Labour’s neutral Brexit policy is unpopular with both Leavers and Remainers, warns Sir John Curtice ‘For every one voter who voted Labour and Leave there were two in 2017 who voted Remain’

Labour‘s latest compromise position on Brexit risks not doing anything to stop both Leave and Remain voters abandoning the party, according to pollster Sir John Curtice.

The party voted to back leader Jeremy Corbyn‘s policy of remaining neutral during a three-month negotiation with the EU if it triumphs in a general election, during its annual conference in Brighton.

It would then hold a referendum in six months between that deal and Remain and only choose which side to pick in the run-up to the vote.

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But Sir John, who is one the UK most respected psephologists, warned that the compromise position may continue to alienate voters.

‘The arithmetic doesn’t lie’

The professor at the University of Strathclyde told the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme: “sure there is no doubt that the Labour Party faces challenges, how does it keep the coalition that it has together. But at the end of the day, the arithmetic doesn’t lie.”

“For every one voter who voted Labour and Leave there were two in 2017 who voted Remain, and the difficulty about believing that Labour’s latest variation of its compromise designed to appeal to both groups is going to work is that the party has lost ground heavily amongst both Remainers and amongst Leavers.

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“It lost that gound essentially by the end of May it was only running at around 25% in the polls across the electorate as a whole. There is no evidence at all of any recovery in that figure, and so, therefore, it’s not clear why yet another compromise, a compromise that looks unlikely to appeal to either Labour Remainers or Labour Leavers is actually going to succeed in repairing the damage.

“Remember that around two thirds of those people who are Labour leavers say that actually, their preferred policy is Boris Johnson’s policy of ‘let’s just get out by the 31st of October.’

Meanwhile, Labour Remain voters are, if anything, closer to Jo Swinson’s view of ‘let’s just revoke article 50’ than wanting another referendum?”

“So how either of these groups is going to get attracted back by the policy is not immediately obvious.”

Labour vote

The Labour leadership fought off attempts by some in the party to push it towards a more pro-Remain position in a vote on Sunday. The party has long tried to maintain a compromise position on Brexit, with many voters in traditional Labour areas in the north of England backing leave in the 2016 vote.

Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC that he was disappointed with the result and he personally felt Remain to be the best option for the UK.

“Would I have liked us to have gone a bit further and won that vote? Of course I would – but I don’t want to take away from the fact that it is quite considerable movement.”