, privatisation of the NHS, demonisation of those on welfare and so on. Yet perhaps all of these things could be explained away individually if that is what you want to do: continuing Blairs policy on the NHS, responding to popular opinion on immigration and welfare. The dominant narrative, at least to begin with, was of Cameron the moderniser.

The clearest indicator of a rightward shift was austerity. It should have been clear by 2012 if not earlier that the recovery was stalling. Thatchers experiment with austerity had been brief and was quickly reversed, but Osborne was not for turning. We had for the first time since WWII a government attempting sustained austerity during a recovery phase of a recession. Perhaps too many placed their faith in City folk that told stories of imminent bond strikes, so they believed deficit reduction had to be done. But when interest rates on government debt started falling curious academic minds at least should have begun to smell a rat. Did pundits not notice that the majority of economists were against austerity? This is a genuine question rather than a rebuke, because you had to do a little research to find out they were.

Once you miss the rightward move of the Coalition government, and note that it would have been worse still but for the Liberal Democrats, then you also fail to see that Labour from 2010 to 2015 had been following a triangulation strategy and failed. Did pundits put everything down to Miliband’s unpopularity? Once you understood that Labour had moved to the right and lost, then Corbyn’s victory should have come as no surprise, as I argued here before the result.

Understanding the deep damage that the austerity policy did to the country means that it is hardly surprising that under a left leader opposed to austerity the Labour party should attract half a million members. Too many pundits talked about this in terms that applied to the Labour party in the 1970s and early 80s, but this was a danger for rather than a description of the mass movement that Labour were becoming.

There was one feature of received wisdom that seemed to be holding true, however, and that was that Labour led from the left would be defeated decisively in any general election. Poll after poll suggested this was true. I was told too many times that the left were only interested in controlling the party (how surprising) and not interested in winning elections. It was nonsense of course.

As soon as Labour's position in the polls started rising in the middle of the campaign I suggested that Corbyn’s unpopularity before the campaign told us more about the media than anything else, but I’m not sure this is accepted by most pundits. Many will blame the Tories bad campaign, but what that showed us was that May and her team were pretty bad at doing politics, which was something that should have been clear given the evidence if the media had been doing its job properly. But underestimating the role of austerity is important here too.

Austerity was, after a time if not initially, designed to shrink the UK state. And it succeeded. Attitude surveys tell us that is very unpopular, with less than 10% of the population wanting lower taxes and spending. So a party proposing the opposite, with a tax financed fiscal expansion that was at the heart of the Labour campaign, was bound to be popular on that account. Again the Labour surge was a consequence of a media that preferred talking about Labour divisions and personalities rather than policies, so Labour's policy stance came to voters as a surprise.

Thus in my view the failure to see austerity for what it really was is crucial in understanding why pundits got Corbyn so wrong. However I would be fascinated to know how some of those same pundits themselves account for this failure, and whether they see my account having some validity or not.

Labour’s Brexit stance is a tragedy for Labour but the current Brexit mess is an entirely Tory failure.

Before deciding that I’m writing about Labour when I should be writing about the disaster that is Theresa May, please read to the end.

As it becomes obvious (sort of) that there is no majority among MPs for a People’s Vote (something that has actually been clear for some time), the argument has been made that this justifies Labour’s failure to support a People’s vote and instead to seek a compromise, a softer Brexit. I have talked about the wisdom of compromise over Brexit before, but I want to make a different point here, about the stance that Labour has taken over Brexit.

In 2015 Labour lost a General Election where the strong card, perhaps the only strong card, of the Conservatives was their handling of the economy: in other words austerity. It would therefore not be ridiculous to claim that the vote was a verdict on austerity. Some Labour MPs did just that, and argued that if Labour were to win the next election it had to match George Osborne’s policy.

Thankfully on that occasion a new Labour leadership did not take their advice. There were three compelling reasons to continue to argue against austerity - indeed to argue against it much more strongly than Balls and Miliband had done. First and most importantly, it was a policy that made pretty well everyone worse off, and almost certainly led to premature deaths. Second, austerity was a policy that was very unpopular among party members. Third, there were good reasons to believe that the popularity of austerity among the public at large would fade away over time.

I think all these points apply to Brexit as well. Does the fact that 2016 was a referendum while 2015 was a General Election make a difference? Here we have to talk about the nature of the 2016 referendum result. It was not, and could never be, an unconditional instruction to leave under any circumstances. As the form of leaving was unspecified, and the conditions under which we would leave were strongly disputed (with the winning side proving to be completely wrong), it should only have been a request for the government to investigate how we might leave.

