I know, yet another story about a possible party split. Yet, this may be more realistic as the Brexit deadline approaches. Chuka Umunna has been quite bold on Twitter with his opposition to a no deal Brexit.
Something is needed to shake up UK politics and this could be it. A party of moderate Labour and Tories opposed to the hard line Jacob Rees-Mogg Brexit policy could work. Add in the Lib Dems as well who are searching for a reason to exist.
The SDP was a failure electorally, but they were a success in finally breaking the hard left and radical trade union grasp on Labour. Perhaps a repeat in 2019 will be enough to crush the Corbyn cult or else the hard left Labour will wilt into a minor party and the moderate party can be the second major UK political party.
So what would this mean for Brexit? Calling it off? An even harder crash-and-burn? A (somehow) somewhat sane Brexit? No change, but a symbolic opposition to it, in preparation for an I-told-you-so?
This isn’t an issue around which to form a lasting movement. As long as any such party is seen as the “Not X or Y party” it’s never going to attract more than the passing protest vote, and it’s going to fall apart as soon as things move on to an issue for which they have no clear common principle other than “Not too much of this or that”.
Which is a shame, as an electable centrist party would be great for the country, but it’s looking unlikely that moderates will take control of either main party in the near future.
“Not too much of this or that” would actually be rather radical these days.
So effectively, this means they’re threatening to become independents, then? That sort of thing happens in US politics from time to time, but I don’t recall any mass defections in my lifetime - just the occasional one-off like when Jim Jeffords quit the Republican party and threw the Senate to the Democrats in 2001, or Arlen Specter becoming a Democrat in his final term.
Not so much become independents, and leave their current parties with a view to forming a new political party to compete against the existing parties.
Something similar happened in the early 1980s, when about 25 MPs quit the Labour Party to form the Social Democrats, which sought support from centrist voters. It formed an electoral alliance with the existing centrist Liberal Party, and in the ensuing general election the alliance secured 25% of the vote. However, given the crapulous British electoral system, this delivered only 3.5% of the seats in parliament. This was repeated at the next general election in 1987, when they won 22.6% of the vote but just 3.4% of the seats. The two parties then merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats, which at the 1992 election secured 17.8% of the votes and, predictably, 3.1% of the seats.
Which basically illustrates the problem; there’s really only room for two parties in the British electoral system, and any new centrist party faces a limited future unless it can supplant one of the existing dominant parties. The last time that happened was more than a century ago, when the Labour Party supplanted the Liberal Party.
I actually think a centrist party could supplant Labour as the second U.K. political party. Has there every been a time where the majority of the Labour MPs despised their leader? The Labour Party is stuck with Corbyn due to their stupid way of picking their leader. No one sees Corbyn as a potential PM.
Both the major parties are currently saddled with awful, just awful, leadership, and it may or may not be a coincidence that this has happened after both have altered the leadership selection methods to give more power to rank-and-file members of the party, and less to elected officials.
Regardless, I don’t think a major realignment is likely juwst on the basis of the personal qualities, or lack of them, of the current party leaders. The current leadership is always ephemeral; you would need some enduring change in circumstances to occur.
Hardly Michael Foot. He was elected by Labour MPs in the days when this is how the party leader was chosen. And, after his election, we had the split referred to above which removed a number of right/centrist MPs from the Parliamentary Labour Party, which if anything would tend to have strengthened his position.
Of course, by the end he was unpopular with his party, having led them to a crushing electoral defeat, but that’s not untypical for UK party leaders. Most of them are unpopular in the end; that’s why it’s the end.
I’m American, but following Brexit keeps getting more frustrating.
I really don’t understand why now is the time people are leaving Labour. Labour already backed the referendum, they nearly unanimously voted to invoke article 50 which set up no-deal Brexit as the default outcome unless the government makes another decision, they campaigned on leaving in the last general election, and they just voted down the deal May negotiated. Now, working with May to try to at least get some deal is the last straw?
I realize that there is no brexit outcome better than remaining, and it was stupid in the first place for the UK to even start down the path of leaving. However, the difference between simply cancelling article 50 and agreeing to be in a customs union with the EU is so much smaller than a customs union is to no deal brexit. I think there’s a chance that if either Labour publicly backed remaining or having a second referendum over a year ago, or if remainers were willing to leave and join the Lib-Dems, they might have avoided this situation. Now the UK has about a month to decide to do anything that isn’t no deal brexit.
Not only that, the political situation in parliament is now clear: Most of the Tory party wants to sign May’s deal, but since they’re in a minority government and the DUP and the hardline brexiters in the Tory party are never going to vote for any realistic deal, the only way a deal happens is if May wins it from outside the coalition. If Labour doesn’t find some way to make an agreement with May’s faction in the Tories, there simply is no way to avoid a no=deal brexit. Every other option has either been ruled out by hardliners in parliament who will never accept reality, or by the EU which has had it with the UK’s bipolar approach to this whole mess.
If I could have picked the worst time for Labour to be hemorrhaging support for Corbyn, it would probably be now. And I actually think Corbyn’s decisions up to this point have been terrible.
/rant
P.S. I also think if the UK did simply agree to a custom’s union, they would be in the position where technically they can make a lot of their own regulatory laws, but have a giant financial incentive to align themselves with Europe. I think this may be a blessing in disguise for the country, because instead of politicians claiming that “Eurocrats” are preventing them from sticking up for their national interest, they would have to be honest and admit that they were voluntarily choosing to align with the EU because that’s the way international relations and trade work. Really the only ways to solve the problem of half of the country blaming the EU for everything is to either leave completely and see how terrible it is for them or to end up in a situation where the government has to admit that even without being forced to, it will align with EU regulations 99% of the time.
“Leave is in the air, everywhere we look around,
Leave is in the air, every sight and every sound,
And we don’t know if we’re being foolish,
Don’t know if we’re being wise,
But it’s something we must believe in,
And it’s there when we look in our eyes.”
It’s in part because a while back the Labour Party Conference resolved that a second referendum would be a last resort if May’s Deal were rejected by Parliament, but Corbyn has been refusing to carry out that resolution, despite making claims about the party becoming more democratic under him.
His letter the other day offering a compromise Brexit has angered many who see it is as betrayal of the Six Tests and the Conference resolution.
Corbyn’s dishonesty is frustrating too, but I still think this isn’t the time.
May offered this exact deal, with no room for negotiation, from Europe months ago. She survived a VONC from her own party and in parliament over a month ago. Corbyn already didn’t push for a second referendum. Now it’s simply so late that the only reasonable option for Labour is to make some kind of compromise with the Tories that allows them to get any deal from the EU.
Given the political will going against a second referendum, or another avenue to remaining in the EU, putting a promise to “leave a second referendum on the table” in a party manifesto wa never going to be enough. Remainers needed to make it a policy they were willing to cut party ties over months ago.
Also Labour’s six tests were never possible from the start. Even if they were in government negotiating with the EU, they would need to come down to essentially agreeing to the EU customs union with some minor face-saving concessions. I realize it’s frustrating that leadership is basically admitting it was a pipe dream, but it was a pipe dream and once again the UK is so close to the cliff they need to find some political cover for not completely crashing out with no deal.