Poor Expectations: why the Liberal Democrats are doomed

How times change. When Stephen Lloyd MP, who quit the Liberal Democrats this month in order to vote for May’s Brexit deal, first stood for Parliament in 2005, his party had 62 MPs. Following his departure, they now have 11. After Lloyd was elected as an MP in 2010, his party took part in a UK government for the first time since 1931, and within the previous decade had also governed as part of coalitions in Scotland and Wales. They were, in a very real sense, a major political force. Now they are struggling to have more seats than the DUP.

The party’s position on the fringes of British politics is a consequence of the 2015 general election result. In one devastating night, the Liberal Democrats’ participation in the Coalition undid over 45 years of electoral progress. Under Clegg, the party won just 8 MPs (-49) and 7.9% of the popular vote (-15.1pts). On both counts, this was their worst result since the general election of 1970, but it was also the biggest drop in Liberal support since 1931, and the biggest percentage loss of seats (86%) since 1918. Given that the 1931 election saw the Liberals stand 400 fewer candidates than in 1929, and that the 1918 election saw a temporary split in the Liberal Party, it is fair to say that the 2015 result was their biggest ever defeat in a ‘normal’ election.

Is it even possible for a party to recover from that, let alone to recover enough that they are in government again? Maybe. Stranger things have happened. But it would take a long time, and there are significant obstacles in its way. In this article, we’ll examine what they are. 

Part 1: Hard Times 

The Liberal Democrats’ entry into the Coalition government in 2010 was the culmination of an 80-year journey, in which the party dragged itself out of the political wilderness and back to the Cabinet. And yet, despite spending decades trying to return to power, just 5 years in government has left the party barely existing as a political force. Their local government base has been depleted, after over two thousand of their local councillors (51%) lost their seats; their representation in devolved Parliaments is virtually non-existent; their European Parliament representation is at its lowest level since the UK switched to using proportional representation; and their group of MPs (11) barely outnumbers those of the Democratic Unionist Party (10).

It is tempting to point to history as proof that the Liberal Democrats will never recover. But the truth is, it is hard to know. The party has never experienced circumstances as bad as the ones they experienced in 2015. Yes, the party has been stuck on a low vote share before, and yes, the party has gone through decades without winning more than 12 seats.

But since 1924 (when they lost 118 seats) and 1935 (when they lost 17.1pts in vote share) they have not experienced a mass withdrawal of support in any way similar to that experienced in 2015. Yet those examples set a worrying precedent. After dropping from 23% to 7% in 1931, the Liberals did not win more than 20% of the vote until 1983. And after dipping below 100 seats for the very first time in the 1924 general election, the party never won anywhere near that number of seats again. To this day – 94 years after the 1924 defeat – it still hasn’t. So if history is any guide, the Lib Dems’ defeat in 2015 will leave them on the fringes of UK politics for a very, very long time.

As former Leader Tim Farron told the Independent in March 2018: 

“There is no doubt it [the Coalition] possibly fatally damaged the party”. 

Part 2: A Tale of Two Elections 

But history is not the only indication that the Lib Dems will struggle to return to power – on this question, the present is as much a guide as the past.

The 2017 result, in which they made a net gain of 4 seats, would seem to suggest that they are recovering. But outside of Scotland, where anti-SNP tactical voting saw them gain 3 MPs, and a few key seats, the party simply collapsed further. For the first time since the 19th century, there are no Liberal MPs in Wales at all, after its last stronghold of Ceredigion was won by Plaid Cymru in 2017. In England, the party now holds just 7 seats out of 533, only 1 more than their 2015 result (which was their worst since 1970). And contrary to expectations – given that 48% of the voters backed ‘Remain’ in 2016 – the strongly pro-EU Lib Dems failed to increase their vote share in the 2017 election. Instead, they went backwards, falling to 7.4%, their worst share of the popular vote since 1959. The party lost half of the seats (4 out of 8) that they had won in 2015 – it was only by gaining 1 new seat (Oxford West & Abingdon) and regaining 7 seats they had held in 2010 that allowed them to make net gain of 4.

Even more worryingly for the Lib Dems is the fact that they have collapsed in many of the seats they used to hold. The table below shows the 57 constituencies won by the party in 2010, and compares the Liberal Democrat vote in 2010 with their vote share in 2015 and 2017.

