When the coming electoral contest is settled, there will either be a government led by an anti-austerity Labour party committed to a referendum with remain on the ballot paper, or a hard-right Tory party committed to the hardest of Brexits. Everything else is noise.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of noise, and Labour is partly responsible. The party’s new Brexit position – that a deal with the EU should be put to the British people, and the government will implement whatever decision they make – is entirely straightforward, or at least it should be. It was, after all, the sole demand of the People’s Vote campaign, which – until three months ago – did not even officially back remain, just a referendum to end the impasse. But Labour is failing to communicate its stance clearly, fuelling a perception that the policy is a contorted mess when it actually isn’t.
Yes, a big caveat is needed. Labour’s leadership has few sympathisers in an overwhelmingly hostile press landscape. Those commentators feigning ignorance about the party’s position – guffaw, guffaw, you need 15 paragraphs to explain Labour’s policy! – are muddying the waters for partisan ends. Many of those ridiculing Labour for zigzagging and incoherence do not apply the same standard to the Liberal Democrats’ absurd position, which now means revoking article 50 in the fantastical scenario that the party wins an election, or if not reverting back to support for a people’s vote. Nor is Jo Swinson under sustained media pressure about whether she would prefer no deal to a temporary Corbyn-led government that would agree an extension then hold an election.
But acknowledging unfair media treatment does not absolve Labour of mistakes. It should have adopted its current position unequivocally after the European elections in May. Now the policy is in place, the party isn’t making the best of it.
Explaining it is easy: messages such as, “Labour will let the people decide, not the politicians”; or “Only Labour trusts the people in a public vote”. When shadow ministers are asked how they’ll vote, they should answer the question – and indeed point out that most Labour MPs will campaign for remain – while saying it shouldn’t be about politicians, who have done enough to inflame divisions; it should be about the people. Under a Labour government, the vote would be a choice between remain and a Brexit deal that doesn’t blow up the economy and destroy hard-won rights – with no deal permanently taken off the table. Having a prime minister who isn’t deliberately polarising the country, but attempting to heal divisions, should be presented as a virtue.
Labour ought to be on the front foot. It needs a massive social media and billboard campaign committing to a people’s vote, public rallies, set-piece speeches by leading Labour politicians extolling the policy’s virtues. At the moment, the position mostly emerges when a shadow cabinet minister is under sustained fire from a broadcast journalist who’s defining it negatively. It is already subjected to laughs of ridicule from Question Time audiences. So unless Labour goes on the offensive over its policy, there will be lots more of these moments in the hothouse of an election campaign. Boris Johnson’s Tories do have a clear message, after all – “get Brexit done” appeals to a widespread sense of Brexit fatigue. The danger is that the Tory party is defining itself, while Labour is allowing itself to be defined by its opponents.
There is an understandable fear among some Labour strategists that without winning over leave voters who did not opt for the party in 2017, the route to a majority is closed off. But there surely must be a sense of urgency over the fact that most of the support Labour has haemorrhaged is among remain voters who have flocked to the Lib Dems and, to a lesser degree, the Greens. Without them, Labour will be consigned to an electoral rout. As it is, those who prioritise Brexit taking place over everything else already consider support for a referendum as code for backing remain; the danger is many remain voters do not, while both regard the party as shifty.
This is not to be fatalistic. In an election campaign, the stark choice – and the highest stakes since the second world war – will be far clearer than they are now. Labour will be able to present itself as the only party offering a pathway to remain, as well as offering a range of goodies – from scrapping tuition fees and tax justice to public ownership – that the Lib Dems will not.
The unprecedented electoral fluidity of our time – and the experience of 2017 – means that any confident prediction about the election’s outcome would be foolish. It is a winnable election for Labour – but without being far clearer and more confident about its own position, it risks imperilling its chances.
• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
