No political party has struggled to find its soul on Brexit more than Labour. The party has tried to straddle both sides of the debate, but as it inches slowly towards Remain, its MPs are worried it risks losing Leave-supporting voters in its traditional heartlands.
The parliamentary party — like the membership – is divided. Some want Labour to become a party of Remain, while others want to secure a deal and get on with leaving the EU. Some fear that to do anything else will lead to a fundamental breakdown of the relationship the party has with voters in the areas where it draws its biggest support.
Labour voters are divided too — in places like London, Labour MPs represent Remain constituencies, but in the former industrial towns and cities that historically made up its core vote, the majority want to see Brexit delivered.
The party finally agreed on a Brexit position at its conference this week — to extend Article 50, hold a general election, and then a second referendum. Labour will decide whether to back Leave or Remain only after winning an election — but critics say the policy is redundant because its position is too ambiguous and puts paid to any hopes of gaining a majority.
It has taken years of wrangling, negotiation and internal lobbying to get to this point, but still some are not happy. Historic Labour strongholds such as Sunderland, Hull, Doncaster and Blaenau Gwent all voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union at the 2016 referendum, and failing to “respect the result” could cost Labour MPs heavily in those areas.
Remain-backing MPs, who were disappointed that their party chose not to come out in favour of staying in the EU, have criticised the policy, but critics on either side seem to agree that it leaves Labour open to attack on both fronts.
For some MPs in these seats, the risk is worth taking. Houghton and Sunderland South MP Bridget Phillipson has been calling vocally for a second referendum since long before it was Labour’s position, and despite the fact that her constituents voted otherwise; Jess Phillips’ Birmingham Yardley constituency voted the same way, but similarly she has been a prominent voice for a second referendum, and to remain.
However, not all of their colleagues agree. Although they may have originally voted — and campaigned — for Remain, some MPs think the best way forward is to implement the result of the 2016 vote.
Labour’s dismal performance at this year’s European elections, gaining just 14% of the vote, suggests it could lose seats to the Lib Dems in cities where the Remain vote was high. At their annual conference, the Lib Dems voted to adopt policy to revoke Article 50 — effectively cancelling Brexit — should they win a general election.
If Labour also loses MPs in pro-Brexit seats to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives — or the Brexit party — then it will stand no chance of forming a government. While the referendum results were calculated by local authority not parliamentary constituency, it is estimated that around 60% of Labour’s seats voted to leave.
And with all parties saying they want to go to the polls — the Conservatives imminently, and Labour after a no-deal Brexit is definitively avoided — a general election could be just around the corner.
For the MPs who want a Brexit deal, it is not just about holding on to their jobs: Gloria De Piero, for example, has said she won’t contest her Ashfield seat at the next election, but continues to advocate for a smooth exit from the EU. These MPs believe that failing to implement the result will further divide Britain and alienate those Labour voters who already felt ignored by the political class.
The “MPs For a Deal” group, comprised of Labour MPs including Stephen Kinnock, Caroline Flint and Gloria De Piero, as well as moderate former Conservatives Nick Boles and Rory Stewart, and others including Lib Dem Norman Lamb, is working cross-party to pass a deal before October 31. They want the last version of Theresa May’s deal to be put before parliament, believing it has the best chance of reaching consensus.
For a minority of Labour MPs, even those not publicly signed up to support the group, this approach is more favourable than the party’s current position, which they believe sends mixed messages.
“Labour’s position is better than Remain, but on the doorstep it’s causing confusion — people just want to know if we’re a Remain or Leave party,” one MP who represents a majority Leave constituency told BuzzFeed News.
Kinnock, who represents the Welsh constituency of Aberavon, was even stronger in his criticism, telling BuzzFeed News that Labour’s new Brexit position was “absurd” and “close to impossible to sell on the doorstep”.
“I really worry that it doesn’t pass the doorstep test,” he said, explaining that candidates won’t be able to answer where Labour currently stands on the biggest issue Britain faces.
He also pointed out that several members of the shadow cabinet, including shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, have said they will campaign for remain whatever the deal, so would not be invested in securing the best possible deal.
“We’d be sending a team of negotiators to Brussels who have a vested interest in getting a bad deal,” he said, “because they’re going to campaign for Remain. It’s convoluted, and close to being impossible to sell on the doorstep.”
The second referendum itself is also a problem for MPs who share Kinnock’s thinking. “It’s a difficult sell in principle for a lot of people who believe that the result of the referendum should be respected, but there’s also a basic weakness in the logic when they [some members of Labour’s shadow cabinet] say they’re going to campaign against whatever deal they’re getting — it’s absurd," Kinnock continued.
“We should have stuck to our guns — in the 2017 manifesto we said we would respect the referendum result but we were the party of never leaving without a deal. Now we’ve got more positions on Brexit than the Kama Sutra.”
Sheffield Heeley MP Louise Haigh, voiced similar concerns at a Hope Not Hate fringe event, titled “How to Beat the Brexit Party,” at the party’s annual conference in Brighton.
She said: “I talk to other colleagues who believe that a 2017 similar compromise policy will get us through another general election, and it will allow those of us in Leave seats to say ‘don’t worry we’ll push for a Brexit deal’, and those of us in Remain seats to say the opposite, and I personally don’t think it will, I don’t believe another compromise like that will see us through another general election.”
Emma Lewell-Buck, who represents South Shields in the northeast of England, was also concerned about the commitment to a second referendum. "I resigned from the frontbench to vote against a second referendum," she said. "It’s going to be a very hard sell and it’s going to anger some voters in Labour Leave areas.”
Several MPs including Haigh, and Heywood and Middleton MP Liz McInnes, are in a similar position.