It was also won narrowly, with the winning side spending significantly more than was legal. That alone casts a question of legitimacy over the result. I find it extremely odd that some on the left say otherwise, and suggest Remainers have to prove that the additional spending made the difference, something that it is almost impossible to do. Do they realise the precedent they are setting? The right always has more money for obvious reasons, and if the only consequence of overspending by the right is a fine then that is an open invitation to try and buy elections.

Labour’s early approach to Brexit was successful in avoiding the 2017 election being a rerun of the referendum, but there were other ways of doing that. A reasonable strategy that would have achieved the same end was to accept the vote (obviously), but to reserve judgement while the government was negotiating. It would make sense to put down markers about being extremely skeptical that Brexit promises could be met and, crucially, whether a deal that was beneficial could be found.

As the outlines of the government’s deal became clear, Labour should have done what was right and what its members wanted, and campaigned for a second referendum. Once Labour had to put its cards on the table, triangulation ran out of road. The case for a vote on the final deal became unassailable once it was clear Leave promises about what the EU would do were worthless, that there were alternative ways of leaving each of which had some public support, and the public were not getting behind Brexit but were still deeply divided about whether to Leave and how to Leave. 

The Labour leadership’s arguments against doing that were of exactly the same form of those who wanted to adopt Osborne austerity after 2015: the policy that members wanted was seen as a vote loser. Even if they are right about backing a second referendum being a vote loser (and I strongly suspect they are wrong), the only argument I can see for treating austerity and Brexit differently is a belief that one matters much more than the other, and such a belief is very misguided.

What about the argument that there are not enough MPs in parliament to support a second referendum? In my view that is an entirely separate point. In general opposition parties cannot get their way, but that does not mean they stop campaigning for what they think is right. It may well be that parliament will never vote for a second referendum, and some compromise - a softer Brexit - is all that can be achieved. I hope that is not the case, but it could well be. But that does not mean a party should start off campaigning for the compromise you may be forced to reach, rather than campaigning for what is right.

Some people argue that we have to support Brexit to show solidarity with those left behind who support it. That ignores those left behind who voted against it, but even so it is not a good way to proceed. You could say exactly the same about immigration, which many of those left behind blame for their situation. It would be quite wrong for Labour to adopt an anti-immigration policy they did not believe in just to show solidarity with those who wanted it. The same is true of Brexit.

But I have to make one final, and critical, point. I think Labour’s Brexit policy is tragic because it has, directly or indirectly, diminished support for Labour and its leadership among many people who might vote Labour. By triggering Article 50 Labour bear some responsibility for Brexit, and I have suggested before that the successors to the current leadership should come from those who voted otherwise. However I cannot say with any certainty at all that Labour’s policy has had any effect on the Brexit process as such. It is not at all clear that if Labour had adopted the stance I suggest above it could have stopped Brexit, This Brexit mess is entirely Tory affair. To quote Alison McGovern, “This is a Tory problem, a Tory solution and a Tory obsession.” It is Tory disunity and madness that has delayed Brexit. It is a terrible Tory Prime Minister that has made democracy in the UK become a laughing stock among the rest of the world. Those who claim the Tories and Labour are equally to blame or equally responsible for Brexit are wrong. 

May's speech to the public on Wednesday night was Trumpesque, and extremely dangerous. She blamed MPs for delaying Brexit when she had delayed one vote for no good reason, and then basically said its my deal or no deal. She pretended she was acting for the people while parliament was frustrating the people’s will, when in reality less than 40% of voters support her deal and parliament is reflecting that. She seems on the point of taking us over the cliff edge and it is only Tory MPs that can stop her. To make such an authoritarian, populist speech without realising what she was doing tells you all you need to know about her character and political ability.

Her proposal to the EU only made sense if she was prepared to leave with No Deal, which in turn signals to the ERG that they should not vote for her deal. The EU is much too sensible to agree with that, and has in effect given parliament three weeks to work out an alternative to May’s deal. That requires Tory MPs to cooperate with the Labour leadership, something they have not yet been prepared to do [1]. To the many who suggest that somehow the Labour leadership could have prevented the mess we are in I say show me how you can be sure of that, because to me this looks like all the Tories own work from David Cameron to today.

[1] If Tory MPs do finally have serious discussions with the Labour leadership, the Single Market is critical. If all the leadership does is demand to stay in a Customs Union (something inevitable with May's deal given the backstop), it will be equally responsible for the damage caused by leaving the Single Market. Phrases about 'access to' or 'staying close to' the Single Market bind the government to nothing. 

Jeremy Corbyn cannot end Brexit

There is a cheap jibe that responds to the title of this piece by saying that Corbyn does not want to end Brexit. It is cheap because what Corbyn wants above all else is power. It is difficult to imagine this government surviving the collapse of Brexit, so ending Brexit is a means to that power. 

