Remainers shouldn’t be so confident about winning a second referendum

Brexiteers are determined and organised, while Remainers are fighting like rats in a sack. Let’s do the time warp, again!

Remainers are closer than ever to securing the second vote they’ve been seeking since the result of the first one. Keir Starmer has expressed doubts that any cross-party Brexit deal lacking a ‘confirmatory referendum’ could pass parliament, warning up to 150 Labour MPs would reject an agreement that did not include one. The idea of a final Brexit showdown is gaining traction.

For Remainers, this in itself would be a huge victory, but one fraught with risk. Too many people who speak of a ‘people’s vote’ or ‘confirmatory referendum’ equate it with remaining, but a victory for remain can’t be taken for granted. The Brexit Party is showing how effectively the anti-EU electorate can be mobilised and the narrative of the ‘betrayal of democracy’ is a powerful one. The forces of remain, meanwhile, are disunited and disorganised.

The failure of Change UK, Lib Dems and Greens to back a single candidate in Peterborough in European Parliament elections is revealing.  It’s a reminder that if a second referendum does come about, the remain campaign will have the same difficulties uniting Remainers from across the parties as they did for 2016. Different personalities will refuse to appear together and there will be disagreements about messaging.

The total flop that is Change UK should act as a warning sign, epitomising as they do the presumptuousness and arrogance that hampers the remain movement. They seemed to believe that they were so self-evidently correct and dazzlingly brilliant that all they had to do was ‘build it, and they will come’. So, they didn’t need things like a single name for their party, or decent branding, or coherent messaging.

Riding a wave of their own brilliance, they’d destroy Brexiteers, consume the Lib Dems and unite Remainers as they stormed into the European parliament. It’s not quite working out like that so far. Currently they are polling around 2-3%, will be lucky to reach 5% and gain a single MEP and they continue to embarrass themselves on a weekly basis. Most tellingly of all though, there is no substance in their rhetoric. We don’t know how they plan to change our ‘broken’ politics and, worst of all, they have no pro-EU vision.

We know that Change UK want another referendum and they will campaign to remain in the EU, but they have offered no substantial arguments as to why that is the best thing for Britain. To them it’s obvious, Brexit is bad and should be stopped. End of. Well, that isn’t good enough.

If they want to be sure of a remain victory, they need to inspire beyond the core remain vote. They need a positive, pro-EU message that articulates clearly why EU membership works for Britain. They must convince people that remaining is a positive thing and that Britain will be stronger, richer and happier for it.  If they campaign on the negative – Brexit is bad and we will be weak and poor outside of the EU – they can expect their narrative to be effectively countered by Brexiteers and resented by a substantial part of the population.

In contrast, Brexiteers are more determined and organised than ever. The Brexit Party is racing ahead, polling 34 per cent and holding very well attended and lively rallies across the country. Nigel Farage, fresh from learning from the Trump playbook, has made a huge comeback. The Brexit Party is proving slicker and better organised than UKIP ever were, with a cleverly chosen range of candidates and an excellent messaging strategy.

Despite this, they should be beatable. Ultimately there is very little substance to the Brexit Party and many vulnerabilities, but their opponents have totally failed to capitalise on them. There are some seriously dodgy figures in the Brexit Party, from the Communist IRA sympathiser Claire Fox, to the numerous racists who have been caught out in the press.

They have just one policy. It’s a bad one that should be easy to dismantle. A ‘no deal’ Brexit would be politically and economically damaging and the evidence for that is decisive and overwhelming. Yet no one is laying a glove on them. The Brexit Party is ducking and diving its way to victory and the contrasting fate of the other new party, Change UK, is an abject humiliation for Chuka and co.

It’s not difficult to imagine how this translates into a second referendum turning into a nightmare for remain. Yes, the Brexit process has gone badly and there is a deal on the table that no one seems to like. Indeed, Brexit has caused our political system to malfunction and grind to a halt. Every week bad economic news comes in as factories close, investment is held back or cancelled, and our trade policy is stalling. There is an anti-Brexit consensus amongst British business and industry and opinion polls consistently show the country leaning to remain.

It should be easy to exploit all of this and point to the fact that the process has been far more problematic than Vote Leave said it would be… but I wouldn’t bet my own money against Remainers grasping defeat from the jaws of victory, would you?

A second referendum campaign would not be an urbane discussion about the merits of EU membership. It would be a bitter struggle dominated by themes of sovereignty, nationalism, democratic betrayal, identity and culture, exacerbating the divides in the country. The campaign would be messy and raucous, the result very difficult to predict.

You’d have the Brexit Party going all out packing out its rallies across the country ensuring its voters are champing at the bit to get in the polling booth. They’d be hitting their simple message home while Remainers stutter in response. There would likely be Vote Leave mark II also drumming home the ‘democratic betrayal’ message while again trying to entice people with an optimistic, patriotic vision of an ‘independent Britain’.

I’m not predicting a Leave victory here, but I am saying that Remainers will have to fundamentally rethink their campaign and how they argue for EU membership. As things stand, remain risks doing a Hillary Clinton. They believe their opponents are so self-evidently wrong and their cause clearly absurd, that the rest of the country must surely see this too and vote accordingly.

They may get their referendum, but it may end up being a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’. If it comes to another vote, Remainers don’t just need to win, they need to win big. Only a clear and decisive victory of remain gives any chance of the UK’s EU membership being sustainable after the last few years. If the consent for remain can be questioned, then an anti-EU populist party could gain popularity and wreak havoc.

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