May has been an eventful month in Brexit terms so far. On May 1st, the next batch of border checks on imports of certain goods have come into effect and there were local and Mayoral elections taking place up and down the country, which were widely considered a big test for PM Sunak.
Beyond the complexities, what both events illustrate is that Brexit has become unambiguously a (far-right) minority project. From ports, over businesses, to a majority of voters, very few people outside the narrow elite of politicians whose reputation and career prospects are entangled with Brexit still believe that anything good has or will come out of the project.
The best evidence to support that claim is the fact that hard-core Brexiters David Frost and Robert Jenrick felt the need to pen an article that reads like a truly desperate plea for other hardcore Brexiters to not lose hope that something can be salvaged from a project that in its envisaged form was bound to fail.
Yet even those who seemingly have lost hope do not ‘face up to Brexit’ – as Chris Grey put it recently. Instead of taking seriously the very real problems that the exit from the European Union and the single market create for an ever-growing list of people and businesses, those in charge continue to treat Brexit with nonchalance, denying its very real impact on the British economy and businesses, and instead trying to divert attention.
Diversion strategies
Their preferred diversion strategy remains immigration. Over the past weeks the government was trying to shift public’s attention towards appallingly trivial things such as the fact that one illegal immigrant has accepted £3000 from the UK government to voluntarily depart the country for Rwanda. The right-wing press and the government seek to create the impression that this somehow is linked to the recently passed -and absurdly named – Safety of Rwanda bill (which it is not, given that the voluntary scheme is separate from the forced deportation scheme).
The right-wing narrative was helped, however, by the Irish government. A spat has broken out about an uptick in asylum seekers in Ireland purportedly coming from NI as a result of the Rwanda plan. Others have commented on the complexities of the issue (see here and here). Suffice it to say, anyone seriously interested in the question whether or not the alleged increase of asylum seekers in Ireland coming by land (and hence from the UK) was driven by the Rwanda plan, could only conclude that it is impossible to know at this stage. Even if there was an increase in asylum seekers who already are in the UK moving to Ireland and if this was caused by the Rwanda plan, it would still not allow any conclusions to be drawn for the effect of the same policy on asylum seekers who are not currently in the UK. The fact that such bold and questionable statements have to be made (e.g. here by Tory minister Michelle Donelan) illustrates how very thin the evidence is for Brexiters having delivered any of their promises.
It also illustrates another persistent key feature of Brexiters’ delivering their project: Namely that they are fundamentally indifference to the actual impact their project is having on the country – otherwise all the political effort and the obscene amounts of public funds spent on a policy largely considered not only illegal but irrelevant in terms of actual migration numbers cannot be explained. Brexit, as I noted so many times before, is merely an instrument to fool enough people in a bid to conquer and maintain power – not a project that requires careful planification and execution to achieve positive outcomes for the country. Yet, even in that respect, Brexit starts to fail.
Brexit’s declining effectiveness
The instrumental effectiveness of Brexit in achieving the goal of conquering and maintaining power is rapidly declining as fewer and fewer people are being fooled and even fewer are seeing any Brexit benefits. The local election results – to the extent that they are a judgment of Sunak’s Brexitist government – illustrate that to perfection. The media have been awash with commentary of what the local elections really mean in terms of the next General Election. Now that all votes have been counted, three interesting observations seem to emerge:
Firstly, with a loss of nearly half of the seats to be defended (losing 474 and retaining 515), the Tories’ losses were at the lower end of expectations even accounting for pre-election expectation management. Even the hope of holding on to the Westminster seat in Blackpool South – where the Tory MP was defending a large majority – and two high-profile Mayoralties (the one in the West Midlands and the one in Tees Valley) was dashed. In the Blackpool South by election, Labour managed a 26.3% swing away from the Tory candidate. In the Mayoral races, Ben Houchen was re-elected as Tory Mayor of Tees Valley, but clearly despite his being a Conservative not thanks to it (very symbolically he reportedly forgot to wear his blue rosette for to the count). Andy Street widely-respected West Midlands Mayor, on the other hand, very narrowly lost his re-election bid, with some commentators suggesting he may have won had he run as an true independent rather than a pseudo-independent who played down his links to Sunak’s Conservatives without formally cutting them. More significantly – because not subject to the ‘incumbent bonus’ – the inaugural elections for the mayors of York & North Yorkshire, the North East, and the East Midlands all returned Labour mayors – despite conservative mayoral candidates mostly imitating Street and Houchen’s pseudo-independent strategy. The victory in York and North Yorkshire was hailed by Rachel Reeves as particular sweet win for Labour and particularly significant, because it indicates that older rural voters too are turning away from Sunak’s Tories.
