Brexit Party drop-outs clear way for Johnson
Elections are the moment to choose. At last voters have a real choice between the political parties
BORIS JOHNSON’S hopes of winning a parliamentary majority were boosted yesterday as the Brexit Party fielded just 274 candidates, giving the Tories a clear run in several key marginals.
Nigel Farage had promised the Brexit Party would contest every Labour seat and field 300 candidates in total, but he fell 26 shy and failed to register candidates in 16 Labour-held seats.
Other seats where the Tories will be the only Leave-supporting party include SNP and Liberal Democrat constituencies where the Conservatives were narrowly beaten in 2017.
It came as the Brexit Party said it was compiling a “dossier” of evidence to back up its allegations that Tory party officials offered peerages and jobs to its candidates if they agreed not to stand.
The Brexit Party said it would decide whether to report the matter to police once it had assessed the “hard evidence” it would be able to present.
Scotland Yard said it was assessing two allegations of electoral fraud and malpractice it had received, but refused to say whether they related to the
Brexit Party or when the allegations were made. Lord Falconer, the former Labour justice secretary, wrote to the Metropolitan Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions calling for an investigation. Downing Street categorically denies the allegations.
On Thursday, the Brexit Party candidates for Dudley North, where Labour has a majority of 22, and Canterbury, with a 187 Labour majority, pulled out, fearing they would split the Leave vote.
Seats without a Brexit Party candidate also include Lanark and Hamilton East, where the Tories lost to the SNP by just 266 votes in 2017. In 11 of the seats, the Tories are less than 10 per cent behind the incumbent.
A Brexit Party spokesman said many drop-outs came when the party’s leader in Scotland, Louis Stedmanbryce, withdrew his support in protest at Mr Farage’s decision not to contest Tory-held seats. He said: “This is mostly cock-up rather than conspiracy.”
Mr Farage cancelled a rally in Dudley North yesterday because candidate Rupert Lowe had pulled out.
Ayear ago next week, the Brexit Party Limited was incorporated at Companies House – an unusual structure for a political party. By the beginning of February this year, the party was registered with the Electoral Commission. By the end of March, Nigel Farage had become its leader. Two months later, it won over three times more votes than the Conservatives at the European elections, returning 29 MEPS. Its Euro-election victory doomed Theresa May’s deal and her premiership.
Seen as a business start-up, the Brexit Party has been a phenomenal success. A phoenix arising from the ashes of Ukip (the earlier Farage vehicle), it immediately established itself as what the jargon calls a “challenger brand” against the traditional market leaders, the Conservatives and Labour.
There is much to be said for political entrepreneurism, despite the exhausting egos involved. As in all competitive areas of life, it is wrong to let the same old crowd have it their own way. The big players collude to keep out the new entrants and protect their market share. That is against the public interest.
The whole story of Britain’s membership of the EEC/EU can be seen in this light. EEC entry was always an establishment position. In the 1975 referendum, the three main party leaderships combined to urge us to stay. Towards the end of her time in office in 1990, Margaret Thatcher became increasingly fed up with the European drive for integration. She started to say in public that there should be a referendum on the main issue then current – membership of what later became the euro. She called for a referendum because she saw that existing party arrangements were not offering voters a choice.
Her idea of a referendum never went away. Sir James Goldsmith and his Referendum Party took it up. They did not score terribly well in votes, but they frightened the main parties into promising a referendum. The parties tried to avoid one, of course, but the pressure of opinion, particularly Conservative opinion, grew. In 2016, David Cameron – mistakenly, from his own point of view – succumbed. We voted to leave.
In this saga, Mr Farage played a notable role. Radicalised away from the Tories by the political assassination of Mrs Thatcher and by John Major’s Maastricht Treaty, he gradually emerged as the main political cartelbuster of our times.
Yet this week, he stood down around half his workforce. The structure of his party as a company of which he is boss makes him free to do this in a way that no mainstream leader could attempt.
All his prospective parliamentary candidates expecting to stand in Tory seats have suddenly found themselves victims of the political gig economy, on zero-hours contracts.
This is shocking for them, but it follows the logic of the situation. The Brexit Party, as its name suggests, wishes to achieve Brexit. If it does well in this general election, it will make Brexit less likely, which is not clever. If it does badly, as Mr Farage was conscious when making his decision, it will go bust as a political force. Actually, Mr Farage’s approach is really only half-logical. He would have done better not to put up candidates at all. He seems to be realising this by degrees, letting more and more candidates fall away.
By precipitating the fall of Mrs May, he also helped precipitate the election of Boris Johnson as Tory leader. This brought into being the only pro-leave government in our history, and therefore the best, probably last chance to achieve Brexit. So, on December 12, a vote for the Brexit Party will usually help a Remainer party win seats.
I know Mr Farage’s decision not to oppose Tories is very annoying for potential Brexit Party voters in constituencies where the Conservative candidates are Remainers, although it is worth remembering that most of the really Grieve-ous offenders have now departed. It is also true – which is a more serious point – that the deal the Prime Minister miraculously accomplished is no guarantee that we shall eventually negotiate full freedom from the EU. It may be, as Michael Gove says, “oven-ready”, but it is only the first course. The battle of the free-trade deal will need to be fought quite early in the next Parliament. If it starts to go the wrong way, the Brexit Party will (rightly) be back.
The word “election” derives from the Latin word for choice. At the last election, Mrs May made the great mistake of thinking that the choice between herself and Jeremy Corbyn so clearly favoured her that she did not need to prove her worth or expound her party’s policies. On Brexit itself, there was remarkably little choice, since both main parties were pretending that they were going to make it happen. The voters intuited that little real choice was being offered, and so returned an appropriately indecisive result.
This time, there is a choice. On the most obvious level, it is Brexit (Conservatives), no Brexit or a magical new deal (Labour), or no Brexit (Liberal Democrats). Slightly less obviously, it is a choice between ending the present stasis or prolonging it. This is encapsulated in Boris’s mantra, “Get Brexit done”. The slogan appeals not only to Leavers, but also to millions who may have voted Remain but like the idea of a normal life under a government which can decide things. The successful Dominic Cummings referendum slogan “Take back control” applies in this general election, too: we want to take back control of the MPS who forgot they represent us.
If you compare Mr Farage’s political entrepreneurism with that on the Remain side, you will see a much less keen business sense in the latter. After the shock of the 2016 result, Remainers first of all decided to trash the very idea of the referendum, but then switched to saying it was so important to consult the people that we must have a second one. This is not a credible marketing strategy. Now Labour’s solution is to negotiate a lovely, caring Brexit with the EU and then offer it or Remain to voters as the choice in a second referendum, without yet telling us which vote it would recommend. It also promises another independence referendum in Scotland. A less convincing “Let’s get it done” message would be hard to contrive.
As for the true Remainiacs who felt trapped in their existing parties, it is fascinating to watch them go their separate ways. Like kitchen-table start-ups of exciting new fashion labels which haven’t quite been thought through, they switched names – the Independent Group becoming Change UK. Then they started quarrelling. Some of them – Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen – moved to an established brand, the Liberal Democrats. Other rebels against their parties, such as Dominic Grieve, will become sole traders. Others still – Philip Hammond, Kenneth Clarke – have retired. Poor, nice, troubled David Gauke this week says he wants the Lib Dems to win, but will be a candidate without joining them.
Since Mr Cameron announced the referendum in February 2016, the led have been far ahead of the leaders. The entire thing is summed up in those short television shots you see of a voter in a street in Barnsley or Southampton or Oldham, saying: “We voted to leave, so we must leave.” Despite all its defects, democracy has a logic which comes through over time. I believe that is what is happening in this election.