Another idea that some Remainers have is that if only Corbyn had campaigned against Brexit from the moment the vote to stay in the EU was lost, the Labour party could have somehow swung enough public opinion such that support for Brexit would by now be collapsing, and the resultant pressure on Remain-at-heart Tories would be so great that they would have been prepared to bring down their government just to stop Brexit.

To see why this makes little sense start with the 2017 election. May wanted this campaign to be about Brexit. She would have wanted nothing more than Corbyn to oblige by supporting Remain. The reason is straightforward. The Brexit vote divided the electorate on social conservative/liberal lines, with social conservative (anti-immigration) Labour voters supporting Leave. May knew that in a general election right wing social liberals would return to the Conservative fold, but left wing social conservatives could have been persuaded to vote Conservative, or at least not vote for an anti-Brexit Labour party. As a result of all this, the only choice Corbyn had before the election was to triangulate over Brexit, and it is only because of this that May did not get her landslide.

The only possibility is therefore if Corbyn had campaigned for Remain from the moment Remain lost the vote, and that as a result he had been sufficiently stronger in the polls by the following spring to dissuade May from holding an election. This seems very improbable for two reasons. First, immediately after the poll many who voted Remain believed the referendum result should be respected. Second, the Brexit vote has stayed pretty firm despite a fall in real wages. Once you recognise that, Corbyn had no choice but to triangulate over Brexit. That may have been an easy choice for him to make, but it was also the wise political choice. Had he not done so, May would have got her landslide in 2017. If Owen Smith had become Labour leader he might have made an anti-Brexit campaign work, but that is now irrelevant speculation.

That is why wishing Corbyn had not triangulated is in effect wishing May had got her landslide. Triangulation is why Corbyn has endorsed staying part of a customs union (although he could have done so sooner). As one of the reasons Labour gave for doing that is to avoid any infrastructure on the Irish border they have effectively endorsed staying within the EU’s Single Market for goods: the so-called Jersey option.

But triangulation is a dangerous game, particularly if your core support is not clear that is what you are doing. You have to convince socially conservative Leave voting Labour supporters that you will respect the vote, but at the same time convince your Remain voting core supporters that you will always push for a softer Brexit and take any realistic chance you are given to stop Brexit.

That was why sacking Owen Smith was foolish. The general belief of most Remainers is that they only way Brexit can be stopped is a referendum on the final deal. Sacking Smith because he advocates this just weakens Labour’s support among Remainers for the forthcoming local elections. Maintaining shadow cabinet discipline gains him nothing, while appearing to cast aside the hopes of many loyal Labour party members is a big deal. You do not win votes by shattering dreams.

However Remainers also need to realise another important political fact. The remaining slim chance that Brexit can be stopped requires Corbyn to remain passive. The only people who can stop Brexit happening will be the handful of Conservative MPs that have in the past voted against May’s wishes. They need to support moves that initiate the circumstances that lead to a popular vote on the final deal. Those Conservative MPs will only support such moves if they come ‘from parliament’, and not if they come from Jeremy Corbyn directly. Anything that comes from Corbyn is too toxic, as George Eaton notes here. All that Corbyn can do is leave it to others to do what they can to facilitate that moment, and then go with it if it comes. And he will go with it, because it increases the chances that the government will fall.

Whether that moment will come depends not so much on Corbyn or Labour, but more on the EU. So far the EU have allowed May to pretend that there is another solution to the Irish border question than the Jersey option. They have even gone as far as to set out what any free trade agreement (FTA) between the UK and EU would look like. They must know that the only way that FTA could ever happen is if there was a border in the Irish Sea, and they must also know by now that this is politically impossible for May. To go down the FTA route when May will have to concede something like the Jersey option for the whole of the UK is a waste of their time.

The EU therefore has two options. It could force the issue, and make May choose between the DUP and Liam Fox, or it could allow her to continue to fudge the issue until after we leave in 2019. Remainers should stop using Corbyn as a punchbag for their frustrations as time runs out to stop Brexit, and focus that frustration where it may belong, which is in the EU’s apparent willingness to indulge May’s desire to keep her party together.

Here is why the EU should not allow this charade to continue. Brexit is and will always be a right wing fantasy project. It is an attempt by a small group of newspaper owners and politicians with Little Englander fantasies to persuade the country that by leaving the EU the UK could become more wealthy in economic terms and more powerful in political terms. In reality precisely the opposite is true. In order to keep the fantasy in tact the Brexiters have tried to vilify experts, take power from parliament and intimidate judges, and have called any dissent they face unpatriotic. In other words the attempt to make this fantasy work has required its opponents to threaten almost every aspect of our parliamentary democracy.