As you can see, in 35 of the 57 seats, the party did worse in 2017 than in 2015.



And in 29 previously-held Lib Dem constituencies, the party’s vote share has undergone a dramatic collapse since 2010, falling by more than 20pts.



Effectively, the 2017 election confirmed the message of the 2015 election: the Lib Dems’ support base has dramatically shrunk, and it is not growing. Between 1983 and 2015, the party never received less than 17% of the popular vote. Yet they have now received less than 8% of the vote in two successive elections for the first time since 1959, and they have not averaged above 10% in the polls in any month since their landslide defeat in 2015. This is not a party on the cusp of returning to relevance. Yes, the only way is up – but ‘up’ is a long, long way away. 

Part 3: The Mystery of Brexit 

The final question worth considering, when it comes to the Lib Dems, is (what else?) Brexit.

You might not know it, but Brexit has affected the Liberal Democrats’ base as much as it has affected the Tories and Labour. A YouGov survey conducted after the 2017 election found that only 20% of the party’s voters had backed ‘Leave’ in 2016. This might not be surprising, but amongst people who had voted for the Lib Dems in 2015, 29% had voted Leave. YouGov found that 73% of these ‘2015 Lib Dem Leave’ voters backed other parties in 2017. Even more worryingly for the party, a YouGov exit poll after the 2017 election suggested that the Lib Dems had retained only 42% of the people who backed them in 2015. By contrast, Labour retained 83% of its 2015 voters.

Think about that: the Lib Dems couldn’t even convince half of the people who voted for them after 5 years of the Coalition to stick with them just two years later. Granted, it’s not quite as bad as the Green Party (who lost 86% of the voters who backed them in 2015) and the Lib Dems did manage to win a handful of new voters from other parties, arguably because of their stance on Brexit. But the party faces an uphill party even to stand still. As Tim Farron himself said in 2018, if it weren’t for the Lib Dems’ stance on Brexit: 

“There’s no way we’d have 12 seats and 100,000 members now. We’d be doing a David Owen now and winding up the party”. 

The mystery, though, is this: when Britain leaves the European Union (as it will), how long can the Lib Dems continue to be the party of Remain? The party’s voters back remain by an 80-20 margin. Nearly 6 in 10 of its voters didn’t back the party in 2015, and even its former Leader thinks that the only reason the party is still viable is because of its Brexit stance. When Britain has left the EU, why would those people continue to vote Lib Dem? We don’t have an answer to this question. But neither do the Lib Dems. And that should really, really concern them. 

Conclusion 

Inhis speech to the 2010 Lib Dem conference, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg claimed that coalition government would soon become the norm for Britain; that “Liberal, plural politics will feel natural” after 5 years of the Coalition. “Hold our nerve”, he told his party, “and we will have changed British politics for good”.

It’s easy to see why he thought that. Earlier that year, his party had won its highest share of the popular vote (23.0%) in over 25 years. Despite declining slightly from their 2005 result of 62 seats, the Lib Dems still had 57 MPs, more than it had held at any point from 1931-2005. And for the first time since the early 1930s, Liberals were part of the government.

Yet 5 years later, it wasn’t Clegg giving the Leader’s speech to Lib Dem conference. He had resigned a few months earlier after leading the Lib Dems to their worst defeat since 1918.

Instead, the new Leader Tim Farron gave the speech. The 2015 election result “was utterly devastating”, he told members. But he did not criticise the party’s performance in government. Instead he said: 

“I am proud of what we did in government and I am determined that we will return to government. Did we make mistakes in Government? Of course, but show me a government that didn’t. When we come to measure our time in Government the scales are heavily weighed in our favour…We paid a heavy price for our time in government, but we did right by our country”. 

Two years later, Farron led the Lib Dems to their lowest share of the popular vote since 1959. He resigned not long after.

Despite the electorate rejecting them decisively in two successive elections, the Lib Dems have not shown any desire to apologise for the Coalition. Indeed, after Farron resigned, the party elected Vince Cable – a former Coalition minister – as their new Leader unopposed.

And that, ultimately, is why the Lib Dems are doomed: not because they lost badly in 2015 (which they did), not because they declined further in 2017 (which they did) and not because they continue to struggle in opinion polls (which they do). They are doomed as a party because they fundamentally will not accept that the decision to join the Coalition is what led to them losing 80% of their seats. As ‘The Newsroom’ famously stated: “The first step in solving any problem is recognising there is one”. Until the Lib Dems acknowledge their mistake, they will remain stuck in the political wilderness.

