How a General Election Can Produce a Result

At last Labour is ahead of the Conservatives in the polls. The Mail on Sunday reports a five per cent lead. The Cabinet implosion that seems increasingly likely makes a General Election more likely too.
May says that a Customs Union solution to leaving the European Union with a deal would be against her party’s manifesto. What she means is that half her Cabinet would walk out if she took this and used it to apply for a long extension. On the other hand, failure to intend to go to the EU Council Meeting on April 10th with a solution would cause the other side of the Cabinet to walk out as well. Also some 170 Tory MPs are demanding no long term extension. The upshot is a broken record, to try again for the Withdrawal Agreement and/ or the Political Declaration probably pitched against the Customs Union option on the notion that she could win against a Customs Union. Not with 58 short on the WA that would be more with the PD – so a straight fight would garner forces for the Customs Union, even amongst those who would remain as full members. Once there is a delay, anything is possible including remain. So this becomes a final battle, and either the government goes for the Customs Union or the government collapses at Cabinet level – in that the hard right walk out and then we get by fast footwork the removal of May, a caretaker and bringing in a set of opposition politicians who could guide the result through.

We are forever told that a referendum on the deal is divisive, and this is surely true. I am myself not a fan of any referendum, except one to support or reject a given decision. This second one might fulfil that condition, but it might equally be an either-or that is another gamble, and carries the political risk that no deal off the table (the economic risk being too great) is seen as a stitch-up.

We are also told that a General Election cannot decide the issue because the parties are split. I have thought this too, but now there are grounds for thinking otherwise. What may make the General Election something to decide the issue is the lack of credibility in both main parties, the Tories for making a mess and Labour for apparent indecision, PLUS the emergence of candidates for the Brexit Party and Change UK. Change UK do need to negotiate with the Liberal Democrats. But there could be a Macron style from nowhere result here, if only because the Brexit Party and the now undoubtedly racist UKIP will take votes from each other and won’t be able to negotiate unlike the Lib Dems and Change UK. We know that the Social Democratic Party collapsed, but the SDP were derailed by the Falklands War and, of course, the voting system. But if the two main parties melt down, then the first past the post system can deliver as it did to the Scottish Nationalists the moment they lost the Independence referendum.

The meltdown would happen during the campaign, in part because the manifestos would be confused and Theresa May or a caretaker leader would head the Tories’ campaign. Whether Corbyn could rally support as he did in 2017 may depend on whether the remain supporters rally to the Labour flag again. There is some doubt about this. Other issues of pressing need may well benefit Labour. But Tory and Labour remain votes may well go to the Liberal Democrats and Change UK. The Scottish National Party have domestic issues to tackle but for a UK representation they are bound to advance on Labour and the Tories this time. UKIP and Brexit Party may draw Tory right votes, but cancel each other out in effectiveness. It is not clear how the Tory right will do; also the Democratic Unionist Party may suffer in Northern Ireland for being unrepresentative of a narrow remain province and assisting uncertainty.

So there is a real chance that the outcome may well produce a result for the country, and a likely remain parliament again. And this time the remain aspect would be revoke. Set against this is the fact that ever fewer constituencies are marginal: what would have delivered landslides in the past delivers small victories or minority administrations now. But, if the meltdown happens, the change (pun intended) to something new is possible, once the tipping point is passed.

Liberal and Thoughtful Website creator; critical examiner of social sciences and theology, religious liberal, ‘terror blogger’.