At his first PMQs Sunak twice attempted to wrong-foot Sir Keir Starmer by accusing him of being insufficiently supportive of the 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU.
Unlike Mrs May and Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak was a Brexiter from the start. His performance at PMQs indicated that he remains a Leaver and is bullishly unrepentant. I think this provides the Liberal Democrat parliamentary team with a wonderful line of attack.
We now have a shedload of evidence that Brexit is having an adverse impact in all sorts of areas. Only last week the Financial Times issued an excellent video that catalogued the damage that Brexit is causing.
Additionally, we may note that that the YouGov polling tracker of how voters view Brexit showed on 19 October 54% as “wrong to leave” and only 34% as “right”. Dissatisfaction with Brexit has become palpable.
Our party has the advantage of having an excellent policy on how we might rebuild a better relationship with the EU, culminating in joining the Single Market and the customs union. This was spelled out in detail in Policy Paper 144, discussed at the 2022 Spring Conference.
A major complaint in the Financial Times video is that the two main parties in parliament are operating a conspiracy of silence – with the possible exception of Sunak’s injudicious remarks at his first PMQs.
So here is a great opportunity for our party. Labour is too busy sitting on the fence to do anything principled or courageous. The Conservatives are privately embarrassed by the mess they have created. To mix metaphors wildly, it can fall to the Liberal Democrats to identify the elephant in the room whilst pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
* John Cole joined the Yong Liberals in 1961 and was Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Shipley in both the 1992 and 1997 general elections. From 1997 he was a Lib Dem councillor on Bradford Metropolitan District Council, retiring (undefeated) in 2012.
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14 Comments
It’s time that the my opinions matter attitude of some Ministers was called out. The country matters, British subjects matter.
I believe in getting trade going with the EU, getting food into shops.
And it’s about time the Lib Dems pointed out that Labour are not interested in rejoining the EU in the future or for the UK to join the single market or customs union which would significantly benefit our economy and bring prices down. Trading with our nearest partner without restrictions is common sense. That’s how to attract Labour voters who are pro European and to differentiate this party from that one. We all know the Conservatives aren’t going to budge on Brexit but Labour is moving in the wrong direction too.
Of all the misguided, ill judged and harmful decisions taken over recent years Brexit must have been the among the most damaging to our country as recent events have highlighted, not only for our economy but with so many other important areas jointly shared with our friends and allies. The EU may not be perfect but you cannot help to improve it unless we are involved.
Rejoin now would be a massive vote loser.
In spite of the opinion polls indicating a modest turn against Brexit, unfortunately, a very large majority are either Leavers or Remainers who don’t want to re-open the debate.
If Rejoin is our policy, we will simply repeat the massive psephological error of 2019, where Remain Alliance alienated half the electorate upfront, condemning us to a very poor result in a FPTP voting system. Notice even in “Remain-leaning” constituencies, the majority of voters are Leavers or don’t look back Remainers.
It is one thing being aware of how Brexit has damaged the UK and responding accordingly to an opinion poll, quite another to want to go back down the route of endless debate and division culminating in another referendum.
We need to learn from experience and show some patience and comprehension. It doesn’t advance the European cause by being naive and strategically inept. It will simply leave us with very few MPs.
Yes I am aware that re-join is not an option at the moment, maybe at a later date. But at least the Party could articulate the benefits of being a member of the single market/customs union on trade, bringing down inflation, inward investment etc. and that is not the same position as re-join in any case.
I think Chris Moore (comment) is excessively downbeat.
Note, I did not mention fully rejoining the EU , but moving over time to Single Market membership. A sensible and feasible route map is provided by Policy Paper 144 – progress over time. Have you read and digested the paper, Chris? I commend it.
John Cole
There is a great opportunity to say let’s rejoin the single market and we’re just not taking it, hence we are on 9% in the polls when Labour are on 51% (I know they won’t get that in an election).
