Labour Party voters and members are waking up this morning to a grinning Nigel Farage and news that our party has lost eight MEPs across England and Wales. It is a both a devastating result and an entirely unsurprising one.
Ever since the party leadership sanctioned a manifesto that said Labour support for a People’s Vote on Brexit was no more than an ‘option’, it was apparent that millions of Labour voters were going to choose a different option at the ballot box. The tragedy is not just that the Labour leadership has handed the political initiative to Nigel Farage and his band of nationalists, but that this outcome was so easily avoidable.
Since December 2017, our grassroots Remain Labour movement has been urging the party to embrace a People’s Vote on Brexit and commit to a campaign to Remain in the EU. We represent the views of the many in our party (88% of Labour members would vote to Remain EU if given the opportunity) and nearly two thirds of Labour MEP candidates signed our ‘Remain Labour Pledge’, in which they made a personal commitment to campaign to give the country the final say on Brexit.
Instead of listening to Remain Labour voters, members and candidates, the manifesto debacle condemned activists to fighting a defensive campaign with a confused message. Instead of uniting the pro-Remain vote behind the Labour banner and taking the fight to Farage, we are left with a fractured Remain vote in which the only real winner is the Brexit Party. It could and should have been so different. A Comres poll less than a week before polling day found that if Labour had fought the election with an unambiguous commitment to a People’s Vote, Labour would have defeated Farage by eight points. In reality we lost by 18.
The only source of comfort is that it is still not too late to change course. I want to look back at these EU elections as the turning point – the moment which Jeremy Corbyn accepted that ambiguity on Brexit will lead to annihilation for the Labour Party. I want the loss of good Labour MEPs to be a catalyst for a definitive change in policy, which clearly states that Brexit in any form must be put back to the people.
Over the next two months, the Conservative Party is going to tear itself apart in public. Cheered on by Farage and his Brexit ultras, the likeliest winners (Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab) are going to advocate a no-deal Brexit that would be the greatest act of self-harm in our country’s democratic history. Even the ‘moderate’ candidates in the race are arguing for the UK to leave the single market and the customs union. These are not people that the Labour Party can or should ‘do a deal with’, over our future relationship with the EU.
While the Conservative candidates play Nigel Farage’s tune, Labour has a chance to draw a line in the sand and unite our voters, members and MPs behind a People’s Vote. We can’t afford to wait until Party Conference in September, we need to spend the summer winning back Remain voters and mobilising for a campaign to Remain.
The result of these elections is a final warning to leadership of the party. Listen to the majority of our voters, members and MPs and we can beat Brexit and Remain in the EU. Fail to get off the fence and I fear both party and country will be broken by it.