Political Pain. The European Parliament elections are a huge headache for Britain and for Brussels

Unless the Westminster equivalent of divine intervention occurs next week then the UK will have to participate in an election for the European Parliament, which will be held in this country on Thursday 23 May but with the results not counted and announced until Sunday 26 May (the day on which most EU nations cast their ballots).

The caveat is that if, in theory, the Withdrawal Agreement were to be adopted by the House of Commons before the end of next week and the old European Parliament were willing to come back into special session during the week afterwards, then it would just be possible for the UK to exit the EU late but relatively early compared with the latest extension deadline (on 1 June not 31 October), and avoid a European Parliament election entirely. About a month ago, this did not seem entirely inconceivable. Right now, it appears this would be a miracle of the scale of the loaves and fish. This has consequences.

The reason why there seemed to be some chance of a cross-party understanding (if not outright co-operation) that would allow the Withdrawal Agreement to be enacted was as follows. For a while it looked as if the Conservative Party, Labour Party and European Union would have a mutual strong interest in avoiding the UK returning to the European Parliament elections. The Conservatives had the fear of a strong showing by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party which would undermine their standing. Labour had reason to suspect that The Independent Group/Change UK would hoover up the Remain and second referendum support at their expense. The EU, as will be illustrated later, had profound grounds not to want the complications that a continued UK presence in the European Parliament would undoubtedly cause.

If these mutually interconnected incentives had held together then it might have been in the widespread interest of the UK and EU political elite to accept an outcome in which the Withdrawal Agreement was endorsed and a hastily rewritten Political Declaration backed.

Events since then have all but sunk this prospect. It does not seem as if the incentives for the two major political parties in the UK are as aligned as once looked credible. Put bluntly, the Brexit Party is doing a lot more damage to the Conservatives in the opinion polls for the European Parliament vote than The Independent Group/Change UK is inflicting on Labour. Or, set out a different way, Leave voters are deserting the Conservatives in droves for the ‘true believer’ Leaver Mr Farage but the old Remain vote is splitting several ways. Much of it is sticking with Labour as that party flirts with the notion of a ‘confirmatory vote’ on any Brexit deal that Parliament may rally around. Other parts of it are embracing any one of the Liberal Democrats, Change UK, the Greens and the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein or the SDLP, depending on what part of the United Kingdom a Remain voter might live in.

This relative concentration of the Leave vote and fragmentation of the Remain vote has the instant effect of damaging Theresa May and the Conservative Party. It also has the secondary effect, though, that it may enable Mr Farage, the Brexit Party, and the Leave cause more broadly, to claim that they have ‘won’ the European elections when the votes are finally tallied, because they took the most votes of any political force, even if that victory consists of not much more than 27% of the overall vote on what could easily be a turnout of less than 37% of the whole electorate.

The argument that could be marshalled against this, namely that if one adds up all the votes cast for the parties that are broadly speaking for Remain, a second referendum or the softest of Brexits, they may exceed all the votes marshalled by those favouring a harder Brexit or leaving without a deal, is likely to have less emotional and political resonance.

Besides which, if the turnout is as low as has been true for the UK in previous ballots for the European Parliament, the Leave victory claim will be numerically valid. The only riposte to it will be that turnout in 2019 was about half that of the 2016 referendum result.

What are the wider considerations now for the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the EU itself?

Conservatives

The European Parliament ballot is a horror show for the Conservative Party. If, as looks plausible, it is impossible to stop them occurring then damage limitation is the only path to follow. The party faces a potentially pivotal decision next week after the local elections. It could move – via the Cabinet and the parliamentary party – to force the Prime Minister out and start the process of electing a new leader before 23 May in an attempt to soothe the anger of pro-Brexit Conservatives and show that the party can be trusted to deliver not only a tolerable ‘stage one’ Brexit but a more Canada-style ‘stage two’ Brexit as well.

If it were to strike swiftly then a new Prime Minister could be installed in Downing Street by the end of June and would have a chance in July to exploit their ‘honeymoon period’ and force a Withdrawal Agreement through based on Conservative and DUP votes alone.

While this has some force to it as a thesis it may well not happen. For a start, expectations of the Conservative performance in the local elections tomorrow are now so low (losses of 800 seats have been predicted by serious commentators) that the end result will not be seen as bad enough to oblige Mrs May to quit immediately afterwards.

Second, none of the heavyweight contenders to replace her (messers Gove, Hunt, Javid, Johnson and Raab) seem to have concluded that a very early contest is in their own best interests. All would rather Mrs May continued to take the whole blame for the European Parliament election debacle and then be compelled to walk the plank.

Finally, it may be hard to find a format to force the PM out that does not fatally damage the Government. The chances are, therefore, that the process of leadership transition has to wait for longer until mid-July.

Labour

All of the above is splendid news as far as Jeremy Corbyn is concerned. His main concern is how to appear sympathetic to the possibility of a second referendum but not be so committed to it as to alienate pro-Leave Labour electors.

The heated Labour National Executive Committee yesterday demonstrates precisely how difficult this balancing act is. The entire notion of a ‘confirmatory vote’ is, in any case, somewhat slippery as it can be read as meaning the same thing as holding a second referendum where it does not need to be so. A ‘confirmatory ballot’ on any Withdrawal Agreement could be constructed as a simple Yes or No on that agreement, with a No requiring the Government and House of Commons to look again for a different device for ensuring Brexit, not that the UK would reverse the first referendum and remain inside the EU on a permanent basis.

Labour is engaging in some absolutely extraordinary and contradictory contortions over its stance on Brexit. Yet in the end, this does not matter much. It is the Opposition, hence all it is strictly obliged to do is oppose.

The European Union

Finally, spare a thought for the poor old European Union and European Parliament in all this. At these elections the 73 UK MEPs were supposed to disappear. Their departure was to be used to reduce the size of the (excessively large) legislature from 751 to 705 (a net cut of 46 not 73), with the other 27 vacancies being redeployed to countries which were underweighted by population in the previous European Parliament. That replacement process cannot now happen (at least not until the UK is finally out of the EU legally and politically).

Some countries which were due to secure extra MEPs will elect then anyway but keep them in a version of cold storage until the British depart. Others will await that moment and then hold a mini-election for those additional MEP slots. In the meantime, UK MEPs will have a possibly decisive voice and vote on who is the next President of the European Commission, the identity of the next President of the European Parliament itself and the relative balance of political parties on all of the multiple committees of the European Parliament. At some point after that, they will (probably) bugger off. Not before time, many in Brussels will mutter.

Tim Hames
Director General, BVCA