And to be honest, that’s where they deserve to stay.

Should I stay or should I go? Labour’s Brexit dilemma

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With the government having finally put its proposed Brexit deal on the table, and with a Parliamentary vote imminent, the Labour Party and its 257 MPs face a dramatic test of their Brexit position.

Despite the vocal demands of the “People’s Vote” campaign, Labour has declined to back a second EU referendum, and has instead prioritised a general election so that Labour can form a government and negotiate a Brexit deal that meets its “6 tests” for a good deal. As part of this strategy, Labour will vote against the Tories’ Brexit deal - the idea is that if the Tories’ Brexit deal cannot pass the Commons, then the government will be forced to call a general election to obtain a mandate for May’s deal. Labour can then win the election and renegotiate a new deal. If Labour cannot obtain an election, then all options (including a second referendum) remain on the table.

The nuanced approach of Labour’s policy has often left pro-EU campaigners frustrated and angry – many ask why Labour doesn’t simply back a second referendum or support stopping Brexit outright. The reasons for Labour’s complex strategy, however, are equally complex, and in this article we’ll try take a look at the statistics that illustrate Labour’s dilemma.

Part 1: Play to Win 

On the face of it, Labour’s base is mostly anti-Brexit. In the most recent Survation poll (the most accurate pollsters in 2017), the pollster found that 65% of those who voted Labour in 2017 would vote ‘Remain’ in a second EU referendum. Other surveys have found that 90% of Labour members support ‘Remain’, and that 78% of Labour members back a second referendum on Brexit. With the Brexit vote having gone to Leave by only a 4pt margin (52-48) in 2016, and with public opinion having slightly shifted towards Remain since 2016, you might think Labour’s path is clear: it should follow the advice of its voters and members, adopt a ‘Stop Brexit’ (or second referendum) manifesto pledge and win the votes of the pro-EU 48%. Simple. 

But the problem Labour faces is this: the House of Commons isn’t elected through a national popular vote. It’s elected through individual constituencies. And on the question of Brexit, the vast majority of those constituencies lean more strongly one way or the other than the nation as a whole. Within England, Wales and Scotland, just 18 constituencies recorded a vote that matched the national figure (52% Leave, 48% Remain). 350 gave a higher vote share to Leave (on average, 60% for Leave), whilst 264 gave a higher share to Remain than the national figure (on average, 59% for Remain). And if Labour wants to become the governing party, especially with an overall majority, it has to win dozens upon dozens of constituencies where the voters backed Leave. 

In total, Labour needs to gain 64 new seats (and retain its current ones) to win an overall majority. The smoothest path runs through the 76 seats where Labour is behind the opposition by less than 10 percentage points. 42 of these voted Leave (with a 59% Leave vote, on average), and 36 voted Remain (with a 61% Remain vote, on average).

This in itself shows Labour’s challenge – it cannot win a majority without taking seats that went heavily for Leave AND that went heavily for Remain. However, the challenge is greater than it looks. Of those marginal seats, 23 of the 36 pro-Remain seats are held by the SNP or Plaid Cymru, and taking seats from the two nationalist parties doesn’t increase the number of anti-Conservative MPs in the Commons. Labour could take every single one of these seats and it wouldn’t make any difference: the Tories would still form the government. 

The seats that matter most are the 54 Conservative-held Labour target seats. And of these 54 seats, a full 41 voted Leave (with an average Leave vote of 59%), and just 13 voted ‘Remain’ (with an average Remain vote of 57%). These 54 seats are listed in the table below.

The upshot of it all is this. Labour voters might be pro-Remain. Labour members might be pro-Remain. And the national vote in 2016 may have been close. But in most of the marginal seats that Labour must win in order to form the next government, the voters leaned heavily towards Leave in 2016.

A Labour Party committed to overturning those people’s votes and keeping Britain in the EU against their wishes might well win a handful of votes from the Liberal Democrats, and take some seats from the SNP, but the price might well be losing to the Tories in dozens upon dozens of marginal seats. That doesn’t sound like a risk worth taking. Labour’s nuanced and unifying Brexit policy, that respects the referendum whilst reaching out to Remain voters, may well be the only way for the party to win in these marginal seats. After all, it’s that strategy that saw Labour win 42% of the popular vote in England in 2017 – its highest share of the vote since 1997.