The extent of the defeat and lack of confidence of the Tories was illustrated in a rather amusing way by deputy foreign minister Andrew Mitchell who insisted during the recount of the West Midlands vote that whether Andy Street won or ‘nearly won’ – i.e. what most people would call ‘lose’ as Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman pointed out – it would be a great achievement for the Tories.
In short, then, in different parts of the country, being part of the Conservative party has become an electoral liability not an asset.
Unsurprisingly, the reaction of the PopCons in the Tory party to the local election was to pressure Sunak to move the party further to the right. This seems to be based on the – correct – observation that where far-right Reform UK stood candidates, they took a large chunk of votes away from the Tories. What that right-shift strategy ignores though is that even the combined Tory and Reform vote (on average around 24% and 12%) only amounts to a minority of the electorate and even in the most optimistic scenarios would not be enough to win the GE.
The second interesting observation that emerges from the local elections concerns Labour’s chance of winning the next GE. Some commentators and the Tory party stress that Labour has not done as well as some may have expected or as well as Labour did in the last local elections before the 1997 GE victory. That idea is primarily based on Sky expert Prof Michael Thrasher’s argument that his estimate of a 7% lead of Labour over the Conservatives in the local elections suggests a number of seats in a GE that is 32 short of a majority. There are several problems with Thrasher’s claim, most notably that it does not acknowledge that people vote differently in GE’s than in local ones, that Reform will field more candidates competing for Tory votes in a GE than in the local elections. It also ignores the fact that a UK GE will be decided not just in England but may be heavily influenced by what happens in Scottland where the recent turmoil the SNP has been facing may allow Labour to retake a number of seats.
Regardless the idea of Labour underperforming was picked up by senior Tories. Sunak was according to some convinced by Conservatives election strategist Isaac Levido to spin the results not so much as a Tory near-worst-case scenario, but as a Labour not-as-good-as-expected one. He used Thrasher’s 7%-margin argument as the straw to clutch at, suggesting that the most likely outcome of the next GE will be a hung parliament and hence to a – supposedly – unsavoury coalition or Labour, Greens, Lib Dems, and/or SNP. This refried ‘coalition of chaos’ strategy from the 2015 GE is meant to encourage voters to flock back to the Conservatives, but may of course equally well push some former Conservative voters to switch to Labour rather than – say – the LibDems to avoid a hung parliament. Possibly for that reason some leading conservatives seem to privilege a different strategy which more directly aims at bolstering the Conservative vote share by suggesting a vote for Reform is a vote for Labour. While Sunak’s strategy is geared towards the electoral centre ground, the latter strategy is more in line with the direction of travel the party has embarked on in terms of a drift towards the right fringes of the political spectrum.
Regardless, taking into account that there is little tactical voting in local elections, Labour’s performance probably exceeded expectation most importantly due to the massive swing in the Blackpool South byelection and the victory in the North Yorkshire and West Midlands Mayoral races. Given that Labour’s stance on Gaza clearly has hurt its appeal among Muslim voters – both in terms of losing votes to other parties and possibly to abstentions –, the results are even more remarkable.
