The argument against Labour committing to a second referendum (part II)

The media is awash with news that 90% of Labour members back a second referendum, that Tom Watson is calling for Labour’s formal backing for a second referendum, and that the leadership as a whole may now accede to it if conference votes it through.

First things first. The You Gov question to Labour members is as follows:

When the negotiations with the EU about Brexit are complete, would you support or oppose a public vote on the outcome?

As such, the binary answer sort simplifies the matter at hand to the point where proper deliberation is made impossible — a deep irony given that the context for it is a first referendum from which any sense of proper deliberation was excluded.

Proper deliberation of the context would immediately result in the unpicking of this simple question, and two questions emerging along these lines:

a) When (if at all) the Tory-led negotiations with the EU about Brexit are complete, would you support or oppose a public vote on the outcome?

b) If Labour comes into power before Brexit takes place and their negotiations with the EU are complete, would you support or oppose a public vote on the outcome?

To date, the Labour leadership strategy (and my view in part I) on whether it should explicitly back a second referendum has been geared more or less to these more appropriate questions, and set within a context of;

i) The reality, simply ignored by Remainers who prefer to think that Brexit is in Labour’s hands, that a second referendum called under a Tory government is highly unlikely, such that question a) is largely an irrelevance;

ii) A belief (especially in the McDonnell ‘wing’ of the leadership), that Labour’s negotiations with the EU could create a substantially different ‘outcome’ (for public vote or not) from anything the Tories’ so-called negotiation will ever bring about [1];

iii) The reality that any new Labour government would need to seek an extension on Article 50 to give it time to carry through a very different negotiation over, let us say, two years, and that in two years’ time the shift in public opinion and demographics might actually make a second referendum (and the quite real risk of a renewed Leave vote) redundant;

iv) The fact that a Labour government with a majority is pretty unlikely, given the post-2015 electoral strength of the SNP, the fact that for its own understandable nationalist reasons the SNP does not currently support a second referendum (put simply, the SNP’s view is that Scotland voted Remain, so it should get to remain without the political hassle of a second referendum).

I would love to see a proper deliberation of all these issues, come to the fore at the Labour conference debate.

In the event of such a proper deliberation (and it may be one Starmer’s team can have behind the scenes with key players), I do think that many of the 90% committing currently to a support for a second referendum in all circumstances would change their minds, and come round/revert to the Tom Watson position of just two weeks ago, namely that a second referendum is a good option to have in the ‘back pocket’.

They would do so not least because they would recognize that committing to a second referendum actually increases the chances of Brexit taking place, if such a manifesto commitment results in a failure to do a deal with the SNP and get Labour into power.

Sadly, I’m not holding my breath given that Conference will see any such deliberation; the debate will most likely be a proxy war between Corbynphiles and Corpbynphobes.

Given this, I think it is now likely that the leadership will now be pushed into explicit support for a second referendum, because it will be seen as the lesser of two evils — not quite as bad as being widely seen to ignore the wishes of the membership, even though these wishes have, as I’ve suggested above, been filtered through the prism of the Corbyn proxy war and the pollsters’ and the ultra-Remainers’ binary simplicity.

Labour’s Brexit strategy is likely to be in a worse place come the end of Conference this week, largely because the Centrists who have decided to play with fire didn’t realize or willfully ignored that we might all get hurt by it. One thing those who do actually put us in a worse position might want to consider as recompense is working across the party feud lines on local initiatives like this which take the fight to the Tories rather than the other side of the Conference hall.

Notes

[1] I have covered this differentiation in detail in other pieces, not least in terms of the essential negotiation distinction between A and THE single market, but it remains sadly overlooked by pretty well the whole commentariat;

I do in a subsequent post need to come back to Brendan’s helpful point on twitter that John McDonnell, in his latest comment, does seem to be heading back towards a more Lexit-style stance than we have seen recently, with his that Brexit will allow re-nationalization, and that Freedom of Movement may be ‘adjusted’.

In brief, though, I think this can be seen as further ‘jobs first’ differentiation from the Tory stance rather than signalling an absolute ‘red line’ (in the same way that Corbyn signalled that State Aid “clarity” would be sought, as opposed to making it a ‘red line’).

His Freedom of Movement comments still fit with my earlier analysis of how ‘square can be circled’ by using the right parts of current legislation and dumping other more flowery bits by EU consent. I suspect they are really more about seeking clarity on procurement rules, such that local labour stipulations can be built into contracts (not, against perceived wisdom, actually illegal under EU law, but requiring of some contracting finesse that EU clarification could help embed).

The fact that McDonnell references rail nationalization specifically suggests that his main interest is actually some form of renegotiation of the 4th Railway Package, which is pernicious (though not insurmountable) legislation dating from the height of the EU competition-is-all phase, and from which there has been a more recent retreat, at the very least in terms of rhetoric (see the Five Presidents’ report, for example).

This is in fact precisely the kind of area where a Labour government might be able to develop common ground with other left-leaning governments and oppositions in Europe and, while not fixing renegotiation as a red line for any deal (whether or not for a second referendum), might be able to secure a commitment for a review of the legislation after the UK manages to remain in the EU.