The Federal Trust : The Brexit Election: Not all outcomes are equally bad

[Celerity]

https://fedtrust.co.uk/the-brexit-election-not-all-outcomes-are-equally-bad/

Jeremy Corbyn has rarely in recent decades feared political controversy. On issues such as Ireland, the Middle East, NATO, income redistribution and renationalisation, he has advocated with candour and persistence views that have been unattractive, even shocking to many electors. Many of his supporters thereby hail him as a “conviction politician,” contrasting him favourably with his New Labour predecessors, tainted as they were by compromise and equivocation in the search for electoral advantage. On the central question of Brexit, however, the Leader of the Opposition has struck since 2016 a notably different tone. His policy on Brexit has been by turns vague, mutable, self-contradictory and utopian. Even more strikingly, he has presented himself as seeking compromise to heal divisions on the issue within British society. This supposedly statesmanlike and pragmatic approach culminated in Corbyn’s recent declaration that in the event of a further European referendum held by a government he headed, he would personally remain neutral, as a reassurance to the electorate that he would faithfully carry out its final decision.

While some faithful adherents have hailed this promised Corbynite neutrality as a strategic master-stroke, others have seen it as a final and desperate attempt at compromise between Corbyn’s personal Euroscepticism and the pro-Remain attitudes of the great majority of his party and voters. It is indeed extraordinary that the Leader of the Opposition should enter this General Election holding a position of avowed neutrality on the greatest political, economic and constitutional question of the day. The strangeness of this stance is underlined yet further by the intriguing prospect of the Labour Party’s renegotiating in government the present Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, and then holding a referendum, in which Corbyn would not support the renegotiated text and many of his Ministers would actively campaign against it. There is a striking symmetry between the predicaments of Corbyn and David Cameron. Cameron wanted to stay in the European Union, but his party would not allow him to do so. Corbyn wants to leave the European Union but is also held back by his party. Botched attempts to manage their recalcitrant parties by circumscribed party leaders have been a recurrent and damaging aspect of the entire Brexit tragi-comedy.

Tactical voting

The prominent Brexit commentator Chris Grey’s sense of frustration on watching the ITV debate between Boris Johnson and Corbyn will have been shared by many. But those still hoping to put a spoke in the wheels of Brexit on 12th December would be ill-advised to resort to wishing an equal plague on both the Conservative and Labour houses. Whatever the inadequacies and implausibility of Corbyn’s personal position, the arguments in favour of tactical voting, calibrated to the needs of individual constituencies, are still overwhelming for Remainers. In many, perhaps most constituencies, a rational tactical vote will be a vote for Labour. The objective consequences for Brexit of a Conservative government will be different to those flowing from a non-Conservative government. A Corbyn-led minority government would be far from ideal in the minds of many, probably most Remainers. But it would be a considerable improvement on the Johnsonian alternative.

A number of websites have been set up providing detailed recommendations for tactical voting in individual constituencies. These recommendations occasionally vary, reflecting different polling data and divergent analyses of local circumstances. This occasional variation in no way undermines the general principle and efficacy of tactical voting on 12th December. The First Past the Post system sometimes makes it difficult, or even impossible to vote tactically with any assurance of success in every constituency. But it cannot be denied that if anti-Brexiteers vote throughout the country for the party most likely to defeat the Conservative Party in their seat, then nationally it will be much more difficult for Johnson to win a majority in the House of Commons.

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