A third key takeaway concerns what has happened beyond the two dominant parties. On the far-right Reform UK have done well – but not brilliantly. But again, that is not necessarily surprising given that Reform did not stand as many candidates as they will in a GE. Conversely, Lib Dems – while down in terms of vote share – won more seats than the Tories, suggesting that Sunak is losing voters not just to those who think he is too centrist, but also to voters who think he is taking the party too far right. The Green party too won many new seats, almost doubling their previous total. Overall, what the local elections tell us in this respect is that the country is varied and pluralistic with people voting for parties as diverse as the Greens and Reform UK.
What it also tells us is that the majority of people who could and did vote cast their vote for parties that do not engage in the Brexitist discourse of xenophobia and culture wars that the Tories and Reform offer. Despite all the efforts that Tyce, Truss, Braverman and their likes are making to render PopCon popular, the divisive US-style culture war politics are the views of a minority of people in this country. Brexitism has been and remains the project of a far-right elite, not a reflection of what most people want.
Scorched earth, traps, cans down the road
Given that, it seems all the more astonishing that the Labour leadership still caters to the minority that does support Brexitist parties to win the next GE, rather than to the majority of people in this country. To be sure, given the distribution of that minority across key constituencies Labour needs to win to overturn the Tory majority, a cautious approach is certainly warranted including on Brexit. But a new risk for Labour emerges from the fact that Brexit is such an unmitigated disaster that more and more people are disowning it and distancing themselves from it. Thus, Bill Cash in his role as Chair of the European Security Committee asked Transport Minister Guy Opperman a question about the impact of the new border checks on food supply, expressing his ‘worry’ about perishable goods getting stuck at the border – omitting the fact that problem is a direct consequence of the hard Brexit he advocated for. Similarly, talk about the border checks being a choice rather than a necessary consequence of leaving the SM (a framing repeated even by trade experts), suggests that Brexit per se is not to blame, but rather its implementation.
What this more aggressive disowning of Brexit by more and more Brexiters may presage is that come the GE, voters will believe that the logical, inevitable, and necessary consequences of Brexit are policy choices that could be different even within the parameters of hard Brexit. In other words, we may witness a return of naïve cakeism, whereby people believe that – if done right – we could both exit the EU and enjoy all the privileges that EU membership confers on member states while not carrying any of the costs.
If this narrative catches on – as it has in the past - it will be easy to blame the new government for the further fallout from the full implementation of Brexit – such as the next patch of border paper work scheduled to be introduced in Octobre 2024 and physical checks, which are expected to cause considerable delays at UK ports. For Brexiters, kicking the can down the road on border checks, may now turn from a necessity imposed by unpreparedness and incompetence (as illustrated by the May 1st introduction of new checks), into savvy politics. Delaying the checks would force an incoming Labour government to introduce these necessary checks under its watch, possibly causing considerable chaos at the UK borders, leading to food shortages and higher prices. Alternatively, a Labour government keen on avoiding this outcome, delaying the checks further will sooner or later lead to another food scandal as the seizure of illegally important rotten meat this month and the increase in cases of food poisoning since Brexit suggests. If such a food scandal happens after a GE that returns a Labour government, Brexiters will claim that it is not Brexit, but the way it is implemented (or not implemented if the choice is closer alignment with the EU) by the (Labour) government that caused the damage.
That strategy can clearly be inferred from Frost and Jenrick’s article, which seeks to claim that things are going well outside the EU (based primarily on wishful thinking and the usual spurious claim about fastest-growing economy in Europe and about meaningless things like a fourth place in service exports). Brexiters are preparing the ground to blame any future economic problems on the anticipated Labour strategy – however timid – to seek closer alignment with the EU.
The risk of that strategy working is increased by Sunak’s attempt to set up a series of traps and scorching the earth in various places for Labour to inherit a proper mess.
Getting ready to inherit the Brexit mess
What can Labour do to avoid that trap of getting the blame for the inherited Brexit mess? The first thing would be to change Labour’s discourse that consists in saying in the abstract that the ‘people’s’ vote for Brexit has to be respected and that Brexit can be made to work (I have argued elsewhere that I think it could – in some sense). People clearly have changed their mind since 2016 – so there is no betrayal associated with changing government policy on UK-EU relations. Instead, Labour should focus on pointing out just how damaging Brexit has been. People need to understand the real cost of Brexit to accept that rapprochement is not treason but vitally important to reduce the damage. Most people will not take much convincing.