Part 2: The Magnificent Six 

But Labour’s electoral challenge extends beyond their marginal target seats. There are a total of 54 Labour-held seats where the party leads its opponent by less than 10 points, and to win power Labour must also hold all of these constituencies (or all but a few of them). Of these, Labour is being challenged by the SNP in 6 of them, meaning that regardless of the result the seat will elect an anti-Conservative MP. Of the other 48 Labour-held marginal seats in England and Wales, the Tories are in second place in 46, with the other two being Labour/Lib Dem marginals. And most of these (36, to be exact) voted Leave.

But how do we know that these seats would vote Conservative if they want Leave? After all, many have voted for Labour for decades. Unfortunately, those long-held loyalties are crumbling under the pressure of a motivated and active pro-Brexit electorate. 

Take Stoke-on-Trent-South. The seat voted Labour from 1950 (when it was created) until 2017, when it elected 26-year old Jack Brereton as its first Conservative MP. Stoke-on-Trent-South was one of six Labour-held seats lost to the Conservatives in 2017, all of which had one thing in common: they all voted Leave by big margins in 2016. Stoke-on-Trent-South itself voted Leave with 71% of the vote.

 
In many more pro-Leave seats, Labour came close to losing. In Ashfield (71% Leave), Labour’s majority fell from 9,000 votes to 441, with the Tories increasing their vote share by 21pts; in Dudley North (71% Leave), it fell from 4,000 votes to just 22 votes; in Bishop Auckland (61% Leave) it fell from 3,500 votes to 502. The story is the same in dozens of other Labour seats; the table below shows all 69 Labour-held seats where there was a net swing to the Tories in 2017. As you’ll see, every single one of them voted Leave.

The six lost Labour Leave seats, and the fact that every single Labour seat that saw a swing to the Tories in 2017 voted Leave, are a warning for Labour to stay away from a ‘Remain-at-all-costs’ position. Leave voters have shown that in heavily pro-Leave seats, loyalty to Labour is less important to them than their desire for a swift British exit from the EU. The potential gains of a ‘Stop Brexit’ standpoint (gaining 15 Tory and Lib Dem seats) are outweighed by the potentially devastating downsides (losing 36 Labour seats to the Tories). The potential gains are minimal, and the risks are very high. Far from proving to be electoral gold dust, a Stop Brexit stance could be destructive for the Labour Party. 

Part 3: Every Little Bit Hurts

The final point to make about Labour’s dilemma has already been implied above, but it is worth restating it specifically: two-thirds of Labour voters might be pro-Remain, but a third of them are not, and it is those Leave voters who are making Labour competitive. Losing them, especially losing them to the pro-Leave Tories, would be devastating.

The recent 20,000-sample poll by Survation (the large sample gives us more accurate demographic breakdowns) showed that Labour is currently attracting the support of 51% of Remain voters. However, this large support from Remain voters constitutes just 23% of the overall popular vote. Even assuming that those backing Labour who didn’t vote in 2016 are pro-EU (these non-voters are currently delivering 6 points’ worth of vote share to Labour), this still leaves Labour on a mere 29% of the popular vote, less than in 2015. Labour only gets to 40% (1pt ahead of the Tories) when you take into account Leave voters, 26% of whom are voting Labour. These ‘Labour Leave’ voters constitute a sizeable 12 percentage points of the overall popular vote.

Thus, Labour’s 40% share of the vote is made up of three groups:

• People who voted Remain in 2016 (22.8pts)
• People who voted Leave in 2016 (11.6pts)
• People who didn’t vote in 2016 (5.9pts)

Some Remain campaigners argue that Labour could win on the votes of Remainers alone, as they made up 48% of the total votes in the 2016 referendum. But this is a misreading of the situation. At present, a full quarter (26%) of ‘Remain’ voters are voting for the Conservatives – the party driving us towards a Hard Brexit. If they will vote for the Conservatives even now, then Brexit clearly isn’t their priority or their main objection to the Labour Party, and adopting a 100% Remain position will not win them over.

