Labour has begun to realize that its only possible route back to power is by opposing Brexit. Detailed analysis of the 2017 election returns has shown that Labour’s unexpected gains were due almost entirely to affluent young voters whose motivation was the hope of derailing Brexit. Had it not been for these anti-Brexit voters, Prime Minister Theresa May would have won the widely predicted landslide.1

If Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, now becomes “the handmaiden of Brexit,” in Tony Blair’s memorable phrase, by shying away from effective opposition, these new voters will feel betrayed, the party will split between the Marxists and centrists, and its hopes of ever winning a general election will be dashed. If, on the other hand, Labour decided to fight Brexit, public opinion would rapidly shift.

Opposition to Brexit would start to be treated as a natural feature of democratic politics. Labour would start to benefit from the government’s negotiating blunders. And the sense of Brexit’s inevitability would vanish.

That, in turn, would give courage to pro-European Conservatives. Tory MPs are unlikely to vote against their party leadership if the absence of Labour opposition allows the government to win anyway. If, however, concerted opposition from Labour created a genuine possibility of stopping Brexit, Tory MPs who put national interest ahead of party loyalty would find themselves praised for their mettle, not ridiculed for folly. They might even calculate that their own careers would prosper if their party reconciled itself to Europe.

This chain of events now seems to be starting. In December, May lost her first important Brexit battle, when Labour MPs united with 12 Tory rebels to pass an amendment requiring a specific Act of Parliament to approve whatever deal is negotiated with the EU. This means that any Brexit plan that arouses serious opposition, either from hardline nationalists or from pro-European Tories, could be used to trigger a new referendum. Following this breakthrough, the first serious cross-party campaign explicitly aiming to stop Brexit, and not merely to mitigate damage by seeking a “softer” divorce deal, will be launched later this month.

To succeed, this campaign will need to persuade disillusioned Remainers that Brexit is not inevitable. It will need to show protest voters that whatever their problems, Brexit is not the answer. It will need to convince Labour politicians that collaboration with Brexit is electoral suicide, and persuade pro-EU Tory rebels that a rebellion would not be futile. Finally, it will need European leaders to state unequivocally that Britain is legally entitled to change its mind about leaving. These requirements are challenging, but not impossible.1

David Davis, the pro-Brexit Tory who is now leading the UK’s Brexit negotiations, once said that, “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.” Britain is still a democracy, and it can still change its mind about Brexit.

Anatole Kaletsky is chief economist and co-chairman of Gavekal Dragonomics. A former columnist at the Times of London, the International New York Times and the Financial Times, he is the author of "Capitalism 4.0, The Birth of a New Economy," which anticipated many of the post-crisis transformations of the global economy.

©Project Syndicate

 

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