A Lost 48%: The Remain camp is far weaker in the Brexit debate today than in theory it should be

A year ago this week, David Cameron was whizzing around the capital cities of Europe looking for support for his renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership. It is a reflection of how much has changed in the past 12 months that not only has he seemingly vanished from the face of the Earth but that almost no one can now remember what exactly those terms were that he finally managed to secure.
Instead, we are in a situation where the House of Commons tonight appears set to award a Second Reading to a two-clause 137-word Bill that will authorise the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and start the process by which the UK will leave the EU two years later.
And it is symptomatic of the politics of the moment that although the obligation to enact this legislation has been imposed upon the Government by the Supreme Court and might thus be seen as somewhere between an inconvenience and an embarrassment for Theresa May and the Cabinet, it is the Labour Party that appears to be in agony about its approach to the issue with several resignations over it.
In theory, 48% is a very substantial minority in a referendum and should thus be a very substantial voice in the debate as to whether and how the withdrawal from the EU should be handled. The blunt political reality, however, is that the 48% are nowhere near a 48% influence in that discussion. What was the ‘Remain’ camp has been politically marginalised and is close to inconsequential at present. This matters enormously for how events move on from here. Nor does it look to be easily reversible.
There are five main factors as to why the 48% are so lost in this argument. They are captured in five ‘Ds’ which are strongly interlinked namely: Denial, Defection, Division, Decapitation and Defeatism.
Denial
The vast majority of those involved in the Remain campaign did not think that they would lose and made absolutely no planning as to what they would do if that loss was forthcoming. This was true at the highest levels of government with literally no preparation made for a Leave outcome (the only institution of the British State that engaged in serious scenario scoping was the Bank of England, led by a Canadian).
It also explains the comparative carelessness of the legislation which established the referendum which (unlike the equivalent law relating to the AV Referendum in 2011) did not set out explicitly in writing what would need to occur in terms of Article 50 if the UK decided to quit the EU. This failure even to contemplate what a Remain strategy might be has haunted the 48% ever since.
Defection
A crucial element in what has occurred involves defection at an elite level. While the public at large does not seem to have shifted sentiment much since 23 June 2016 - in that thumping majorities on both the Remain and Leave side still think that the position they took in the referendum was right -the exception is about 100-120 Conservative MPs who were in the ‘Reluctant Remain’ space at the time of the vote but who have to all intents and purposes bolted wholesale to ‘Brexit means Brexit’ territory commanded, of course, by the Prime Minister herself.
Mrs May’s Cabinet actually contains only one more individual who advocated withdrawal from the EU last spring than Mr Cameron’s did. Yet despite that all of them will vote for the Bill triggering Article 50 with no hint of any resignations. That cohesion was not a certainty after what was less than a landslide decision to abandon the EU after a campaign that few viewed as a well-informed or edifying spectacle. It was a political choice. It has left truly pro-Remain pro-EU Conservative voters with a minimal status inside their own party.
Division
While the centre-right of the political spectrum now appears to be basically united around the Brexit question (with at most 20 Conservative MPs willing to threaten to cause any kind of trouble), those who comprise the Remain contingent within the House of Commons are badly divided.
The Labour Party under a different leader making an uncompromising demand for a second referendum, or for a bespoke General Election before the divorce from the EU became absolute, might have made itself a natural (if temporary) home for the whole of the Remain electorate. That possibility (outlined in the BVCA Insight entitled ‘Apollo 13?’ on 27 2016) crashed and burned when the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn failed.
As is so obvious this week, Mr Corbyn is not willing to obstruct Brexit in any way and while he will huff and puff about remaining in the single market, this is plainly not a subject that excites him or his core supporters. A resolution calling for a second referendum was actually passed by his party conference last September but he has ignored it. Even if he were to embrace it absolutely would pro-Remain Conservatives be willing to vote for him and the rest of his policy package in a Hail Mary Pass attempt to stay in the EU?
Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are much more forcefully making the Remain case but she is not an alternative candidate to be Prime Minister, and her party is suspected to be secretly grateful for Brexit as it provides a means to another ballot on Scottish independence at some point in the future if the circumstances look fortuitous.
All of this means that the only political party that stands squarely in the Remain camp and for what appear to be the right reasons is the Liberal Democrats, a political ‘force’ which won less than 8% of the overall vote in May 2015 and which has nine Members of Parliament in a 650-seat chamber.
Decapitation
Division has been reinforced by decapitation. The leader of the Remain campaign was Mr Cameron with George Osborne acting as Robin to his Batman, but the former has left not only Downing Street but the House of Commons and seems to have disappeared to a beach somewhere while the latter remains nominally in Westminster but essentially invisible outside of the US lecture circuit and now the advisory board of Blackrock. No alternative figure of any stature has emerged to replace them (Tony Blair would love to take the responsibility on but the taint of Iraq makes that impractical).
The only party leader who is even auditioning for the part is, as implied above, Tim Farron for the Liberal Democrats, but he is hardly Winston Churchill in the late 1930s and, in truth, on most subjects other than Brexit, his instincts are much closer to Mr Corbyn than Mrs May, which makes him a challenging figure for pro-Remain Conservatives to rally to. Ironically, Nick Clegg would be a much better option.
Defeatism
All of the above has combined to knock the stuffing out of the 48% in the current Brexit discussion. A dispirited and deposed elite has not only effectively conceded that it cannot prevent the UK leaving the EU, it is rapidly resigning itself to a Brexit that could turn out on the harder end of the spectrum.
All of the above matters because it means that even if the economy were to suffer a sharp short-term reversal during the next two years which was almost universally agreed to be the result of the referendum and perceptions of what sort of Brexit conclusion would be reached, it is difficult to see how the Remain camp could make any sort of recovery and be in a position to seek reconsideration.
It is too institutionally enfeebled to make such a case bar a slowdown, unique to the UK, of 2008/9 proportions. The absence of this as a plausible, if improbable, possibility shifts the terms of dialogue within the Government, the House of Commons and the political class as a whole in favour of the formula for Brexit that Mrs May set out this month and which hence will be the basis for withdrawal.
Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA