This week in Brexitland, October 1, 2021
Miracle time: Labour mentions Brexit
For a long old while, since the aftermath of the 2019 general election really, the Labour party has avoided using the B word as much as possible. It has given the impression of wanting to pretend Brexit never happened, with the idea seeming to be that we can all move on from the culture wars that erupted in the wake of the referendum and return to….the golden age of Ed Miliband? Anyhow, this week, they finally realised this wasn’t working and spoke about our relationship with the European Union. Not in terms that Remainers want to hear, but it’s a start.
There seems to be a three-pronged approach from Labour to Brexit at the moment. Starmer, as leader, talks about how Johnson and his crew are failing to deliver on their Brexit promises. So, it’s all about the phrase he used in his speech: “Make Brexit Work”. The point of this is to put pressure on the Tories over how badly Brexit is going without wanting it to seem like Labour want another EU referendum.
Then you have other senior members of the shadow cabinet who take a harder line, saying Brexit is done, let’s move on - essentially a continuation of what every Labour frontbencher was saying until before this week. What Rachel Reeves spoke about this week is a prime example of this wing of the attack.
Then you have people like David Lammy who are given a little freer reign to be more vocally anti-Brexit. He’s gone as far this week as saying a Labour government would “fix” Boris Johnson’s bad deal. The idea here is to keep the Remainers on side, although again, it isn’t anywhere near as anti-Brexit as they will want Labour to be at the moment. But given no other party is filling the anti-Brexit space effectively - and every Remainer knows that unless the Tories change their spots very soon, a Labour government is the only way we begin to reverse Brexit - it might be enough.
Will any of this work? It’s a whole lot better than Labour avoiding the issue, which not only wasn’t working, it was letting the government get away with a great deal that could have otherwise hurt the Tories. Time will tell - it will be interesting to see how (and even if) this strategy evolves.
The petrol crisis gets worse - and the Tories begin to use the B word in connection with it
It was last weekend that the petrol problems hit south London. My attempts to shop for food were stifled by the fact that every supermarket remotely close to me has a petrol station attached to it, and thus getting in to buy food was impossible unless I wanted to queue behind the reams of cars with three-quarters of a tank waiting for hours to slightly top up.
The government is taking the line that its all in hand and the crisis shouldn’t be felt for much longer - but one, every government says that during a crisis and two, this government says it more often and more readily than most. Of course, there is still a mad scramble to say that this has nothing to do with Brexit, but it isn’t washing with the public - polling suggests that a comfortable majority of the electorate realise all of the shortage problems are down to a combination of Covid, Brexit and the incompetence of this government.
Except, maybe even the Tories are starting to get it. Grant Shapps, after having swore up and down last week that Brexit had nothing to do with the crisis, said this on Wednesday: “Brexit I hear mentioned a lot, and it no doubt will have been a factor.” No doubt? That’s a long way to travel in a week. Maybe the Tories are starting to become worried about the polls on this one.
Polling on Brexit
And speaking of polling, YouGov have a new poll on Brexit opinion out this week and it is bad news for Brexiteers. 53% of voters think Brexit is going badly, with that being split into 21% thinking it’s going fairly badly and 32% thinking it’s going very badly. This compares with only 18% who think it’s going well, 14% fairly well - and only 4% of voters thinking that Brexit is going really well. 29% are on the fence, saying that Brexit is either not going well or badly or that they don’t know.
These are terrible figures for Brexit and further proof that while in 2019 the electorate was sick of fighting over Brexit and didn’t want a second referendum, that didn’t mean they weren’t going to hold the whole thing to account. I think the collective attitude was, ‘We had the referendum in 2016, we voted Leave, so we should give it a shot. But if it’s terrible, don’t expect us to just suck it up. The Tories had better deliver on this’. In other words, while Brexiteers like to claim the 2016 EU referendum was some sort of golden vote, one that is sacred above and beyond all other plebiscites that ever have or ever will exist, the Great British public is treating it like any other vote - on the promise of something better and if the something better doesn’t come along, they will vote to change it.
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