People criticise 2019 but we got 21% of the remain vote, now we’re on 12% according to You Gov. So almost half of remain voters who voted Lib Dem in the “disastrous” 2019 election are now intending to vote Labour.
Thank you, Marco, for making my point for me. It is a hopeless proposition to only appeal to Remain voters. 21% of Remain voters: brilliant. A massive haul of seats on those numbers in 2019.
Remain voters have several other parties to vote for: Labour, Tory, Green, SNP, Plaid. This is the reality now and it was the reality in 2019.
Deliberately alienating Leave voters and move on with life Remain voters is a losing strategy. To be avoided.
Our current position in polls will improve: it’s very similar to prior to 1997 when Labour was getting percentages in the 50s and we were often in single figures. The Tory government is doomed. We are out of media coverage, for all sorts of reasons, not because our European policy isn’t clamant enough.
The answer is NOT to alienate more of our core voters with an over-hasty return to the battlefield of Brexit.
We should not be calling to rejoin the single market as a political strategy. We should be calling for it because it would be good for our country. Having decided that, we need a political strategy that makes sure that everyone who agrees with us knows that we agree with them and Labour doesn’t.
A good many people from all political persuasions are coming to the conclusion that leaving the EU was not such a good idea after all and that much of the rhetoric from the Brexiteers was just lies so why not be up front and extol the virtues of closer links with our allies, nothing much wrong with that I would think.
The Brexiter media is being incredibly indulgent towards the Conservatives, errors are downplayed or excused that if made by the opposition would have led to a loud and sustained lacerating campaign in the press, echoed by the rest of the media.
If Labour are in government they will have to manage an economy, knackered by Brexit. Labour will be excoriated for failure to stimulate and grow the economy. In such circumstances, Labour will not have the luxury to equivocate this way or that, the imperative for growth will dictate the need for an agreement that opens easy access to the Single Market, including harmonisation of standards.
I don’t know if Chris Moore is making a bid for ‘usual suspect’ status, but our core vote is obviously anti Brexit and reaching out to die hard Brexiters would be a fool’s errand. In any case, the first step is to highlight the damage caused by Brexit; to expose Brexit as an emperor who has no clothes.
Unfortunately key figures in our leadership (Ed, Layla and Brexit minister, Baroness Ludford)do not grasp this. We do have an excellent agreed policy document, but we do not have the strategy to act on it.
Chris Moore – The problem in 2019 was that we didn’t convey to voters what our policies were apart from stopping Brexit but being pro EU wasn’t the problem (although revoke was unhelpful).
Polls suggest that support for rejoining is at a record high. Yet Labour are committed to Brexit to shore up the red wall. The Greens have no foothold in the FPTP system and the SNP only stand in Scotland. That just leaves the Lib Dems. If we don’t stand up for some form of rejoin a new movement might emerge that does.
Unless, any political Party can connect with the voting public, then its wasted. The Labour Party has put itself in difficult positions in the past.
Do you agree with the spending of millions on hotels, and the option for many will be to be cold and hungry? Can warm spaces be of use say to cancer sufferer with a lowered immune system. The disabled and very unwell, very young babies? Lets be logical.
I agree the need to cut waste within energy but it takes preparation, this has not happened on the scale needed. Ceo’s of the energy suppliers have large checks and often earn millions.
I questioned the Russian in the House of Lords, we all know about his family connections. Now there are suggestions the the former Prime Minister had her mobile phone hacked.
If you agree with me or not, we are now in a very difficult position as a country.
Much as I would love to see a re-join movement led by the LibDems, the numbers that have shifted are as yet insufficient for the issue to become a problem in too many seats, such as in most of the West Country, Wales and north of England or Carshalton.
It could also become a distraction nationally, with journalists fixated on nothing else?
Putting utilities back in public hands would be very popular and would encourage tactical voting with the swollen Labour vote. The LibDems did better when they were more on the left, pre-coalition. The Tories block out and absorb every bit of light on the centre right with Kippers nipping at them from the far right.