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Brexit: four parties dancing and falling to bits

By Arthur Dent - posted Thursday, 15 August 2019


Rebel Tory MPs did acquiesce in Bojo becoming PM so there is now a loose canon in 10 Downing Street.

But the Brexit saga will still be effectively over before October 17.

Bojo has done rather well in achieving a bounce in the polls, by adopting the No Deal policies of the Brexit party, while Labour and LibDems remained fairly static with a resulting net shift to:

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Con 31%, Lab 21%, Libdem 19%, Brexit 14%, Green 7%, SNP 4% (Scottish Nationalist Party)

That is still 45% voting for parties committed to Brexit even with No Deal, and 55% for parties opposed.

But Bojo cannot deliver Brexit because he does not have a majority in the House. So a high proportion of Tory votes will return to the Brexit party after Bojo's promises to deliver on October 31 implode. For example if 8% gave up on a Tory Brexit the result would be Con 23%, Brexit 22% – more like the situation at the start of July, before the Bojo bounce.

Labour also wants to get voters back from LibDems by opposing No Deal while not losing them to Brexit party by actually becoming a Remain party. It is likely to get a substantial swing back from the LibDems because Bojo is fully committed to "No Deal" and Labour can now wholeheartedly oppose that without alienating its Leave supporters. For example an 8% swing back would produce Lab 29%, Libdem 11% – more like the end of April, before the EU elections.

In addition, the extremism of Bojo's adoption of the Brexit party's "No Deal" could move some Tory voters out of the pro-Brexit camp entirely, either to not voting or to the LibDems. With the LibDems no longer competitive, a Tory swing to LibDems would lose Tory seats to Labour rather than to LibDems.

The combined net result could still be near extinction of the Tory party as looked plausible at the time of the EU elections. Only a detailed regional and seat by seat analysis of polls after actual campaign launches could hope to provide a reasonable prediction but things look much worse for Tories than for Labour if Labour successfully blocks a "damaging Tory No Deal Brexit". Things certainly look a lot better for Tories than before Bojo, but they could look a lot worse again after his bluster implodes.

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The media on both sides are convinced that Bojo is determined to jump off the "No Deal" cliff edge on October 31 expecting to win an election around the same date. That is absurd, but it has nearly all the journos quite mesmerized. The election will be held after Brexit has been "resolved" by a "Final Say" referendum. How long after would depend on the opposing inclinations of an unstable agreement among rebel Tories, LibDems, Labour and SNP.

Bojo's tactics can be understood as aiming to keep as many Brexit party voters as possible to save as many seats as possible by defying the majority in the House and getting sacked. It's an unusual strategy for a conservative PM but these are strange times. The point is that only by getting sacked can Bojo heroically lead most of the Brexiteers to glorious defeat in the inevitable "Final Say" referendum. Otherwise Farage could still be leading too many of them for the Tory party to survive. If nobody else will do it he will move to sack himself.

Labour now wants to avoid an early general election but cannot admit it.

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This article was first published on C21st Left.



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About the Author

Arthur Dent (formerly Albert Langer) is a left-wing political activist and an occasional contributor to the C21st Left blog.

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