The party grassroots and Labour voters are anti-Brexit. It's this which must guide the leadership.
2018 is a vital year in the Brexit battle, and there are great opportunities for Labour to pick apart May’s Brexit. But the party needs to turn its Brexit fudge into clarity. The voters need it, members need it and the country needs it too.
In the coming year, the government will have to negotiate transition before it knows its Brexit destination — and it will have to find a solution to the frankly impossible conundrum of separating Northern Ireland from Ireland without harming peace and economic stability.
May will no longer be able to pretend that she can have a pick’n’mix Brexit, and will have to take on one side of her Cabinet by opting for hard or soft Brexit.
The Prime Minister will rack up quite a few miles offering perks and deals to different EU partners, but it will be those battles closer to home that could really unravel the government, and Labour should be maximising them.
Labour can win the Brexit debate – but the party too has its own choices to make. While the government struggles to decide between two extreme forms of Brexit, Labour has a golden opportunity to look at all options, especially given shifting public opinion for the UK.
At Best for Britain we are fighting for all options to be on the table, including No Brexit, when the meaningful vote comes around.
There are three main reasons why Labour should shift its policy to include a No Brexit option.
1. This is likely to reflect what the Labour Party Membership want.
Many polls and surveys have consistently put staying in the EU well above 70% amongst the Labour Party membership.
This will help the leadership get the clarity they need. The party need to look at creating new forums and networks, harnessing new technology to allow members to get messages through – loudly and clearly.
If the Party leadership believe in bottom up democracy, it has never been more vital to listen than on this issue.
2. Hardening the position will help Labour at the ballot box.
Research done by Best for Britain shows that many voters may have picked Labour as the anti-Brexit vehicle in 2017.
These voters are likely to have lent Labour their vote but not made a long-term commitments to the party (yet).
The real electoral battle ground is for the new floating vote: people that support staying in the EU, many of whom flocked to whichever party was most likely to beat the Conservatives- because of Brexit.
This suggests that by appealing to voters that wanted to stay in the EU, Labour will likely be able to maintain and extend their gains made in 2017.
According to Ipsos Mori, Labour has the votes of 54% of remain voters to hold onto in the next election. Meanwhile the Tories have 26% of remain voters still to lose.
3. To attract new voters as well as keep the ones Labour gained, all options need to be on the table.
I and my colleagues at Best for Britain have been campaigning to win a meaningful vote on Brexit with all options on the table, including staying in the European Union.
This is not the position of an ideological campaign: it’s about what’s best for Britain – providing a safety net the country is crying out for.
With David Davis now in post despite lying to Parliament, Liam Fox in charge of trade talks despite countless examples of incompetence, and with Theresa May barely hanging on to leadership of the Tory party, the country needs a real set of alternatives to those being presented by the government.
It’s time for Labour to develop these alternatives. Labour should focus on a jobs-first new deal with the EU, whether inside or outside.
It should focus on deep discussions as to how its agenda might be implemented within EU rules, and seek support for what would be the micro-targeting of investment in the most deprived areas of the UK.
All of Labour’s stated objectives in the manifesto can be delivered within the context of EU Membership. The economic fallout of leaving the EU would most likely shatter that programme.
Labour is the only party that can offer what the majority of people who think that Brexit is a mistake actually need and want: leadership that reflects this view and a safe, steady path to serious consideration of the no Brexit option.
The local elections in May will be a particular test as to where the votes of those that wanted to stay in the EU will go- Labour should consolidate its position before then.
2018 could be the year where we can show the electoral dividend of this position. And if Labour doesn’t shift, other pro-European forces may pop up and take away the vital proportion of voters that got Labour over the line in many marginal seats.
Eloise Todd is CEO of Best for Britain. She tweets here.
17 Responses to “Opposing Brexit might be the best strategy for Labour in 2018. Here’s why”
Terry
Parliament said it would respect the Referendum result.
Labour declared it would respect the peoples decision.
Only political leaders lacking integrity wish to nullify democracy.
It won’t wash.
Apart from the fact that Labour’s leader won’t be fooled into a disastrous anti-Brexit stance, were Labour to volte-face, it would be royally crucified by the wrath of the many on an unheard of scale, and justifiably so, as an unprincipled, neoliberal kowtowing party for the few.
Labour marches forward with a real alternative to austerity and privatisation, making the best of Brexit, and must not be distracted by the toxicity of the LibDems, Tony Blair and others who fail to understand why forgotten communities voted as they did, and how these same communities will be let down if we don’t get on with winning the General Election, whenever it comes.
PS I voted remain.
Alasdair Macdonald
Robert and Cloud Cuckoo,
I agree with much of what you aspire to with regard to Labour. However, at present Labour is pretty fractured, despite the gains at the GE and has no coherent policy with regard to Brexit and is adopting a wait-and-see-how-the-wind-is-blowing approach in the hope that the Tories explode and Labour comes to Government by default. And, it is then that the fissures within Labour will burst open because Government actually means taking decisions.
I think that constitutional reform has to be a centrepiece of any reforming government, which wants to bring about irreversible paradigm shift which entails a genuine redistribution of power and wealth. (Personally, I think dissolution of the Union, with independence for Scotland, reunification of Ireland and for England and Wales to make up their own minds).
I agree with you, Cloud Cuckoo, in that there are strong grounds for optimism in the awakening of political consciousness and involvement by the young. Labour has always been conservative and patriotic – jingoistic English nationalist, and fervently royalist, often – and its electorate and supporters have always been susceptible to union-jack waving. It has, also, had many who saw through all of this and had genuinely socialist-redistributive-republican paradigm and, that was the Labour Party for which I voted often and invested hopes. However, in the 1990s I realised that ‘new’ Labour was largely Thatcherism rebranded and had as an aim, the destruction of ‘hope’, that socialism/republicanism entailed. Many of the young who are coming into politics do not have that historical colonialist baggage. They are better-educated, they have access to a wider range of information sources and have the in-built bullshit detection, they are creative, they see the depredations that Thatcherism is inflicting, they see Gordon Brown for the risible and ridiculous dinosaur that he is. However, the positions of power within many CLPs are held by such cliques of dinosaurs who have set up standing orders in such a way as to make change difficult.
Where I disagree, Robert is in your hope of Labour bringing about change in Europe. Its history of opposition and lukewarmness towards Europe and the obvious coolness of Mr Corbyn towards it, gives it low status amongst Europeans. The fiasco of the ineptitude and xenophobia of the current Government and media towards Europe certainly ensures that for generations, Europeans will be very wary of ‘THE BRITS’. Undoubtedly, Europe needs change as we saw in its treatment of Greece, but, the change will come from the countries on the mainland and a reunited Ireland.