Stats for Lefties: Should I stay or should I go? Labour’s Brexit dile...

With the government having finally put its proposed Brexit deal on the table, and with a
Parliamentary vote imminent, the Labour Party and its 257 MPs face a dramatic
test of their Brexit position. 

Despite the vocal demands of the “People’s Vote”
campaign, Labour has declined to back a second EU referendum, and has instead
prioritised a general election so that Labour can form a government and
negotiate a Brexit deal that meets its “6 tests” for a good deal. As part of
this strategy, Labour will vote against the Tories’ Brexit deal - the idea is
that if the Tories’ Brexit deal cannot pass the Commons, then the government
will be forced to call a general election to obtain a mandate for May’s deal.
Labour can then win the election and renegotiate a new deal. If Labour cannot
obtain an election, then all options (including a second referendum) remain on
the table.

The nuanced approach of Labour’s policy has often left pro-EU campaigners frustrated and
angry – many ask why Labour doesn’t simply back a second referendum or support
stopping Brexit outright. The reasons for Labour’s complex strategy, however,
are equally complex, and in this article we’ll try take a look at the
statistics that illustrate Labour’s dilemma.

Part 1: Play to Win 

On the face of it, Labour’s base is mostly anti-Brexit. In
the most recent Survation poll (the most accurate pollsters in
2017), the pollster found that 65% of those who voted Labour in 2017 would vote
‘Remain’ in a second EU referendum. Other surveys have found that
90% of Labour members support ‘Remain’, and that 78%
of Labour members back a second referendum on Brexit. With the
Brexit vote having gone to Leave by only a 4pt margin (52-48) in 2016, and with
public opinion having slightly shifted towards Remain since 2016, you might
think Labour’s path is clear: it should follow the advice of its voters and
members, adopt a ‘Stop Brexit’ (or second referendum) manifesto pledge and win
the votes of the pro-EU 48%. Simple. 

But the problem Labour faces is this: the House of Commons isn’t elected through a
national popular vote. It’s elected through individual constituencies. And on
the question of Brexit, the vast majority of those constituencies lean more
strongly one way or the other than the nation as a whole. Within England, Wales and Scotland, just 18 constituencies recorded a vote that matched the national
figure (52% Leave, 48% Remain). 350 gave a higher vote share to Leave (on
average, 60% for Leave), whilst 264 gave a higher share to Remain than the
national figure (on average, 59% for Remain). And if Labour wants to become the
governing party, especially with an overall majority, it has to win dozens upon
dozens of constituencies where the voters backed Leave. 

In total, Labour needs to gain 64 new seats (and retain its current ones) to win an
overall majority. The smoothest path runs through the 76 seats where Labour is
behind the opposition by less than 10 percentage points. 42 of these voted Leave (with a 59% Leave vote, on average), and 36 voted Remain (with a 61% Remain vote, on average).

This in itself shows Labour’s challenge – it cannot win a majority without taking seats that
went heavily for Leave AND that went heavily for Remain. However, the challenge
is greater than it looks. Of those marginal seats, 23 of the 36 pro-Remain
seats are held by the SNP or Plaid Cymru, and taking seats from the two
nationalist parties doesn’t increase the number of anti-Conservative MPs in the
Commons. Labour could take every single one of these seats and it wouldn’t make
any difference: the Tories would still form the government.

The seats thatmatter most are the 54 Conservative-held Labour target seats. And of these 54
seats, a full 41 voted Leave (with an average Leave vote of 59%), and just 13
voted ‘Remain’ (with an average Remain vote of 57%). These 54 seats are listed
in the table below.

The upshot ofit all is this. Labour voters might be pro-Remain. Labour members might be
pro-Remain. And the national vote in 2016 may have been close. But in most of
the marginal seats that Labour must win in order to form the next government,
the voters leaned heavily towards Leave in 2016.

A Labour Party committed to overturning those people’s votes and keeping Britain in the EU
against their wishes might well win a handful of votes from the Liberal
Democrats, and take some seats from the SNP, but the price might well be losing
to the Tories in dozens upon dozens of marginal seats. That doesn’t sound like
a risk worth taking. Labour’s nuanced and unifying Brexit policy, that respects
the referendum whilst reaching out to Remain voters, may well be the only way
for the party to win in these marginal seats. After all, it’s that strategy
that saw Labour win 42% of the popular vote in England in 2017 – its highest
share of the vote since 1997.

Part 2: The Magnificent Six 

But Labour’selectoral challenge extends beyond their marginal target seats. There are a
total of 54 Labour-held seats where the party leads its opponent by less than
10 points, and to win power Labour must also hold all of these constituencies
(or all but a few of them). Of these, Labour is being challenged by the SNP in
6 of them, meaning that regardless of the result the seat will elect an
anti-Conservative MP. Of the other 48 Labour-held marginal seats in England and
Wales, the Tories are in second place in 46, with the other two being Labour/Lib
Dem marginals. And most of these (36, to be exact) voted Leave.

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