If such tactics are seen to be successful they will only be repeated elsewhere. It is therefore not in the EU’s interest to allow May to keep her party in one piece. Brexit has to be seen as a failure, just as it is essential that Trump is seen as a failure. That has to mean that the Brexiters lose what matters to them most: political power. [1] It is not in the EU’s interests to allow May to appease her Brexiters. The possibility that by not indulging May the EU risks a No Deal outcome is now non-existent.

One thing above all else Remainers need to see. Even if Brexit cannot be prevented in 2019, it is essential that those who masterminded it suffer for the harm they will inflict on the UK. The only way they will suffer is if they lose power, and Conservative party members come to see the Brexiters as the source of their subsequent misfortune. To imagine, as some Remainers seem to do, that this can come about in first past the post UK by some kind of centrist revolution is as mad a fantasy as Brexit itself. [2] Whether they like it or not, the Brexit project will only be seen as a political failure if it leaves its leaders hollow, and the Conservatives out of power for a decade, and that can only happen one way.

[1] The idea that Brexit needs to be seen to fail in economic terms with the Conservatives in power is misguided. Economic failure will be gradual, and as with Brexit itself the government will deflect economic problems by finding scapegoats that play well with social conservatives, and by ramping up nationalism. As Simon Tilford argues, Brexit poses a real threat to pluralistic democracy. This is the strategy that Republicans have followed in the US, and right wing governments in Hungary and Poland are also following with some success.

[2] If centrists are uncomfortable with what Labour has become, think instead about what the Conservatives will become once May finally goes. The top three favourites to succeed may are all Brexiters, and for a good reason.

Labour, the polls and the Customs Union

If you think from the title that this post will argue that the poor showing of Labour in the polls means it must change course on Brexit I’m afraid I will disappoint you. Unfortunately I am not at all surprised that Labour’s lead in the polls that it achieved after the election has now all but disappeared. It is certainly true that for anyone who takes an active interest in politics the performance of this government has been as bad as you can get, but most people do not take an active interest. Instead their view is guided by a media environment which aims (actively or passively) to show a very different picture. This is increasingly true as the BBC becomes little more than a mouthpiece for the press.

I am sure Labour could do better at handling this naturally antagonistic environment, but to put this all at the door of Corbyn or Brexit misses the bigger picture. The lesson of the Labour surge during the 2017 election is that once the party gets direct access to voters they like what they see. Once the media filter goes back on, voters see a very different picture. This is the lesson of 2017 that hardly anyone in the media wants to admit.

Having said all that, it remains the case that the one issue in the news all the time is Brexit, and Labour are failing to capitalise on the current divisions within the Conservative party, and the consequent damage the government is creating. Watching the Labour leadership trying not to talk about Brexit is looking more and more like Labour under Miliband trying not to talk about austerity. In both cases we may be seeing triangulation (moving to the middle ground), as I set out in detail here and here. As I was always careful to say, we do not know for sure that this is what Labour are trying to do right now. They may instead by divided over policy. This uncertainty is important, because it means that Labour supporters who might be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt over Brexit are also uncertain whether they should

For that reason, as I have also emphasised, a party that triangulates has to be very careful to always appear to lean away from their opponents side in the direction of their supporters. In the case of Brexit, that means appearing significantly less pro-Brexit than the government. Polls suggest that was achieved during the 2017 election, but that was still in a period where the parties talked in generalities. Since then things have inevitably become more concrete, with the issue of the moment being the Customs Union. The position of the two parties after transition remains different: May is committed to leaving the Customs Union, whereas Labour say everything is on the table. However sometimes Labour’s position looks as much cake and eat it as their opponents.

Sometime this month Labour will discuss its strategy over Brexit. The danger of its current position is clear. Theresa May is going at some point be forced to admit that we will stay in some form of customs union with the EU because of the Irish border issue. The only alternative is to leave with no deal, or dump the DUP. Whichever occurs, Labour’s non-position on the Customs Union will look bad. If she goes for a deal Labour will be the wrong side of the government in terms of triangulation, which will be fatal to its support. If she goes for No Deal because of the Customs Union Labour will be immediately asked what it would do. Deciding to stay in the Customs Union just at the point when the issue becomes critical will look like the political opportunism that it is.

Given that, there is a clear advantage from coming off the fence sooner rather than later. The benefit of declaring to be in favour of staying in the customs union is that they will, once more, create clear distance between their own position and the government. The Conservatives will of course claim that in doing so Labour are no longer supporting the ‘will of the people’, but I doubt that will resonate. People did not vote Leave in the referendum in order to make separate trade deals with other countries. Any voters that do desert Labour on this issue will come back pretty quickly as May is forced to face reality. The government’s own analysis, which Labour should use, suggests deals with non-EU countries cannot make up for the impact of leaving the Customs Union. Above all else, it is very difficult to see why Labour would ever want to leave the Customs Union, given that doing so would do so much harm to its traditional electoral base.

