Just who will speak up for the anti-Brexit moderate millions?
HOW many of us have read the following words scribbled on Christmas cards: “2017 has to be better than this year.” It might all have been so different: if a few votes had gone the other way last June, the phrase “diplomat-in-chief Boris Johnson” would still be a satirical oxymoron. If all those votes for Hillary Clinton had been distributed differently, Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen would be topping the bill for the presidential inauguration in three weeks instead of (rumour has it) country singer Billy Ray Cyrus.
As it is, achy breaky hearts abound. Twitter and Facebook communities have turned into huge extended selfhelp groups where moderates of all parties and none vent their despair, share wry jokes and offer one another consolation.
This new fault line is not defined by party allegiance; quite the reverse. These people – let’s call them the moderate millions – are Labour supporters, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish nationalists, Unionists and Tories. Some dislike aligning themselves with any party. Many voted Remain but some voted Leave and are having second thoughts. They are united by an uneasy sense that, at the close of 2016, the world is less safe than 12 months ago, that the UK has set itself on a damaging path and that the liberal rationalism that has for decades more or less defined British, Western European and American politics is under mortal threat.
All of this seems to signal a move away from the politics of class that dominated 20th century politics to the politics of values. This leaderless group is a force to be reckoned with but only if it can be harnessed as a political movement. So what will happen to these people in 2017? Who will mobilise them and ensure that they help shape what happens next, especially if Theresa May presses for an election within the next 12 months in a bid to boost her slim Commons majority?
We do not yet know what shape the Prime Minister’s Brexit plans will take but the murmurs from Downing Street are not reassuring. In theory, this should present Remain-minded moderates with an opportunity, come an election. Food and energy prices are expected to rise; banks and insurance companies are musing about setting up in other EU states; and job losses are forecast. Such economic shocks could have a profound effect on the public view of Brexit and what shape it should take, or if it should happen at all.
The Conservative Party is disunited, with passions running high on both sides. The impact was brought home to me by a relative from the Conservative heartlands of the south east of England who told me over Christmas drinks recently that, after 25 years of unwavering loyalty, he wouldn’t vote Tory again, so much did he deplore the present crop of Cabinet ministers; well, not unless they got rid of every one of them. “Disillusioned” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Mrs May has avoided disaster so far by doing next to nothing but her cool, headmistressy demeanour cannot save her from the storm of manure headed her way when Brexit is triggered. How the parties of the centre and Left strategise to harness Remainers and Brexit sceptics when that happens really matters.
Normally the leader of the Opposition would be expected to take the lead but not in these strange times. Labour strategists let it be known before Christmas that they were planning to relaunch Jeremy Corbyn, this time as an “anti-establishment populist”, but it seems unlikely that the saviour of the centre left will be wearing a grey anorak and trouser clips and hiding from journalists.
And, of course, Mr Corbyn refuses to deal with the issue of immigration. Principled his stance might be but most voters accept that migration must be managed to at least some degree.
So, in the absence of a strong Labour party, other figures of the centre and Left are desperately seeking ways to rally the troops in a bid to reset the course of Brexit, chiefly by encouraging cross-party collaboration. The strongest calls are coming from collegiate New Labour and LibDem figures of old, most notably Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown, who were always far more comfortable with cooperative initiatives than their parties’ rank and file. Mr Blair has set up an institute in his name to develop a new centreground policy agenda to counter “the new populism”, while Lord Ashdown’s More United movement aims to capture the anti-establishment spirit sweeping the country by bypassing the party machines and highlighting the values of individual candidates.
Those who cleave to a certain set of beliefs that could broadly be described as moderate, liberal and pro-EU, regardless of their party, could receive crowdfunding from the More United Movement. Neither initiative has so far had a great impact, well-meaning though they may be. The toxicity of the Blair brand is still too potent. The Ashdown proposal, meanwhile, would require significant public buy-in to be effective, though it did help get LibDem candidate Sarah Olney elected in the Richmond by-election.
But the biggest problem by far is the deep enmities that exist between opposing parties of the centre and Left. Even a troubled Tory party will triumph at the next election if its opponents remain so catastrophically divided. So we come back once more to the yawning vacuum in the centre ground of politics that exists in place of a credible government-in-waiting articulating moderate, outwardlooking, tolerant, EU-friendly values.
Labour is paralysed by internal division. A bad result for Labour at the next General Election would clear the way for a change of leader, but Labour moderates could also act now, jump ship and create the Social Democratic Party Mark II. Whatever discussions on that theme are going on in private, though, it will not happen in time for a snap election in 2017. The LibDems are climbing slowly back to political relevance by being unashamedly antiBrexit but there is an electoral mountain to climb.
Nicola Sturgeon’s blueprint to keep Scotland in the EU, meanwhile, offered one possible vision of soft Brexit as it might apply to the whole of the UK but, much as some English voters might wish it were otherwise, she will never be the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
The best hope for opposition parties to influence events remains collaborative working, which means laying aside other differences to unite in opposition to a hard Brexit. The next 12 months are critical. If the voices of the moderate millions are not heeded, and the UK finds itself expelled unceremoniously in two years’ time from the EU, the door slammed in its face, it will be down to the failure of politicians – not just the Eurosceptic fanatics of Ukip and the Tory Right, but of centre-left politicians who failed to rise to the occasion, and instead put their party before the common good.
‘‘ This leaderless group is a force to be reckoned with but only if it can be harnessed as a political movement