The remaining 'Remain' voters are backing the Lib Dems, Greens or SNP. Together this accounts for 9 percentage points of vote share overall. So if Labour ignored (and lost) its pro-Leave voters, adopted a ‘Stop Brexit’ position and managed to get ALL pro-EU Lib Dem, Green and SNP voters, they'd still only get to 38% overall - less than they are polling now.

So: if Labour loses Labour Leavers (12pts) to the Tories, and the Tories retain Tory Leavers (25pts), Tory Remainers (12pts) and new Tory voters (2pts) they would be polling at 51%. If Labour gains all other Remain voters, keeps Labour Remainers (23pts) & new Labour voters (6pts) they'd be polling 38%. 

Simply put: the numbers don’t add up. Labour cannot win the popular vote without winning at least some Leave voters, and if the party drives away all of its Leave voters, then a landslide Tory majority (the sort predicted in 2017) will be the result.

Now, some will say that it’s unrealistic to assume that all Labour Leave voters would leave if Labour adopted a Stop Brexit position. And that’s true. But the point of the stats above isn’t to predict what would happen – we don’t know. It’s to illustrate that in order to win with a Stop Brexit position, Labour would need absolutely everything to go right. It would need to retain all its Remain voters, keep all of its new voters and gain almost every single non-Conservative Remain voter. And even if it did all of that, and retained at least two-thirds of its Leave voters (after promising to overturn their referendum vote) Labour would end up with a 3pt lead in the popular vote – barely within the margin of error of its current polling.

Given the massive risks, and the small gains possible even with everything going right, is it really worth alienating half the voters for a poll lead barely bigger than what we have now?

Conclusion

Referendums are really tricky for the Labour Party. For the 118 years in which it has existed, questions of constitutional reform have never been a fundamental, existential priority for the party. Unlike the Liberals, it has never championed proportional representation; even with a massive majority in 1997-2005, it left the House of Lords virtually unchanged; and when the whole of the UK last voted on a major constitutional issue (the referendum on the Alternative Vote) the party remained strictly neutral. Whilst the party has taken many stances on constitutional issues, they have often been cautious (such as on electoral reform), have only introduced limited changes (such as the incremental devolution for Wales and London) or simply dropped the policy entirely (regional devolution for England). Other issues have consistently been regarded as more important.

There has been one recent exception: Scotland.

In the run-up to the 2014 independence referendum, the Scottish Labour Party sided completely with the unionist side of the argument. The party became dedicated to the question of keeping Scotland in the union, with former Labour PMs and Chancellors becoming key spokespeople of the 'No' campaign. And even as the electorate became more and more polarised, Scottish Labour decided to firmly align itself solely with the 55% of the voters who voted ‘No’ to independence.

The response of the electorate was overwhelming: in the 2015 election, Scottish Labour lost 40 of its 41 seats. In 2016, it fell behind the Tories. And in 2017, despite gaining seats, the party ended up third in the Scottish popular vote and all but 1 of its MPs have tiny majorities. 

Hopefully, UK Labour will learn from what happened to the Scottish Labour Party and steer clear of being defined solely by its position on a polarising constitutional question. If it doesn’t learn from the past, the much-predicted landslide Tory majority we heard so much about in 2017 may well turn out to have been merely delayed, and not prevented. Let's hope we never have to find out.

Weaker In: Why Remain would lose a second EU referendum

Last week, the forces of liberalism in Britain held one of their very rare protest marches, as the “People’s Vote” campaign led a march through London in support of a second referendum on EU membership. The numbers attending the march (700,000) has led to another round of speculation about the possibility of another EU referendum taking place before the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.

But, as this blog post will argue, the chances of Remainers actually winning a second EU referendum are slim. 

Part 1: Nothing has changed 

In a recent segment on the BBC comedy programme ‘Have I Got News For You’, comedian Henning Wehn argued that:

“It’s absolutely pointless to have a second referendum, because for anyone to vote any different they would have to admit they got it wrong the first time round. No-one’s going to do that. All that talk about ‘Oh, if there is a second referendum there will be 80-20 in favour of Remain’ – not on your nelly. No chance. 

"There will be exactly the same outcome, because: say you’re weren’t happy with the levels of immigration two years ago, you’re not going to be happy about it now. So, if you thought two years ago the country was run by unelected European bureaucrats, well, nothing over the past two years would have changed your opinion on that. And if you were daft enough to vote for that £350m a week for the NHS lie, you’re daft enough to vote for something else next time round.”