Problems with triangulating over immigration

I have talked before about why triangulation over austerity did not work for Labour, but why triangulation over Brexit seems to be more successful. Tony Blair’s latest intervention suggests it is worth asking the same question about immigration. (The report that he launched is well worth reading.) It is a question that lies at the heart of many Labour MPs views on the politics of Brexit.

One of the lessons from austerity is that it is very dangerous to triangulate on an issue where you appear, as a result, to admit fault or blame. If the deficit is a problem (in 2011, say), why did you let it get so large on your watch? This was why ‘too far, too fast’ failed: you acknowledge a problem, and therefore implicitly admit guilt. Getting over the idea that there is a delicate balancing act between reducing the deficit and protecting the recovery is difficult, particularly as it is also an incorrect idea.

It is an obvious point, but exactly the same was true for immigration. Just look at the headlines. The parallels with immigration and the deficit are clear. In office, Labour did the right thing in ignoring the deficit in 2009, and they also did the right thing in allowing substantial EU immigration before then. In both cases the instincts of many voters is to do the opposite: the government should tighten its belt in a recession just like the rest of us, and the country should be able to control and limit who comes in. In both cases, the moment a government that in the past appeared to ignore these voter instincts starts to appear to suggest the instincts are valid, they trash their own record.

You could argue that while this is clearly right for Miliband and 2015, it has less salience for Corbyn rather than Blair today. You could go further and say that what works for Brexit will work with immigration. Just as triangulation gets you the votes of those who sort of want Brexit but worry about the economic consequences, so too could triangulation over immigration get you the votes of those who want to control immigration but are worried about the economic consequences of May’s obsession with hitting targets.

Here I think we need to look at a second problem with triangulation, which is that the nature of the political debate is influenced by it (is endogenous to it). With Brexit it means that neither of the two main political parties is making the case against Brexit, so the (non-partisan) mainstream political debate tends to ignore the anti-Brexit case. One of the unfortunate consequences of the way the BBC and others interpret impartiality is to see it in terms of the two main political parties, rather than (in this case) the population as a whole, so the views of half the population get largely ignored.

You could argue that this may be of secondary importance for an issue like Brexit, because the anti-Brexit case is still fresh in the mind from the referendum campaign. But that is much less true of immigration. Immigration is now well and truly defined in the media as a ‘problem’, and it is very rare to hear a politician (or anyone else) sing its praises. (Jonathan Portes does his best, but when a well known BBC commentator says his views will not win many votes, you get a clear idea of what is going on. [1]) May is quite safe from the media when she says immigration reduces wages and access to public services. The implication of all this together with a large partisan print media is politicians fear talking about the benefits of immigration because that may ruin a carefully triangulated position.

The reality is of course very different. Study after study after study (from academics, not partisan think tanks) shows how much we benefit from EU migration, and how it has virtually no impact on wages. Immigration increases the resources available to provide public services by more than it uses those services. Yet this knowledge is not reflected in the media discourse. The reason is straightforward: the political right wants to use immigration as both an excuse (for the impact of austerity) and a weapon (to achieve Brexit, for example), and the left by and large keeps quiet because it is triangulating.

People in the media may object by quoting polls that suggest the public overwhelming wants to control immigration: they are just reflecting that opinion. (But see footnote [1].) But polls also say people want less taxes. If you dig deeper public attitudes are far more nuanced than the public debate suggests. Here is some data, from an international study, by IPSOS-MORI:

“British people have become more positive about the impact of immigration over recent years. Forty-five per cent say immigration has been good the economy, up from 38% a year ago and from 27% in 2011, and 38% say immigration has made it harder for native Britons to get a job, down from 48% a year ago and 62% in 2011. However, Britain is one of the countries most worried about the pressure placed on public services by immigration, with 59% concerned – although this too is down from 68% a year ago and from 76% in 2011, when Britain was the most worried of all the countries surveyed.”

In other words, as I have emphasised before, the thing that most worries people in the UK about immigration is a myth. Yet triangulation, together with the way the media creates what I call ‘politicised truths’, means that voters are unlikely to find out what the facts are. [2]

The way this ambivalence is often articulated is through the issue of skill. 75% of people want skilled migration to stay the same or increase, while the consensus is that we should have less low or semi-skilled migrants. Yet if you name some categories of semi-skilled migrants, it turns out a majority want the same or more care worker, waiters, construction workers [3] and fruit pickers. As Rick says “apart from the care workers, construction workers, waiters and fruit pickers, what have low skilled* EU migrants ever done for us?” Skill has just become a way of people reconciling their wish for lower immigration in abstract with a recognition that immigration is good for the economy. It is like wanting lower taxes achieved through improving the efficiency of public services.

