Eve of Poll Thoughts

My eve of poll reflections are that Labour has already won. I don’t mean in seats, which they are going to lose a lot of. But the campaign has unfolded in a way that leaves them much better off than when they started. The main thing is that the left in politics has united behind them. The biggest danger was that the ant-Tory vote and the anti-Brexit vote would split between the Lib Dems, the Greens and Labour. Two party politics is not much fun but it is certainly to Labour’s great advantage.


The other thing is that by doing well on a broadly left wing platform they have successfully moved the overall political agenda in their direction. It is hard to imagine this happening at any other time in the last 40 years. In fact it is rather hard to credit it has happened even now. But the Brexit shock coupled with Theresa May’s curious channeling of her inner Trotskyist has changed the landscape. In fact it is the sudden adoption of several Labour policies and some of its traditional tone of voice by Mrs May that has in some ways helped Labour most. I was most struck by the idea of workers representatives on company boards. She’ll be calling for all power to the soviets and issuing a set of transitional demands next.

I don’t think the Tories will be in Citizen Smith mode for long, but for the moment they have threatened to move in on Labour’s natural territory and in so doing have robbed themselves of their normal weapons of blasting Labour’s unrealistic approach to the economy. So all in all there is a lot of reason for Labour supporters to be cheerful, even optimistic. There is still a strong possibility that all this progress will be thrown away by infighting. If the aftermath of the election is given over to Labour MPs still trying to get rid of Corbyn then the chance might well still be missed. But if they get behind him then the prospects for 2021 or 2022 look good.

The issue that didn’t get an airing of course was Brexit. I noticed that after the first couple of weeks it became a subject that nobody wanted to talk about. I didn’t want to talk about it much. It looks like voters don't find the subject very compelling either. But it is important and how it pans out will have a huge impact on how things turn out in Britain. I have a feeling that we have totally lost the initiative now and the settlement is going to be whatever our former European partners choose to offer us. I have no idea what that will be. I hope it is generous because I really want to get back in and the softer the Brexit the easier it will be to win people round to the idea of rejoining.

But I have no idea, and it is really hard to see how it will turn out well. Of course the problem facing whoever has to negotiate it is that it will be impossible to please everyone, while pleasing nobody is quite a realistic outcome. It may well be that this election really is the one to lose. And when it comes to losing elections, well Labour have pretty good form.