He’s right. The fundamental issues that caused people to vote Leave have not been solved. Research by the Centre for Social Investigation concluded that the major reasons for people voting ‘Leave’ were immigration and sovereignty. Lord Ashcroft found that 49% of Leave voters ranked sovereignty as their main reason for voting ‘Leave’, with 33% opting for immigration as their main reason. This is supported by a YouGov poll from June 2016, in which 45% of Leave voters ranked sovereignty as their primary reason for voting ‘Leave’, with 26% ranking immigration top. Other data from the British Election Study and the Centre for Social Investigation backs this up. 

The problem for Remainers is this: neither of these issues have been resolved in any way since 2016.

Due to the nature of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, Britain will remain in the EU’s institutions until at least 2020, meaning any referendum held prior to that date will be held in the context of Britain still sharing sovereignty with the EU and still operating a form of freedom of movement. Not only that, but Remainers have not yet articulated an alternative political programme that satisfies these critiques of the EU – nor do they have an ideological vision that motivates a competing group of voters. The Remain campaign’s position for the past two years can be summed up in one word: “stop”. And that is not a sustainable basis for a campaign that wants to overturn the biggest exercise in British mass democracy since 1975. 

The reasons that people voted Leave have not been addressed, and the Remain campaign has no answers to them. Why would the result be any different to 2016?

Part 2: For the Many, not the Few 

Ultimately, beyond the technical details of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, nothing has emerged that would give Leave voters a reason to vote Remain that was not already put forward by Stronger in Europe in June 2016. Economic disaster, loss of global respect, complete Conservative dominance over British life: all these reasons to vote ‘Remain’ were raised by pro-EU campaigners on the liberal centre and left in 2016. Indeed, Stronger In ran a campaign based entirely off the idea that leaving the EU would be a total disaster. Where it did make an argument for Remaining, rather than against Leaving, it simply defended the status quo as being a less risky option, and made no argument for reform or change.

But the public does want change. Life for most people in this country has gotten a lot worse since 2008, and the rise of Brexit and Corbyn have shown the desire for a radical break with the previous economic consensus. And yet, instead of challenging the dominant economic model, Stronger In embraced it.

As a consequence, the Remain campaign was disconnected from the lives of ordinary people in Britain. Bythe end of the campaign, the public saw the Remain campaign as an establishment campaign, and saw the Leave campaign as more understanding of ordinary people. And nothing has changed: a YouGov poll in August showed that voters view the new Remain campaign as even less understanding of ordinary people than Stronger In Europe.

What’s fascinating is that perceptions of the Remain campaign have actually slightly improved amongst Leave voters – 78% saw Stronger In Europe as not understanding ordinary people’s concerns, whilst 67% say the same of the new Remain campaign. But among ‘Remain’ voters, the new Remain campaign’s numbers have plummeted – by a 2pt margin, Remain voters think the new Remain campaign doesn’t understand ordinary people’s concerns. Back in 2016, Remain voters said by a 21pt margin that Stronger In Europe did understand those concerns. If the new Remain campaign can’t convince its own base, who can it convince?

Meanwhile, broadly speaking, public opinion has barely shifted in the two years since the 2016 referendum. The average of polls in the month before the 2016 vote showed both ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’ tied on 50% each; polls in October 2018, thus far, show ‘Remain’ on 53% and ‘Leave’ on 47%, a shift of only a few percentage points in two-and-a-half years. In fact, ‘Leave’ has not fallen below 47% in any month since June 2016. 

Polls consistently show that well over 80% of Remain and Leave voters have not changed their minds, and when asked by YouGov in September 2018 how they would feel if Brexit was stopped, 79% of Remain voters said ‘happy’ and 80% of Leave voters said ‘unhappy’. The divisions are as strong as they were in June 2016. To complacently insist, as many Remainers do, that Remain would win by a landslide now that people know “the facts” about Brexit is to ignore the fact that public opinion remains split right down the middle.

Given that the usual margin of error in polls is plus or minus 4pts, and that the Remain campaign started the 2016 referendum campaign polling at 52% (and won 48%), the position of Remainers is incredibly precarious even before any kind of organised campaign. A slight shift in polling – such as the sort that occurred in 2016 – or even a normal-sized error in polling could result in a simple repeat of the 2016 result. There is not much room for error.