So how can something that people are ambivalent about become a major political issue that helped push us out of the EU? One answer is the sheer weight of numbers, and for some particular regions not previously experiencing inward migration that seems to be true. (It also reflects the inertia in public service provision.) But the rise of anti-immigration sentiment elsewhere in Europe where recent flows are not exceptional suggests other forces are at work. In part it is far-right parties exploiting fears about terrorism. But much more importantly in the UK, it reflects the deliberate exploitation of immigration as an issue by the Conservative party.

This predates the increase in immigration from Eastern Europe. In 2001 William Hague talked about Tony Blair wanting to turn the UK into a ‘foreign land’. The political temptation on the right to play the immigration card is strong, but until Brexit it has always been duplicitous. The wiser heads in the Cameron/Osborne government never wanted to hit their own targets because of the economic damage it would cause, and as a result they did not even bother to use all the controls that were available with free movement. As Chris Dillow says, immigration was the only scapegoat left to deflect concern about austerity and stagnant productivity. Immigration scapegoating became part of what I have called neoliberal overreach. [4]

This is I think the main reason why triangulation over immigration is not an effective strategy. By trying to appeal to those who are moderately concerned about immigration, Labour falls into a right wing trap, which is to implicitly validate their scapegoating. You can only convincingly argue that scarce public services are due to austerity rather than immigration if you can argue at the same time that immigration brings more resources to the public sector than it uses. You can only argue that economic policy is responsible for stagnant wages if you also say that it is not the fault of immigrants. Labour should go with its members and argue for the benefits of immigration, and in particular free movement with the EU. [5]

[1] This simple exchange illustrated so clearly to me why the BBC’s so called mission to inform and explain is often no more than a joke. Rather than regard popular beliefs that are incorrect as something the BBC has a duty to try and reverse, they are instead used to dismiss expertise.

[2] This is not just a UK phenomenon: around the world politicians use immigrants as scapegoats.

[3] I’m often told that economic studies of the benefits of immigration ignore ‘existing capital like housing’. Yet we need migrants to help build more houses for natives as well as migrants. The only thing that migrants cannot bring to the UK is more land, but with an effective regional policy which we desperately need anyway we have plenty of land.

[4] Some have asked why I called it overreach, when most just talk about the collapse of neoliberalism? For a start, using immigration as a political weapon is not a natural consequence of neoliberalism, and instead comes more from the social conservative part of right wing parties. Also while I think neoliberalism encouraged austerity, I can quite imagine those with neoliberal views forsaking it.

[5] There is an argument that free movement should be opposed because it is unfair to non-EU migrants. Yet you could make the same point about any trade agreement between two countries: it is unfair on all other countries. Arguments about equity that make some people worse off and no one better off give equity a bad name.

Should Labour triangulate over Brexit?

There are two schools of thought about why Labour is adopting a confusing and conflicting position over Brexit which is almost the same as the government’s line. The first is that Labour is simply confused and conflicted. The more interesting is that this is deliberate triangulation: sound slightly less enthusiastic about Brexit to keep its core anti-Brexit vote, but also not to antagonise its minority pro-Brexit vote. I do not know which view is correct, and it is possible that both are. To the extent that it is triangulation, is this the right thing for Labour to do? This question is related to a recent Guardian article where John Harris argues that although Brexit will be a disaster it has to happen.

If triangulation is how Labour justifies its own position on Brexit, the obvious question to ask is why they made so much fuss when their predecessors appeared to triangulate over austerity. Brexit, like austerity, will be extremely harmful for the economy. So what made triangulation (or appeasement, if you want to use a more pejorative word) over austerity a huge political mistake, but allows the same for Brexit acceptable?

If you take the position that political parties and politicians should always argue for what they or their members believe in, rather than adapting their positions to what is politically possible or smart, then there is indeed no difference. Those who said that Labour’s failure to campaign loudly against austerity in 2015 represented some kind of moral betrayal should, for consistency, be arguing the same over Brexit.

A more political answer would be that in the case of Brexit triangulation worked, while for austerity it did not. In 2015 the election was all about economic competence, and Labour triangulation on austerity had the effect of conceding competence given the prevailing ‘clearing up the mess’ narrative. Of course Labour did not win the 2017 election, but they achieved during the campaign a surge in popularity that is virtually unprecedented. Labour supporters who are also anti-Brexit will tell you that this was because Labour made the election about austerity (or more accurately the size of the state) rather than about Brexit. If instead Labour had campaigned against Brexit, the election would have been a rerun of the referendum (as May wanted it to be) and because of the geographical concentration of the pro-EU vote Labour would have lost badly.