Although McInnes represents one such Leave-supporting traditionally Labour area, she said she has come around to the leadership’s position regardless, after seeing parliament spend years failing to agree to a deal.
“What conference decided suits Heywood and Middleton better than us coming out as a Remain party,” the constituency’s MP Liz McInnes told BuzzFeed News.
“I’ve been trying to respect the result of the referendum and get a deal that works,” she said, but she added: “We’re either going to run out of time or this mythical deal we’ve been promised doesn’t exist.”
“I’ve gone from being virulently against a second referendum to seeing it as the only way forward,” McInnes added, saying that in a second public vote “people will know exactly what it is they’re voting for.”
And she said she believes that Labour’s policy works in the best interests of her constituents. “I’m acting in the nation’s interest, and I don’t want it on my conscience that I voted for the UK to go down the pan, I want to do the best for my country,” she told BuzzFeed News.
Lewell-Buck, who shares concerns about the second referendum aspect of the policy, said she was relieved that the party had adopted the weaker of the two positions at conference. “We haven’t come out and out explicitly for Remain, so that’s positive,” she said, “so it won’t be as bad as if we were saying we were the party of Remain, and do what the Lib Dems do, and say we’ll revoke Article 50.”
Labour’s new Brexit position is yet to be tested, but polling following their conference did not show the expected “bounce”. YouGov had the party on 22%, neck-and-neck with the Lib Dems, and lagging far behind the Tories on 33%.
One MP said that the continued in-fighting in the party was not helping boost Labour’s chances, and was leading Remain supporters to be critical of a policy that had actually shifted to be more in their favour.
“I think the problem with it was all the furore surrounding it, rather than necessarily where it landed,” said the MP, whose preferred option is for the UK to leave the EU with a deal. “We’ve come out of conference probably where we were before, but with a bit more certainty over a second referendum.
“Jeremy comes at this from a good place, of trying to resolve this almost unresolvable situation. Whether you want Brexit or whether you want to Remain, you’ve got to be clear about what Brexit looks like. A Labour government would shape a deal in the best possible way. It’s a pretty reasonable policy on many levels but the challenge is that we’re not living in reasonable times."
They added: “It may prove to be the case that if we stand in the middle of the road then we get run over, but we have to wait and see.”
While Labour waits and sees it continues to face attack lines from both sides — the SNP say Scottish Labour are weak and indecisive; the Lib Dems tell Remain-backing voters that Labour is a party of Brexit; while the Brexit Party and Tories will argue that Labour’s second referendum policy puts them squarely in the camp of Remain.
Kinnock believes a general election at this point would cost Labour heavily: “If there’s a general election whilst we’re still a member state of the EU, it will be a disaster for Labour. It will be an election in name only — it will be a proxy referendum.
“The only people it will benefit are the polarisers and the bandwagon jumpers, namely the Lib Dems and the Brexit Party. We’re never going to be more Remain than the Lib Dems or more Brexit than the Brexit Party.
“We need to get Brexit done, leave the EU, then we can have a general election and talk about the issues that we used to in this country: jobs, healthcare, your children’s future, how we’re going to deal with the issue of food banks, the increase in rough sleeping... the issues that we should be talking about.”
While some MPs, either publicly or privately, favour a deal, one thing standing in the way is the fact that the prime minister Boris Johnson has not enamoured himself with Labour members whose votes he would need to pass any Brexit deal.
His comments in the chamber on Wednesday left some Labour MPs in tears and caused others to walk out. He was accused of “invoking the language of fascism” by describing Brexit in terms of “surrender” and was widely condemned for saying that delivering Brexit was “the best way to honour the memory” of the murdered MP Jo Cox, who had campaigned for Remain.
Former Labour MP Chuka Umunna, now a Lib Dem, said he did not believe that Johnson would have the numbers to get a deal through parliament following his behaviour in the Commons on Wednesday evening.
“Clearly the PM has absolutely no intention of reaching a deal or reaching a deal that is capable of passing through the House of Commons,” he told BuzzFeed News.
“Because if he was serious about getting a deal with the EU he would have had an eye on ‘will I be able to get this through the Commons?’ and his behaviour kiboshed any chance that any Labour MP would feel able to support him in that endeavour. He would have needed a good few Labour votes to get any deal he comes back with over the line.”
However, some Labour MPs who are pushing to secure a Brexit deal said this was their priority above all else, and that they would hold their noses and work with Johnson.
“Boris is a thug, but getting a deal is bigger than that so we need to rise above it and not engage with his games,” one MP told BuzzFeed News.
Lewell-Buck echoed their thoughts, telling BuzzFeed News: “I think the priority should be completely to get a deal that will pass through parliament.”
A third MP agreed, saying that while the atmosphere in parliament had made things “really, really difficult” their priority remained stopping a no-deal Brexit — and seeking a Brexit deal.
“The whole thing has been a difficult atmosphere; very polarising, very divided, very highly charged. It doesn’t lend itself to cross-party working. That is all incredibly difficult.
“But as we career towards October 31 we have to do everything we can to stop us from leaving the EU without a deal — and one of those things is to leave with a deal. But there’s no question that the atmosphere in parliament, in the country, in our respective political parties, makes these things really, really difficult.”
Kinnock agrees. “I really do deplore the language [Boris Johnson] used, particularly in response to my colleague Paula Sheriff who was visibly distressed; it’s just not acceptable,” he said.
“His moves are straight out of the Donald Trump playbook. When we should have been talking about the Supreme Court ruling… instead he threw a dead cat on the table and we’ve fallen directly into his trap, and we’re talking about the language used in parliament,” he added.
“We need to stop dancing to Boris Johnson’s Trumpian tune and start making sure we can get a deal that can come to parliament, and leave the EU in an orderly way, and finally start to unite our deeply divided country.”