A general election will not resolve Brexit
Socialist Resistance online2010sThe publication's own web text.
The government is in a state of collapse. May has suffered two humiliating Parliamentary defeats in the last week and will suffer another one on Tuesday. Meanwhile Britain is in a free-fall towards a disastrous no deal crash-out on March 30th into WTO rules.
This represents a massive opportunity for Labour to take the leadership of the growing tide of opposition to Brexit under these circumstances and inflict a defeat on the Tories, from which they would struggle to recover, through a second referendum.
Unfortunately, this is still not happening. Jeremy Corbyn has repeated his call for a general election and remains vague on a second referendum.
With the Tories in crisis, a general election to get them out is necessary. But the problem is that an election does not, in itself, resolve the Brexit issue. It simply transfers it to the election campaign and to the positions that Labour takes on Brexit within it. Labour’s current position of taking over the Brexit process and completing it by negotiating a better deal with the EU than May has been able to do, is a serious problem. There has never been a left-wing Brexit possible in this process and there is not one now.
A general election is unlikely, since the assessment of the Tories from all sides of the debate is that Labour would win. A motion of no confidence is not really open to Labour either, because it would be inevitably lost, and end up giving May a propaganda boost just after her defeat. The DUP would stick with May in a confidence vote and not a single Tory MP would break ranks.
The key to the situation remains the issue that Jeremy Corbyn continues to ignore the issue of a second referendum. In the event of an election, if Labour must put an unequivocal commitment to a referendum with an option to Remain in its manifesto and campaign for Remain. If it fails to do that, Labour could alienate its core supporters to the extent that it could lose the election.
There is no guarantee that EU will agree to reopen negotiations. They have already said that they would be open to an extension of Article 50 but only in relation to an extension of the democratic process – for example if Parliament wanted more time to discuss or to organise a referendum, not to reopen negotiations on the deal itself.
The case for a second referendum is now overwhelming, and LP members and voters are massively in favour. The idea that the referendum held nearly three years ago represents informed consent for what is now on offer makes no sense. There is now a democratic case for a second referendum.
Alan Davies