People’s will has changed: we don’t want Brexit

Don’t believe the lie that Nigel Farage’s success in the European Parliament elections means the people want hard Brexit. They don’t. But it still may be thrust down our throats against our will because we are about to end up with an extreme Brexiter as prime minister.

Farage’s Brexit Party came top of the poll with 32% of the vote. But otherwise, it was a dismal night for the Brexiters – and a fantastic one for pro-Europeans, especially the Lib Dems and Greens which collectively got more votes than the Brexit Party.

The Tories were savaged, getting only 9% of the vote, apparently their worst performance since 1832. UKIP was wiped out. And Labour got a good walloping. Voters finally saw through Jeremy Corbyn’s policy of fudge and ambiguity, giving his party only 14%.

If you add in the SNP, Change UK and Plaid Cymru, unambiguously pro-European parties got over 40%. The Brexit Party and UKIP together got just 35%. So the pro-Europeans are clearly ahead of the hard Brexiters.

If you add Labour to the tally of those parties wanting a People’s Vote and the Tories to those that don’t, the pro-referendum group is 10 points ahead – 54% versus 44%. The people’s will has changed. We don’t want hard Brexit. We don’t want soft Brexit. We want a new referendum – and we want to stay in the EU.

Hard Brexiter as PM

But that doesn’t mean we’ll get what we want.

The clear and present danger is that the Tories will pick a leader who will try to crash out of the EU without any deal. Whoever wins the prize will care more about stopping Conservative votes slipping away to Farage than governing in the interest of the country as a whole. Indeed, Boris Johnson, the frontrunner, was already drawing that lesson in his Telegraph column this morning.

There is little chance of stopping a hard Brexiter becoming Tory leader. But Parliament can stop them getting their way, contrary to a much-publicised blog from the Institute of Government last week. MPs have several ways to force the government to put Brexit back to the people, as my colleague Nick Kent showed in this article.

Corbyn is now facing intense pressure from his senior colleagues – especially Emily Thornberry and Tom Watson – to get off the fence and back a new referendum unambiguously. Yesterday he shifted further in the right direction. As more and more sensible Conservatives also realise that soft Brexit is no longer an option, we can probably get a majority in Parliament for a People’s Vote.

How to win a general election

There are also enough Tory MPs so opposed to crashing out that a hard Brexit prime minister may lose a no confidence vote. Several senior Conservatives, including Philip Hammond, hinted at this yesterday. A general election would then be on the cards. Indeed, Theresa May’s replacement might preempt this outcome and call an election themselves.

This is both an opportunity and a risk. Although pro-Europeans are in the majority in the country, our first past the post electoral system could still deliver a majority in Parliament to hard Brexiters – especially if the pro-referendum parties split the vote and compete with each other. It will be a racing certainty if the new Tory leader also reaches an electoral pact with Farage.

The pro-referendum forces must find a way of uniting. The good news is that Change UK, which took 3% of the vote in the European elections, seems to be getting the message that it needs to join forces with the Lib Dems.

But that won’t be nearly enough. The Lib Dems and Greens must also find a way not to split the vote. And ideally there should be some broader alliance with Labour, provided it finally comes off the fence.

One way of achieving this would be to hold primaries to choose pro-European champions across the country. The losers would endorse the winners – who would then have a great chance of getting elected. There would be no primaries in constituencies where the sitting MP pledged unequivocally to push for a referendum.

Achieving anything like this will be hard. There is so much tribalism in politics. But despite last night’s fantastic results, we are still looking down the barrel of a gun. It’s time for our leaders to rise above petty politics and put the national interest first.

Correction: The total for the pro-referendum group was changed from 56% to 54%