There is of course a risk associated with this, which comes from two sides as Simon Nixon’s post argues: Despite a majority of people now regretting Brexit, the electorate is not evenly spread geographically and winning leave voters who do not regret their vote may still matters in some areas. More importantly perhaps, the right-wing press remains pro-Brexit and antagonising them is understandably a key worry for Starmer.
However, as the Tories keep falling in the polls and the Brexit disaster continues to spread, we are approaching a point where the risks of boldness may be dwarfed by the risk of pre-election caution that will be followed by Labour ending up holding the hot potato. Accepting that a cautious approach to Brexit is not risk-free would be an important step to formulate a more effective and pro-active strategy. Starting to point out all the different ways in which Brexit has damaged people and businesses up and down the country without delivering on literally any of its promises would lay the groundwork for Labour to then get credit for limiting its damage once in power. For instance, shifting the focus on the unmitigated disaster Brexit borders currently are, will be key to generate the support in the population for measures to address them – even when they involve policies of rapprochement with the EU, e.g. through dynamic alignment. Given that such measures seem inevitable if rejoining remains a red line, Labour ignoring, or even downplaying Brexit damage makes no sense.
This is even more the case as Labour may be underestimating the number of voters who seem to be willing to support a bolder stance on Brexit. Edwin Hayward pointed out on Twitter that 34% labour voters seem unaware that Labour are against rejoining the EU; presumably suggesting that they see the Conservatives as the Brexit party and Labour as the anti-Brexit party. The possibility that Labour voters are expecting more pro-EU policies than what Labour currently offer and the fact that even outside Labour supporters Brexit is now clearly a minority elite project, suggest that is more leeway than the Labour leadership admits for a bolder strategy on UK-EU rapprochement. That does not seem where Labour is at at the moment.
Red lines over red lines
A few weeks ago, I suggested it was time to ‘invert the red lines’ – i.e. putting the onus on Brexiters by saying there is a limit to how much damage the country is willing to accept for the pipe dream of ‘taking back control.’ Yet since then, Labour has added more Brexiter-imposed red lines, even where they are clearly not needed for electoral gains.
Thus, Labour’s reaction to the EU’s proposal to start negotiations on a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS), like the government’s, was to reject it. Worse still, a spokesperson for the party stated that it saw such a deal as “synonymous with free movement.” Given that any government seeking a closer relationship most likely will have to discuss a YMS – because the EU seems keen on one and may include it in a future negotiation package – unhelpfully and wrongly equating such a scheme with FoM is puzzling. If the goal was to make sure Labour’s pre-GE stance on a YMS does not become an area where the Tories and the right-wing media see an opportunity to portray Labour as pro-EU, it would have been sufficient to simply stick to the line that a YMS was not currently part of Labour’s plans regarding UK-EU relationship. Going beyond that and equating it with FoM will either limit a future Labour government’s leeway in achieving the purported goal of a closer relationship with the EU or open it up to accusations of dishonesty and betrayal if a YMS does materialise further down the road.
Conversely, the YMS negotiation offer would have provide a great opportunity for Labour to start steering the public debate away from hysteric shouting, nonsensical slogans, and simplistic worldviews towards understanding and debating the details of the UK-EU relationship. Labour could have taken the opportunity to tell the public what is and what is not FOM. That may not be an easy task but given that any rapprochement with the EU will be depending on arduous negotiations over technical details, it is something the UK public will have get used to. Instead, Labour continues to let the terms of debates be imposed by a small right-wing elite that has less and less support in the population. Yet rather than appealing to the majority of people, Labour’s main priority seems to be to win back the votes of those working-class people who voted for Brexit in 2016 and for Johnson in 2019. Their strategy of doing so seems to be based on what these voters may have wanted before Brexit became a reality. It is also based on a biased view of what working-class voters are like.
