Thread by @uk_domain_names

Here's why the LibDems pivoting to out-and-out Remain (away from "second referendum with a Remain option and we'll campaign for Remain") is so important: if not the largest party, they could well end up kingmakers. If they're Remain to the core, the price of coalition is clear.

"If you want power, cancel Brexit. We'll support you." (Or words to that effect.) Question is, whether Corbyn really wants to be PM enough to accept that massive trade-off. But at least it's crystal clear.

Because if you look at the LibDems right now, their messaging is fantastic. It's snappy, and unequivocal: ("Stop Brexit", "B-word to Brexit", "Remain Alliance")

But when you look at the convoluted path to actually getting remain, you start to get a itchy feeling.

For one thing, Labour may pivot to offering broadly the same thing as the LibDems. A second referendum isn't a massive concession. It doesn't guarantee Remain. It doesn't guarantee anything. So Labour could do it to leap straight back onto the same turf occupied by the LD.

But hard remain... "Cancel Article 50, stop Brexit and Remain" remain? Now that's somewhere Labour's never going to go. But it's there for the taking for a brave party. There are the 6 million signatories to the petition.

And there are plenty of other people who are both:
A) fed up with the Brexit chaos and want to see it done
and
B) More in favour of cancelling Brexit than of going ahead with it, having seen said chaos, economic downturn and warnings of what's to come

The LD will never win a single moderate-to-hard Leave vote. So what? They don't need to. They shouldn't even be trying. But there's very soft Leave, undecideds/don't cares, and the vaste swathe of Remain all up for grabs.

The way the Tories are going, we can expect the snap GE to be the messiest we've ever faced. Every dirty trick in the book, and then some. The only was to cut through the mudstorm is to have a plan so simple, so straightforward, that it can be conveyed in under 10s.

"Cancel Article 50, stop Brexit and Remain" fits the bill.

"What do we want? To stop Brexit. How? Cancel etc."

Votes winging their way in 3... 2... 1...

Remember voting is private. Nobody knows who you vote for. So like the "shy Tories" there will be plenty of "shy Remainers".

By shy Remainers, I mean people who want to stop Brexit more than risk this no deal that's filling all the papers. But they wouldn't want to publicly admit that they want to go against what the "majority" voted for in the referendum. Inside the polling booth, they're safe.

(All the above assumes the GE happens before Brexit does, either before 31 October or in a short A50 extension granted by the EU so that we can squeeze it in. If Brexit day has passed and we're out, the best tactics become almost impossible to decypher.)

One last thing: hard Remain goes hand-in-glove with the label "Remain Alliance". In fact, it would make sense if the LD could convince their RA partners to also go hard Remain. That way, the message is even simpler yet (at least in RA areas): to cancel A50 & stop Brexit, vote RA.

If you're unconvinced, fine. But at least take a look at how the LibDems present the "Stop Brexit" idea on their website.
libdems.org.uk/brexit

And here's the page with their plan to stop Brexit. It's a huge sales pitch for a People's Vote. Sorry, but that doesn't stop anything. It gives us a chance, maybe, of doing so. Nothing more.

libdems.org.uk/our-plan-to-st…

BTW, this isn't me having a crack at the LD. Really. Brexit needs to be stopped, and they're doing as much as any - and more than most - towards that goal. They're pouring a vast amount of energy into it. But they could take the obvious shortcut instead, and reap the rewards.

And if you're still pondering, consider this:

Will the people who want Brexit scream any less if it's taken away from them in a 2nd ref than by a party winning enough MPs to push through its "revoke A50" policy?

I think they'll bust a lung either way.

In other words, offering the sop of a 2nd ref only works on reasonable people. But the screamers aren't. They're the same people blaming the EU, Remainers, and insufficiently pious Brexit believers, for the mess *they* created.