However you cut it, a general election would not be good for Labour

Jeremy Corbyn and his team must be hoping that history repeats itself. In 2017, the Conservatives started the election campaign with a healthy poll lead of more than 15 per cent. But after an energetic campaign by Mr Corbyn and a poor performance by Theresa May, this was reduced to just 3 per cent on polling day. At the semi-official start of this campaign, Labour is doing a bit better than in 2017 since the Conservative lead in the polls is a moderate 8 per cent. Can Labour pull off the same trick again?

Its support at the EU elections in May collapsed to just 14 per cent, with the party polling far behind the Liberal Democrats on 20 per cent. But, since then, it has pulled back some support to be now slightly ahead of the Lib Dems. The Conservatives under Boris Johnson have taken back most, though not all, of the voters who defected to

the Brexit Party. The current political landscape doesn’t hold much cheer for Labour. An average of recent opinion polls has the Conservatives on 33 per cent, Labour on 25, Lib Dems 18 and Brexit Party 13. While both main parties are much less popular than they were in 2017, Labour has declined even more than the Conservatives.

The hard electoral fact is that pro-leave voters are increasingly uniting under the Conservative banner but the main anti-conservative forces are divided between Labour and the Lib Dems. If the polls are right this is bad for Labour, and it could lose nearly 70 seats. My analysis shows Labour could lose seats in Wales and northern England to the Tories, seats in London to the Lib Dems, and almost all their seats in Scotland to the SNP.

This looks like a failure of Labour’s triangulation strategy on Brexit. It could lose seats to the Conservatives for not being Leave enough, and seats to the Lib Dems and SNP for being insufficiently Remain. Mr Corbyn still appears to view politics through the prism of class conflict and economic Left versus Right, while voters increasingly decide based on Brexit and the international-national axis.

A historical precedent from the last election could give heart to Labour. The opinion polls then understated Labour’s popularity.

Are the polls any better now? It’s impossible to be sure, but one clear fact is that the pollsters are already showing divergent estimates.

One group of reputable pollsters has Conservative well ahead of Labour, and another equally reputable group sees a much smaller lead. But this doesn’t prove things will go Labour’s way. There was similar divergence at the European elections. But it was the “Labour-sceptic” pollsters who turned out to be right, while other pollsters overestimated Labour’s vote share.

Despite this, one route for Labour to win this election would be if it could take back significant numbers who defected to the Lib Dems and Greens. The logical case is easy to write: the first-past-the-post system ignores most Lib Dem votes and lets the Tories in. “Don’t waste your vote”, says Labour to Lib Dem supporters, “and vote for us to keep Johnson out”. If Lib Dem and Green voters switched to Labour then Mr Corbyn would get a majority of around 160 seats. But that is an “if ” of galactic proportions. Lib Dem hostility to Labour is well-rooted and their supporters have so far resisted Mr Corbyn’s charms.

Another way is for a Lab-lib Dem pre-election pact, which would probably result in an election victory. The Brexit political crucible has shown it can melt cast-iron certainties, so it’s foolish to rule this out, but there is little evidence of an appetite for a pact.

Public opinion can change rapidly in volatile times, so Labour could forge an advantage. But this election it starts on the back foot and is likely to lose seats, not gain them. It may be too late to go all-out for the Remain vote – but that may be the Left’s last strategy.

Martin Baxter is the founder of Electoral Calculus