An interesting thread from @election_data, which poses an important question: is Labour wrong to believe that it can bank the Remain vote while switching its attention to Tory Leavers? The figures here suggest that it is. I’m not so sure. 1/7
There's no doubt that Labour's willingness to sit on its hands over Brexit has seen it bleed support among Remainers. According to Opinium, its anaemic polling performance is "primarily a result of losing favour amongst Remainers". But would this hold in a general election? 2/7
In 2017, Labour hoovered up Remain votes despite a pro-Leave manifesto, by positioning itself as the lesser of two evils. In the absence of a viable alternative, Remainers rallied around Labour as the best way to deny the Tories a blank cheque for whatever Brexit they pleased.3/7
Would this happen again? If Chequers collapsed & triggered an election *before* Brexit, that dynamic would still apply. The priority for Remainers would be to stop “No Deal”, championed by an emboldened Tory Right. As in 2017, that's likely to trump reservations about Labour. 4/7
If, as seems more likely, an election came *after* Brexit, then either the issue loses salience or things go very badly wrong – in which case the instinct would be to punish the govt. That scenario, again, would see Remainers rally behind Labour as the only viable alternative.5/7
In other words: in an election - as opposed to a poll, where switching is cost-free - Labour can probably hold the Remain vote *in England* so long as it is the only alternative to a Tory govt. The danger is that it alienates opinion so severely that a viable new party forms. 6/7
If that happened, all bets would be off. But as in the 1980s, the main contribution of a new party might simply be its gravitational pull on the Labour Party, frightening it into a change of direction. And that, alone, might be enough to justify its creation. 7/7