Labour’s Lee Anderson
This was illustrated in astonishing fashion by the news that broke on Wednesday just before PMQ that Dover MP Natalie Elphicke was crossing the floor. Elphicke – an ardent Brexiter, former member of the ERG, and anti-immigration hardliner – is a controversial figure (notably due to her defending her ex-husband’s actions as a convicted sex offender) and not an obvious Labour MP given her voting record on workers’ rights (I have written about her before) and more generally her clearly right-wing – even by Tory standards – views.
Starmer’s motive to accept her despite her uneasy fit with Labour values and policy positions seems clear: Elphicke’s criticism of the government’s record on immigration hits Sunak where it hurts most. ‘Stopping the boats’ is arguably turning into Sunak’s first line of defence of his government’s. Seeing the outspoken anti-immigration MP for Dover defect to Labour due to the government’s failure to deliver on that promise is indeed one hell of a coup as one Labour MP is reported to have said. After finally getting the Rwanda bill through parliament and just when the claim about deterrent effect got some support in reality thanks to the statements by the Irish government, Elphicke’s mediatised defection and public statements completely undermine any claim to the government’s anti-immigration policy working. Given that the Conservatives plea to voters now is that they simply ‘need more time,’ this is devastating.
At the same time, Starmer accepting Elphicke constitutes another snub for the left wing of the party some of whom have been outraged about the move. Starmer accepting a controversial right-wing figure into the party may seem particularly surprising and offensive to left wingers after Jeremy Corbyn has been banned from standing as a Labour candidate over his antisemitism and Diane Abbott remains suspended for racist remarks in a letter published in the Observer.
Starmer’s stance on Elphicke confirms that his plan is to win the GE by appealing to defectors from the Tory party – including former Labour voters from the ‘Red Wall.’ More importantly perhaps, it also shows that he thinks he does not need or will not lose, left-wing voters by doing so. Here, the local elections may have confirmed him in his stance: There are clear signs that Labour is losing votes in areas with strong Muslim populations over its stance on Gaza. But the local elections show that Labour is gaining votes from all sorts of directions and groups of society – most importantly of course centrist Tory voters, but also working class 2019 Tory voters, and SNP supporters in Scottland. Might it be that Starmer feels safe enough to happily further antagonise his party’s left wing?
Whether or not this was a smart move electorally, it is a problematic one. Elphicke is to Labour what Lee Anderson was to the Tories: She may be seen as an exemplar signalling to a group of pro-Brexit, anti-immigrant voters that their views are welcome in the party. By doing so, there is a risk that Labour falls into the same trap of inadvertently patronising the working-class voters they want to win back by reducing them to crude xenophobic and culturally retrograde attitudes. Such views are held by a part of working class (and other) groups of society, but certainly do not represent working-class voters per se. Suggesting that they do – albeit implicitly – both gives these ideas more credence than they deserve and may push those who do not share them (working class or otherwise) to choose other parties.
Be that as it may, accepting right-Brexiters into the party will not help Starmer to free himself of Brexitism.
Dark times
Both in terms of Labour manoeuvring itself into a corner about Brexit and Starmer’s Labour alienating different groups of voters at a faster pace than Sunak’s Tories, it feels like for Labour the GE election cannot come soon enough. Unfortunately, the local election results made that less likely. Given the impending electoral disaster, Tory MPs will want to draw a salary from the state as long as possible and prepare for their future outside Parliament. Sunak will want as much time as possible – not because anyone (presumably not even the PM himself) believes that his plan is working, but in the hope that an unexpected event of sufficient importance will come along that averts the all but inevitable electoral defeat.
In the meantime, the country remains in a hostage situation where we are governed by an unelected PM who represents the interests of a small fraction of the population and imposes policies that do not solve any of our problems and make a lot of them worse. But perhaps the longer the dark times that have descended on British politics since 2016 last, the higher the chance that a new generation of politicians will be convinced that our country needs a fundamental reform to protect it from the charlatans and parasites that have imposed Brexit on us.