Reaching out to the centre won’t work
Labour now pledges a customs union Brexit if it can get it, a general election if it can’t, or a second referendum if that doesn’t work either. One would imagine that offering something to everyone would make them very popular. The polls, however, don’t look good. The country can see through Labour’s demand for a permanent customs union, which the Tories probably won’t give them, MPS might not even endorse and the EU is likely to reject. Jeremy Corbyn’s real strategy is to talk and talk and let the Government take the blame for inaction, but it’s not winning many votes. It was the Remain parties that surged in the local elections; it’s the Brexit Party that is shaping up to be the story of the Euro elections. The truth is that there are few votes to be won in chasing a fast-diminishing centre ground.
Yet that’s exactly what many Tories are also trying to do. The leadership’s attitude seems to be that the Euro elections don’t matter, because they’ve seen it all before: “Remember the Ukip surge in 2014? We won most of those votes back in 2015.” But the Conservatives only won a majority in 2015 by promising an in/out referendum on the EU – in other words, they embraced Eurosceptics to squeeze Ukip. Fast-forward to 2019 and the Tories have frustrated and delayed Brexit, not delivered it, and there’s no sign of change on the horizon.
On the contrary, almost the entire army of leadership contenders are obsessed with 2015 and take the wrong message from it. They think they just need to turn the clock back to the Cameron years: get Brexit out of the way and then reach out again to Lib Dem-type voters. But Brexit has changed many people’s priorities and even the definitions of Left and Right. In a world in which Remainer Lord Heseltine says he might not vote Conservative and Nigel Farage is addressing large rallies, one cannot simply paper over the cracks with the softest Brexit possible. But that seems to be what many contenders aim to do.
The Tories, like Labour, need to decide once and for all: are they for Brexit or not? David Gauke yesterday said that it is complicated, which indeed it is, and he was right to argue that the focus must be on detail, rather than pie-in-the-sky promises. But the Conservative Party also has to be for something more than not being the Labour Party, especially when it is looking equally chaotic and indecisive. Times have changed. The Tories need a new leader and message to suit them.