LABOUR’S EUref2 dilemma dominated last week’s news: will they, won’t they, will it make a difference?
I won’t explore the merits of these positions at length, because I’ve already made my views clear. A new referendum on Brexit would be bad for Corbyn and the Scottish independence movement, a victory for the establishment if the UK votes to remain, and a godsend for the populist right either way. As I write, the situation is still unresolved: Labour will almost certainly commit to some kind of second referendum, but whether that is a vote on a deal or on Brexit itself is unclear.
Amid the confusion, Richard Leonard, Scottish Labour’s normally unassuming leader, made a quiet announcement that threatens to explode a gaping new hole in this argument. Having opened up an avenue for one second referendum, Labour was closing off another. Their UK manifesto, according to Leonard, will block any moves towards a new vote on Scottish independence.
“We just had a referendum in 2014,” Leonard argues. True enough, but it’s a very odd time for Labour to argue about settled wills. Brexit happened in 2016, just two years ago.
In that context, any defence of Leonard’s position necessarily becomes tricky and convoluted. He might argue that Labour accepts the 2016 decision, just as it accepts 2014. We’ll see about that tomorrow. But, regardless, remove the leadership, and the bulk of Labour doesn’t accept 2016 at all; most are actively campaigning to reverse it, and, whatever fudge they agree, that will continue. Corbyn and McDonnell have lost control of this. Momentum, supposedly their faction, are bent on undermining any reconciliation with the 2016 vote.
Corbyn’s own position is for a new General Election. Even this involves overthrowing a public vote that’s less than a year old, and abandoning fixed-term parliaments. Citing May’s ham-fisted efforts at negotiating Brexit, some of Labour wants a new election, ripping up 2017; some want a new referendum, ripping up 2016. Surely, then, Brexit itself, plus the blundering that followed, plus all the endless broken promises, all add up to sufficient “material change” to rip up 2014 and start a new referendum on independence?
Leonard’s announcement emerged apropos of nothing, and it’s not entirely clear what he intended. With Labour planning to fight a General Election, maybe it was a message to English nationalist voters: there will be no coalition of chaos with Sturgeon. Maybe it was a threatening message to voters in Scottish marginals: we won’t play ball with the SNP, so only a Labour vote can stop the Tories. It’s pretty clumsy either way. It only highlights Scottish Labour’s weakness.
Labour are genuinely torn over EUref2. Labour members want it, overwhelmingly. But high-ranking trade union leaders, Cabinet ministers and MPs have doubts.
Has anyone thought it through logically – what exactly would we vote on? Does it let the Brexiteer Tories off the hook, and give them
an opportunity to return to martyrdom, which they’d relish? What if we lost? And, most of all, what about all the traditional Labour voters who voted Leave?
All legitimate questions. But the last one makes me wonder. Labour bends over backwards to please “heartland” Leave voters, understandably enough, yet it has shown nothing but bad faith to the left-inclined core voters who abandoned them to the SNP. They’ve received a right royal snubbing. Is it any wonder that Scottish Labour’s vote has continued to drop under Leonard?
I’m not here to advise Labour, but surely winning SNP voters to the Corbyn project must be a priority. Polling evidence shows they are far more likely to embrace anti-capitalist arguments than any other section of the Scottish (and probably British) electorate.
Labour doesn’t need to promise a second referendum on independence, far less back a Yes vote. But provoking the Yes voters in this manner seems like an act of strategic self-sabotage. Maybe Leonard is making his pitch directly to “Unionist” Scotland, but, on average, that vote is far less open to Corbyn’s radicalism: they’d far rather vote Tony Blair, for a return to “normal”.
And what if the gamble fails? What if Scotland continues to vote SNP, and they gain an electoral mandate for an independence referendum? Polling suggests this is twice as likely as a Scottish Labour victory at Holyrood.
In that event, a Corbyn-led Westminster would be on collision course with the will and mandate of the Scottish electorate. The result would be chaos, and a million unnecessary splits on the Left throughout Britain. All thanks to one man’s big, blundering mouth.
It’s doubly galling because this was so unnecessary. Scottish Labour has been virtually invisible for years. Nobody was pressuring them to stake-out a position on this question. And they’ve pushed the argument, worst of all, just as their membership overwhelming commits itself to saying second referendums are good, when they suit us.
I’ve spoken to many honest, independent Scottish Labour members about this announcement. All of them are aghast. They think Leonard has lost his mind. I would advise them to take a leaf out of
the Remainer tactic book and fight this democratically through the party. Otherwise, they’re being led to nowhere, at a time when Scotland badly needs credible socialist opposition.
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