Even if you buy this, however, there remains a question of whether the triangulation strategy will continue to work, and whether it could have the unfortunate side-effect of ensuring Brexit will happen when otherwise it might be stopped. To assess this question, we need to take a realistic view of how the Brexit process is likely to evolve.

We know pretty well what the final deal will look like. It will be along the lines of the deal put on the table by the EU, together with a transition period during which we stay in the customs union and Single Market (and continue to pay for that privilege). We know this because the Article 50 process gives the EU the whip hand: the No Deal outcome, which is what happens if time runs out, is so much worse for the leaving country and there is no time to negotiate a trade deal. [1] As a result, to use a term loved by Conservative politicians but which in this case happens to be true, there is no alternative deal to be done.

The only risk before the election would be that the government would walk away. The election had made that much less likely. As there has been virtually no preparation for that outcome, it would bring chaos. This chaos would ensure that Theresa May’s successor lost any subsequent election. While the Brexiteers in safe seats might be prepared to see that happen, the rest of the party would not. Faced with a split in the Conservative party, Labour could not side with the government, as it would flip its triangulation strategy and lose a lot of its core support. As a result, a No Deal Brexit would fail. [2]

What this means is that we will leave the EU in 2019, but remain in the Single Market and customs union until both sides negotiate something else. Can a final deal of this kind be stopped? Logically you might think that MPs would realise that, compared to EU membership, all this deal does is mean the UK gets no say in the rules governing the Single Market and in addition we have to pay a significant sum of money for that lack of control! It is pure lose, lose, with the only positive (from a Leavers point of view) being the possibility of avoiding Freedom of Movement at some future date.

Unfortunately logic is something not normally associated with Brexit. In reality I suspect most Conservative MPs will agree to this (for the moment) softest of soft Brexits with a sigh of relief, telling themselves that they have fulfilled the will of the people with as little damage as possible. The triangulation strategy, which is essentially designed to prevent Brexit becoming a pro/anti party political issue, suggests Labour will go along with this. The only way either of these things might not happen is if public opinion turns against Brexit over the next year.

Will opinion move by enough to at least make it possible to get a vote for a second referendum through parliament? Who knows, but there are some structural factors against it. The first is the right wing press, which after all are the people who got us into this mess. The second concerns the broadcast media. Its operating model is based on a two party system, and if neither of these parties are making the case that our current difficulties are a result of Brexit then that case will not receive the exposure it deserves.

Here we get to why many of those who oppose Brexit are angry at Labour’s position. They feel that without a major party constantly reminding the public of the problems that Brexit is creating their chance of turning public opinion is much reduced. I suspect Labour’s response, if it was honest about what it was doing, would be to say that they will not risk the next election by taking a public anti-Brexit position. It is the Conservatives who got us into this mess, and they have to make the first move to get us out. The retort that Labour are reducing the scope of what they can do in government by allowing Brexit to happen has less force if we are staying in the Single Market and customs union.

This is related to the argument made by John Harris, which is that a vote to reverse Brexit would do nothing to reverse what caused the Brexit vote in the first place. If Brexit was stopped, UKIP would be given a new lease of life, and “the myth of betrayal ... would sit at the heart of our politics”. To recast what he is saying in my own words, you cannot undo social conservatism and the effects of economic deprivation, plus a decade or more of propaganda from the press, with a single vote of parliament. It is related to the earlier argument because Labour might say that they cannot reverse these same forces by a year of campaigning against Brexit before we leave.

Unfortunately there seems to be no reason why this state of affairs should change during the transition period. The government, committed to controlling immigration, will be determined to get a deal that ends free movement. Labour, to avoid immigration becoming too much of an election issue, will continue to triangulate. The best [3] hope I can see to avoid further Brexit damage is for Labour to defeat the Conservatives at an election, and quickly realise that they are better off staying in the Single Market and encouraging free movement. Which of course gets us back to why they are triangulating in the first place.

[1] It was designed in part to discourage countries leaving the EU. As David Allen Green suggests, there was a better way to leave the EU.

[2] We have gradually seen the government inching their way towards the EU proposals. (Remarks by Boris Johnson, like those of Donald Trump, are a distraction that it is best to ignore.) They are taking their time because the UK side has almost no power in the negotiations, and it is better to gradually concede to minimise any negative reaction among Brexiteers or the public. (Part of the problem here is that because the government still maintains a public stance that is pure fantasy, and the opposition wants to stay deliberately vague, the media feel unable to be straight on these issues with the public. It also requires effort to dispel fantasy with reality.)

[3] ‘best’ as in better than any other likely outcome.

