26 November 2019

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

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. [...]

The real choices ahead

[...] While there is a realistic possibility of a Conservative majority to carry out manifesto commitments, there is no corresponding chance of an overall majority for the Labour Party. If there is a Labour Prime Minister after 12th December, s/he will be the head of a minority government or a coalition. It is far from inevitable that in such circumstances that Prime Minister would be Corbyn. If he were, his room for political and economic manoeuvre would be extremely limited to the extent that fears of a Marxist restructuring of the British economy by Corbyn after 12th December seem on any hypothesis greatly exaggerated.

If a non-Conservative government can be constructed after the General Election, it will be fragile, fractious and circumscribed. It will in effect be the caretaker government for which Corbyn was calling earlier in the year, with little in the way of an agreed political agenda beyond holding a Brexit referendum. To reassure their supporters, Labour may be able under this caretaker government to introduce some redistributive measures of tax and spend; the SNP will press for a second independence referendum (which they could not be certain of winning); and the Liberal Democrats will look to burnish their credentials as a centre party waiting to benefit from what they hope will be the coming restructuring of British party politics. But radical change of any political, economic or social kind will be firmly off the agenda.  In their local constituencies, tactical voters will opt for anti-Conservative parties whose domestic policies they may find uncongenial. At the national level, however, they will – critically – be voting for a pause for reflection in the Brexit process, a pause which the Conservative Party is refusing them.

Despite its long and painful birth, the European policy of a Labour-led government as it stands is not entirely incoherent. It may well be possible for a Labour government rapidly to renegotiate a Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration not very different to Johnson’s but pointing towards a “softer” Brexit in the medium term. After some initial grumbling, the EU would probably be willing to accommodate a new government less hostile to itself and all its works. There is equally a reasonable chance that a second EU referendum would produce a majority against Brexit, with all the renewed economic and political certainty that would imply. In those circumstances the caretaker government emerging from the election on 12th December would have performed its historic role and a new election would inevitably follow soon after. It would be amazing if that new election did not reflect new party configurations born of the agonising Brexit process and the fiercely contended second EU referendum. Many voters next month might see this last possibility as another considerable benefit of denying the Conservative Party the majority it craves.

Remain disunited?

Most of the commentators and pollsters currently predicting a Conservative victory are doing so because they see that Johnson can rely on the support of an enormous proportion of the voters wishing to leave the EU asap. Those wishing to remain are, however, split between Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the nationalist parties and the Greens in England, Scotland and Wales. Voters in their individual constituencies do, however, have the possibility of righting this imbalance by being prepared to vote for candidates who would not normally be their first choice, but who will contribute if elected to an anti-Conservative majority to block Brexit. [...] For Remainers, there are only two realistic options for a future government after 12th December: either a Conservative government to rip the UK out of the EU; or a caretaker non-Conservative government that could prevent Brexit. It would be an unusual Remainer who could honestly say that the dangers arising from the latter are anywhere near as great as those arising from the former.

Nobody who wishes to prevent Brexit and restructure British politics in the medium term should cast his or her vote without considering the national implications of their action. The perverse workings of the First Past the Post voting system can often mean that voting for the elector’s most favoured party can simply help their least favoured party win the seat in question. In most General Elections that is for most voters simply a regrettable fact of life. In this one, it would be for Remainers a wholly avoidable and self-inflicted tragedy.7

Full blog post on The Federal Trust

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