The Brexit Party continues to lead in YouGov's latest European Parliament voting intention poll.. Nigel Farage's new party holds 28% of the vote, having been on 23% in last week's survey. Labour find themselves with 22% of the vote (unchanged) while the Conservatives are on just 13% (from 17% last week). The Greens are on 10% (unchanged) as are Change UK (from 8% last week). The Lib Dems hold 7% of the vote (9% last week) and UKIP are on 5% (from 6%). Votes for all other parties stand at 6% (unchanged).
Ordinarily voting intentions for the European parliament do not merit comment because turnout tends to be low and voters tend to be not very informed about the goings on in Strasbourg (and Brussels). But given the very high salience of Brexit in British political life, possibly even the identities of voters, such polls have become useful proxies for reflecting on the voters' views on Europe/Brexit and the way Westminster is handling it. There are five notable facts here.
First, pure Brexit parties (Farage/Ukip) are polling 33% of the voters. Second, pure remain parties (Lib Dem/Change UK, and Greens), and polling 27%. Below I say something about the significance of this (and the way these votes are spreading out over the parties) in light of the fact that much of the UK uses the d'Hondt system of proportional representation - regional closed list. Third, and as Chris Brooke first pointed out to me, the parties that represent compromise positions on Brexit, Labour and the Conservatives are polling 35%. Since between them, these two parties have ruled the UK for close to a century, this third fact alone is quite notable. Even in the last European election, which saw a sizable pro-Brexit vote, these two parties almost had half the votes.* Undoubtedly many of my Labour party intellectual friends will take great schadenfreude (which is indeed the best freude) in the collapse of the Tories, and perhaps see in it even a form of historic justice. Below I suggest this attitude would be a mistake.
Fourth, the boring thing to say is that these three blocks probably reflect the relative attitudes toward Brexit in UK society right now. But the more important fact is that the collapse in support of the main parties is quite natural when the (perhaps natural) party of government (CON) is a failure at governing and the (perhaps natural) party of opposition (LAB) is a failure at opposing. The failure here was the decision to opt for an a la carte Brexit--once the Conservatives opted for it, Labour felt it had no choice.+ For, that this was embraced by both parties reflects, in part, electoral math: the fear of alienating too many of one's pre-existing coalition. But in part it reflects the historical pattern of opt-outs that the British political class has pursued for much of the time in the EU. And it is this history of opt-outs that has made Britain's participation in the EU so dysfunctional. Rather than buying into the (liberal) win-win logic of the EU, the UK's political stance has always been a halfhearted zero-sum one.
Fifth, in particular, as it happens, by going for their impure voters CON + LAB have left too much tactical room on their own respective flanks. They would be much better off catering to their own pure voters because their impure Brexit voters would have no other place to go. This is an interesting case of lack of collision in a duopoly.
Sixth, the regional d'Hondt system of proportional representation rewards regional concentration and (modestly) favors bigger parties (because there is a de facto high threshold to get any seats). In the UK context this means right now that the pure remain vote also risks being diluted and not translate in equivalent number seats.
Finally, one may think that once (a la carte) Brexit is done, CON + LAB will recover their historic strengths because the EU will have been depoliticized as a politically salient issue in the UK. In particular, my Labour friends may think that the collapse of the Conservatives represents a historic opportunity. This strikes me as delusional for three reasons: first, pragmatically, right now there is little evidence that either of the two main parties can execute an a la carte Brexit while also holding their own party together. Second, once such a partial Brexit is passed, the hard work begins--thousands of EU pertinent issues that were relatively un-politicized during EU membership will become salient again now not just as a matter of interest politics but in terms of fundamental identity. And this gets me to the most important reason: as Stephen Davies first emphasized to me, and as I predicted in claiming that Brexit would be a politically transformative event (see also this post by Helen de Cruz), attitudes toward the EU are themselves now importantly part of a whole range of significant identity values (related to nation, immigration, cosmopolitanism, region, the environment, town/country, age etc.).
*The historic norm was about 70%; but starting in 2004 UKIP begins to rise in European elections and the share of the two main parties begins to fall (also due to Scottish nationalist votes).
+I am no friend of Corbyn's policies or persona, but I was thinking he has played a bad hand really well. But if LAB end up only with a fifth of the votes then one must also judge his approach a failure.
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