Jo Swinson will campaign to cancel Brexit if there’s an election. Jeremy Corbyn will campaign for a referendum between a deal to leave the EU and no Brexit. It’s good they won’t have the same position.
The Lib Dem leader is set to get her party to back a policy of revoking Article 50 at its conference this week. That’s a clear policy which will appeal to pro-Europeans. No fudge or mudge.
It also has the advantage that Swinson won’t be asking the voters to delay the agony. Put her in Downing Street and we stay in the EU. No need to go through the rigmarole of a referendum which would delay the decision by another six months or so. While it would be wrong to cancel Brexit without first asking the people, doing so in a general election rather than a referendum is an acceptable way of finding out what they want.
Of course, it is fantasy to suppose that the Lib Dems will win the election. At most they will form some sort of government with Labour. So it is also fantasy to think that Brexit will be cancelled without a referendum. But that doesn’t stop it being a sensible electoral strategy for Swinson to pin her colours to the “revoke” mast.
Labour fudge
Corbyn, by contrast, will be stuck with a complex position. It is likely to be something like the one articulated by John McDonnell on the BBC’s Marr Show at the weekend.
The shadow chancellor said that, if Labour won an election, the party would “confirm” what the EU was prepared to offer as a Brexit deal and then ask the people in a referendum whether they wanted to leave with that deal or stay. There wouldn’t be an option to leave with no deal at all, as the election would just have been fought and won on excluding that.
McDonnell implied that the deal Labour would put to the people was Theresa May’s miserable withdrawal agreement. But various adjustments would be made, presumably in the non-binding political declaration that sketches our future relationship with the EU. Finally, the shadow chancellor said that he himself would campaign to stay in the EU in such a referendum but that other members of the Labour Party would take a different view.
That’s quite a mouthful. It’s hard to reduce it to a soundbite – and it’s easy to see how journalists and political opponents could have fun tearing it to bits. It should, in particular, allow the Lib Dems to peel off some pro-European voters who might normally vote Labour.
Merits of fudge
On the other hand, Labour’s complex fudge has some merit. It may allow it to hold onto votes from “soft Leavers”, especially in its heartlands in the North of England and the Midlands. By backing Labour – rather than the Conservatives or the Brexit Party – such voters wouldn’t be committing themselves to cancelling Brexit. They would know they would have another chance to give their view on Brexit in a future referendum.
Whether Labour hangs onto more votes in its heartlands than it loses to the Lib Dems is hard to say. But the combination of Lib Dem clarity and Labour fudge would deliver a bigger total anti-hard Brexit vote than if both parties had a simple “revoke” message.
The Tories are going to get savaged in Scotland by the SNP, and could be badly hurt in London and the South of England by the Lib Dems. If Labour hangs onto its seats in the North and the Midlands, there’s no way Boris Johnson can win.