When capturing the middle ground works or fails

In 2015 Labour went for austerity-lite compared to Osborne’s full on austerity. It failed. Yet in 2017 Labour went for Brexit-lite, and it worked. Why does capturing the middle ground (often called triangulation) sometimes work and sometimes fail?

The theory behind why it should work is straightforward. Suppose you can grade an issue from 1 to 10, and we have a two party system: you can vote Labour or Conservative. In the case of Brexit, 1 would be staying in the EU and joining the Euro, and 10 would be No Deal. Now suppose voters are evenly distributed along this spectrum of possibilities: 10% want No Deal (10), 10% want a deal where we leave with minimal trade deals with the EU (9) and so on. An even distribution means 50% of the population want options between 1 and 5, and 50% want options between 6 and 10. Suppose the Conservatives go for option 8, which in this case is a fairly hard Brexit. Suppose Labour actually believe in option 3. What option should they campaign for in an election?

If all voters are well informed and are certain to vote, and there are no third parties, the answer is to go for the middle ground. If they campaigned for 3, they would capture only 50% of voters (those who prefer options 1 to 5), and the Conservatives would win those preferring 6 to 10. But if they campaigned for option 7, they would capture 70% of the vote. Indeed those voters who understood triangulation might have reasoned that although Labour were campaigning for 7, they were only doing that to appease some of their traditional core voters, and if elected they would actually go for a more EU friendly option.

You could read Labour’s position on Brexit in GE2017 as being very close to the Conservatives. But the language that stressed the importance of the economy allowed those who prefered options 1 to 7 to think Labour would be better than the Conservatives. Labour did indeed appear to go for something like option 7 in GE2017, and it seems to have worked: the swing to Labour was higher in areas that voted to Remain (their did not alienate voters who wanted options 2 or 3), but they captured some Leave voters as well. Whether that Labour positioning was based on triangulation or did actually reflect the leadership's true beliefs I honestly do not know.

Compare this to the 2015 election and austerity, where option 1 is wanting fiscal stimulus and more public investment because interest rates were stuck close to their lower bound, and 10 was an even sharper austerity than George Osborne was proposing. Instead he proposed option 8, and Labour went for something more moderate: on paper maybe 6, but they kept quiet about the difference so maybe in practice 7. Labour’s positioning is generally thought to have failed. Not only did they lose the election, but afterwards an ‘outsider’ became party leader on a platform that was clearly anti-austerity.

So why did triangulation work with Brexit in 2017 but fail with austerity in 2015? There are many ways of changing this very simple model to resolve this puzzle. My current favourite is as follows. What is missing from the linear scale of options outlined above is any account of the framework by which voters judge competence, and the option of not voting. In 2015 the dominant narrative was the one set out by the Conservatives: austerity was required because they were clearing up the mess left by Labour. By positioning themselves as austerity-lite Labour in effect did nothing to challenge that narrative. This had two consequences. First, those who took a strong anti-austerity line might have been tempted not to vote. Second, those in the middle did not go with Labour because Labour’s competence was questionable: they had caused the deficit problem in the first place.

So Labour’s positioning in 2015 to capture the middle ground failed. By not challenging the dominant narrative they appeared to accept their alleged past incompetence, and committed anti-austerity voters may have not turned up. In 2017 Labour openly challenged the austerity narrative. That meant they didn’t capture the middle ground, but they did not lose it either. (It should also be added that the middle ground on austerity has probably been shifting as the deficit itself falls.)

In 2017 with Brexit, there was no dominant narrative. As I have remarked before, the country is as divided as it was in the original vote. Labour had two options. It could oppose Brexit, and get the anti-Brexit vote. Or it could attempt to capture the middle ground by accepting Brexit but stressing that they would put the economy first. They, by preference or design, went with the second triangulation option and it seems to have worked.

Why were hard line Remainers not put off from voting Labour as anti-austerity voters may have been in 2015? In part I suspect because Brexit was not the only dominant issue. Labour campaigned on its anti-austerity manifesto, and for many Remain voters this was at least as important as Brexit. This meant that not voting was not an option. There may also have been the realisation that had Labour campaigned to Remain, this would have allowed the Conservatives to make the election a rerun of the Brexit vote, and the distribution of voters by constituency would mean the Conservatives would have won more seats even if the national vote had been evenly split. So in the case of Brexit, but not austerity, triangulation made sense.

Whether this is right or not I have no idea as I am very much an amateur on these issues. I only write about it here because I have not seen this comparison between the two elections made elsewhere. To the extent that Labour’s triangulation on Brexit was tactical, it means if (following May's failed election) the Conservatives move to a softer Brexit (from 8 to 7, say), it is important that Labour moves as well (from 7 to 6) to keep their Remain voters on side.