06 Feb 2019

Decree Absolute? Once the UK has left the EU it will be the Labour Party that faces a divorce

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This week has, like so many weeks over the past few months, sees Whitehall and Westminster utterly consumed by Brexit. There is not even the pretense now of ‘business as usual’ in what was once described as the corridors of power. This week is, though, unusual in the sense that much of the dialogue is once again more private than public.

These discussions are occurring within various sections of the Conservative Party itself, between ministers seeking to discern what sort of ‘ask’ that they could make of Brussels and the EU-27 which might be acceptable, and between the Prime Minister and other EU leaders. All of which is a prelude to a more dramatic series of events to take place next week when, on Wednesday, Theresa May will come back to the House of Commons with another statement of intent as to how she intends to proceed next (a ‘neutral motion’), which will then be debated and is open to amendment the day afterwards.

As the clock ticks so the choice between accepting a variation of the Withdrawal Agreement and retaining the departure date of Friday 29 March or rejecting it and seeking an extension of Article 50 for another model of exit becomes still starker. Hence, the frenzied dialogue between actors as different as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nicky Morgan as to how they might find a formula that Conservative MPs and the EU can take.

That these conversations are occurring and in a reasonably constructive spirit is significant. There is no equivalent process of talking between pro-Corbyn and anti-Corbyn forces on the Labour side of the House of Commons. The vigorous internal contest between rival camps over whether the party should wholeheartedly embrace a second referendum on EU membership seems to have been won by the leadership. There will doubtless be another skirmish over it when amendments to the neutral motion are put forward next week. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell do not want Labour to block Brexit but they want the Conservative Party to continue to own the challenge for as long as possible. This is partly pure parliamentary politics but also because it defers the moment when Labour itself starts what could be a lengthy, complicated, divisive, bitter and brutal divorce within its own ranks.

That a split of some kind will occur in 2019 now looks highly likely. There are up to 20 MPs who are so alienated from Mr Corbyn that it is hard to envisage how they can remain under his charge. A hint of what is to come could be witnessed on the front page of The Observer last Sunday which had some additional detail on what is being debated secretly within Labour moderate circles. It is very close to a matter of not ‘if’ but ‘when’, and beyond the ‘when’, how many Labour MPs will take the plunge, whether the decisive break occurs in the summer or after the Labour Party conference in Brighton in September and what organisational form the division will take.

This too is tied up with the Brexit timetable. An extension of Article 50 probably has the secondary impact of delaying the opening moves in the creation of a new political party within the House of Commons. If Brexit occurs on 29 March, by contrast, many of those most determined to break free of Mr Corbyn may calculate that they would be better off moving before the summer recess in July and not waiting to September. What after all, they will argue, might possibly emerge as a reason to stay in the interim? The three forces that are driving the split - Momentum, Brexit and anti-Semitism - will still be there.

There are, nonetheless, three very sizeable questions that the dissidents have to decide on swiftly. This is not destined to be a clean break in which the whole of the anti-Corbyn contingent within the parliamentary Labour Party departs together on one single day but almost certainly a much messier affair with a ‘pioneer’ collection of MPs detaching themselves first and then hoping others follow. The extent to which they do depends in part on whether the first split is deemed to have been a success and in part on how the Corbynites and Momentum respond to what is likely to happen.

Does the new entity seek to be more than a parliamentary party from the outset?

The first question that those who are determined to break from Labour will have to answer is whether they want, at first, to be essentially a parliamentary faction, separate from the Official Opposition, with their own institutional structure at the House of Commons, or whether they want immediately to attempt to become a national political party with a national membership base.

This is not an academic distinction, it has considerable implications for resources and for the character of leadership within the entity. Where people stand on this is often influenced by their interpretation of why the SDP ultimately failed as a political venture in the 1980s. With more than three years of this Parliament remaining, and the provisions of the Fixed Term Parliament Act now limiting the options of an incumbent Prime Minister in a manner that was not the case 30-plus years ago, there might be a strong case this time for a proto-party to start life as a purely parliamentary club and then evolve or not as the next stages in the Labour Party’s coming civil war take place over the coming 18 months.

This would allow for more informality, a much looser model of leadership and for something closer to a national supporters list mobilised through social media rather than all of the (cumbersome and expensive) features of traditional UK national party structures. In this regard, En Marche!, the device through which Emmanuel Macron conducted his campaign for the presidency and then the National Assembly in France, has been studied closely by MPs likely to leave Labour. Their conclusion is that change since the 1980s means that a SDP model does not need to be repeated.

What relationship would a new party have with others in the centre ground of politics?

The single biggest strategic dilemma that faces any new party formed mostly, perhaps exclusively, of what would be by then ex-Labour MPs is the following. Is what they aspire to create an Alternative Labour Party or an alternative to not only the Labour Party but to all existing mainstream parties? Is the target market essentially those who have habitually voted Labour, or is it a broader mix of electors who might have backed any of what were historically the three main political parties in the UK, or perhaps not have participated at the polling station much at all. Is the new item a Labour Party Mark II or a Centre Party Mark I?

If those who launch this exercise do not have a consistent and coherent line of thinking in this regard then they risk abject failure and intellectual derision. The basics start with the name. If the objective is to reclaim the Labour Party from Mr Corbyn and to restore matters to where they were in 2015, then the dissident force should logically have a name that indicates this such as ‘Real Labour’ or ‘True Labour’. If instead the aim is to establish something entirely novel on the lines of the Macron movement then the word ‘Labour’ should be nowhere in its title.

This in turn has implications for the relationship that such a force might have with other parties. If the idea is to convince Labour voters to switch wholesale from Mr Corbyn to ‘True Labour’ then too cosy an accord with the Liberal Democrats and a small number of Conservative MPs would not make much sense. By contrast, a Centre Party would benefit from, and allowing for the electoral system would definitely need, a close accord with the Liberal Democrats and others, with at the minimum a non-aggression pact in certain constituencies if not necessarily a full-blown Liberal-SDP type alliance.

To what extent is the call for a second referendum the principal political position of a new party?

Finally, the defectors need to determine the extent to which a call for a second referendum is or is not the signature policy stance for them. It has the virtue that it could quickly rally a substantial section of the electorate to its colours. It has the vice that there are many Labour MPs who might otherwise be thought as obvious targets as recruits, who sincerely believe that a second referendum is wrong in principle, could easily backfire in practice and is a dangerous distraction from securing a soft Brexit, which would constitute a base for a future reconsideration of UK membership of the EU. An unduly absolutist insistence on a second referendum may thus limit the appeal of any new party. To dilute the pro-EU stand too much, though, might leave it without a striking political selling point.

The complicated answers to the questions outlined above indicate how difficult an endeavour a new party would be. Even if it were doomed to ‘failure’ in 2022, however, it could be deemed important and a success if it just does well enough to render a Labour Party victory under Mr Corbyn less likely. A new entity capable of drawing up to 10% of the national vote and disproportionately from the centre-left of the spectrum would be more than enough to shut a Corbyn-led Labour Party out of office. For many of those at the heart of the behind-the-scenes planning that would be enough of a triumph even if not a single MP were elected under their banner. Divorce can be decisive in politics.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA


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