Posted by The Labour party conference kicks off in Brighton tomorrow and has the potential for some very internally divisive issues to be discussed. Not least of all, the parties policy on Brexit which has no clearly defined message. The Lib Dems have one, albeit one that I find totally abhorrent. We must remain at all costs and they will revoke article 50 (a\nd ipso facto overturn the referendum result). The Tories have one. We must leave at all costs, including no-deal if necessary. Labour, well, at the moment their policy seems to be to wait and see what happens and take an approach that will garner them the most votes at election time.
So far Jeremy Corbyn has refrained from committing to a firm party policy for Brexit going forward. He is coming under an increasing amount of pressure to do so however. Many are saying he needs to commit to remaining and that if another referendum is called, Labour need to state unequivocally that their official position will be to back remain. As of now, no such commitment has been forthcoming.
Corbyn is facing a tricky proposition. At the moment the position ‘seems’ to be that the Labour party will fight a general election with the promise of negotiating an improved withdrawal agreement with Brussels and then promising to hold a referendum where the options are either remain in the EU, or leave under the newly negotiated agreement. This is a rather vague proposition, and it’s not even clear if this is their position at all. Many Labour members and MP’s are saying that the party cannot campaign a general election with such a vague message and need to nail down a concrete message that they can go to the voters with. Many also think that Corbyn needs to agree to making the official position of the party that they are committed to leaving the union and if there is another referendum, they will campaign firmly for leave.
From what has been said so far, Corbyn doesn’t seem very keen on committing to this course of action. Everything he has said up until now implies that he is in favour of a vaguer strategy that he can tweak during the course of a general election campaign. This has the advantage that he can quickly react to what he perceives the public want. It also has the huge disadvantage that no-one will truly know what the parties policy is on the matter. Many Labour activists are calling for the party to back a vote at the conference that would force the party to back a firm remain policy during a general election campaign, even if Jeremy Corbyn refuses to back the policy. Such an outcome would do nothing for voter confidence in the party. If they can’t even sort out what they want to do about Brexit internally, what hope have they got if they got into government?
Another problem facing Labour at the moment is the public perception of Jeremy Corbyn. As the graph in the tweet from Guido shows, his opinion rating is horrendously low. The public don’t want him as PM, most don’t even want him as leader of the Labour party. This poses a huge problem for the party. There isn’t enough time to push through a new leader in time for a general election that is very likely going to come in the not too distant future. There also isn’t much time to try and increase his approval rating. What can they do to mitigate this situation? Not much. They have to roll with what they’ve got and make the best of a bad situation. The best way to do that is party solidarity. At the moment they have none of this and look like a totally disorganised rabble to their core voters. Add that to the lib dems policy of a flat out revocation of article 50 and you have huge potential for a split remain vote in a lot of constituencies.
Labour is in a very precarious position. Unless they can solidify their position they run the huge risk of losing a huge swathe of voters to the lib dems. The conference over the next few days will hopefully provide a good insight into what they plan to do to remedy it. Unless that remedy comes with a unification of views across the party however, I feel they will fail to win over voters outside of the core Labour membership, and the big winners from that in terms of votes will be the lib dems.
The Brexit brigade should also be revelling in this. Any splitting of the vote between Labour and the Lib Dems is effectively a split of the remain vote. It’s extremely unlikely that a pact will be introduced between the two parties, largely because of Jo Swinson’s policy of revoking article 50. Brexiters need to take full advantage of this and combine resources to put the right candidates in the right seats where they can beat the divided remainers. The Tories and the Brexit party face similar split vote issues however. If they can’t come to some sort of agreement to aid in the tactical voting, the next general election will likely do nothing to provide an answer to the Brexit issue and inevitably end up further dividing the nation.