And yet the Remain campaign has not learned from its errors. Having been led in the 2016 campaign by David Cameron, Alan Johnson and Nick Clegg, its new political leaders are Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry, Nick Clegg (again), Tony Blair and Vince Cable – once again putting failed, unpopular centre-right politicians front and centre. Rather than advocating an alternative political programme to the Tories’ Brexit agenda (as Labour’s 2017 manifesto did), the new Remain campaign is purely defensive. Their strategy seems to consist of listing economic statistics, lecturing people about how terrible it will be if we leave the EU and defending the status quo.

In other words, their strategy, their leadership and their standing amongst the public are largely unchanged since 2016. So why would the referendum result be any different to 2016? 

Part 3: Remain and Reform 

In 2016, despite misgivings, the vast majority of the Labour Party and the political left rallied behind ‘Remain’ in the EU referendum. The Labour Party officially backed the campaign and Jeremy Corbyn toured the country promoting Labour’s “Remain and Reform” campaign (a strategy which convinced two-thirds of Labour voters to back ‘Remain’).

That will not happen next time round.

In any second EU referendum, Labour will be split 3 ways:

1. Remainers
2. People who voted ‘Remain’ in 2016 but accept the result
3. Leavers

Not only that, but we now have concrete proof that around a third of Labour voters want Brexit to happen, which we did not have before June 2016. We also know that these ‘Labour Leave’ voters are perfectly willing to walk away from the party if Labour tries to overturn their vote. YouGov polling showed that in April 2017, only 14% of Leave voters were voting Labour, a figure which rose to 24% after an election campaign in which the party committed to respecting the referendum result. Will they stick around if the party decides to campaign for their votes to be ignored?

As a result of all this, the most active and well-resourced progressive organisation in Britain (the Labour Party) will not put its full weight behind Remain, for fear of splitting the party and driving away its voters. The Remain campaign would only have the whole-hearted support of the Liberal Democrats – a party polling at just 7% of the vote. And given that a lot of Remainers’ energy has been focused on Labour, they seem to be well aware that without the full support of the Labour Party, a second Remain campaign will be much, much weaker than the first.

 

Part 4: The legitimacy problem 

The final problem Remainers face is this: as much as they try to avoid the question of legitimacy, there is no electoral mandate of any kind for a second referendum, fundamentally undermining Remainers’ claim to be demanding a “People’s Vote”. A true “People’s Vote” by definition would be one sought and demanded by the mass of the people, as expressed through the election of a government committed to holding one. But this has simply not happened. 

Parties committed to holding a second referendum (the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party) won a combined 9% of the popular vote in 2017, and just 13 seats between them. Meanwhile, parties explicitly committed to respecting the result of the referendum won 90.2% of the popular vote and 635 seats. Unlike in 2015, when the referendum was a manifesto commitment of a governing party that won an overall majority – coming hot on the heels of UKIP winning the 2014 European elections – there is no mandate from the electorate to hold a second referendum. None. Consequently, any referendum would (unless a snap election is held beforehand to obtain consent for it) have been imposed on the electorate by the establishment. Its legitimacy would be undermined from day 1, giving the Leave campaign a new argument that they did not have in 2016 – that voting Leave would be upholding British democracy and defending it against the manoeuvrings of the establishment.

 

Conclusion 

Despite a lot of energy from the Remain campaign, and plenty of mistakes and incompetence from the government, the polls show that on the question of EU membership, the public remains as split over the issue as they were in June 2016. The issues that powered the Leave vote in 2016 remain unresolved, while important sections of the ‘Remain’ coalition cannot be counted on as strongly as in 2016. And yet despite this, the new Remain campaign seems determined to repeat the mistakes of its predecessor. It has pushed unpopular, centre-right politicians to the forefront. It has focused purely on the dangers of leaving, whilst advocating no alternative programme for change. It has made its primary demand a referendum that nobody voted for. And it has failed to convince the public that it understands their concerns about the EU.  

The events of 2015-18 have shown that predicting the future is a fool’s errand. But with all of these things taken into account, it is very difficult to see a path to victory for ‘Remain’ in a second referendum. And it would certainly be foolish to pronounce, as some have done, that Remain would win in a landslide. 

Because remember: that’s what most people thought on June 23^rd 2016 as well.

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