Labour may get as little as 20% of the vote at the next general election and win fewer than 150 seats, according to an analysis of the challenges the party faces.

Buffeted by difficulties including plotting a course on Brexit and a continued lack of support in Scotland, as well as Jeremy Corbyn’s unpopularity, Labour has virtually no chance of winning outright in the next election, the Fabian Society report concludes.



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The thinktank argues Labour should seek ways to win power with the support of parties such as the Liberal Democrats and Scottish National party, arguing this is the only feasible route into government for now.

Based on analysis of existing poll data and historical trends, the study predicts that the next election, whether held imminently or in 2020, is very likely to see Labour win fewer than 200 seats for the first time since 1935, possibly falling to about 140.

However, it cautions against the idea that Labour could be imminently replaced as the main opposition, saying the electoral system will act as a “firebreak” against a calamitous collapse in the number of seats.

The report says Labour’s general election vote over the past 40 years has tended to be almost eight percentage points lower than its poll rating in the second year of the preceding parliament. If this happens in 2020, the Labour vote could fall to 20% or less.

But using projections based on recent polls, it says that even if either Ukip or the Lib Dems could tie with Labour on 20%, the electoral system would mean neither would win more than 20 seats, with Labour remaining at 140 to 150.

Such a scenario would see the Conservatives win more than 400 seats, giving Theresa May a vast Commons majority.

The study – titled Stuck: how Labour is too weak to win and too strong to die – is particularly pertinent for the party as it comes from an officially affiliated organisation, which was one of Labour’s co-founders in 1900 but is now associated with the centre-right of Labour.

The report stresses that its gloomy conclusions are based less on the immediate issue of Corbyn’s leadership than on long-term issues such as the impact of Brexit, the collapse of support in Scotland and electoral mathematics.

Andrew Harrop, the Fabians’ general secretary, who wrote the report, said Corbyn and his team appeared to have little idea how to respond to such challenges or how to win back the 4 million voters who supported Labour in 2015 but say they would not do so now.

After Corbyn triumphed against Owen Smith in a leadership challenge, his team had produced “no roadmap” for overcoming Labour’s plight, Harrop wrote, while the wider parliamentary Labour party had become “barely audible”.

“In place of the sound and fury of Jeremy Corbyn’s first 12 months, there is quietude, passivity and resignation,” he said. “And on Brexit, the greatest political question for two generations, the party’s position is muffled and inconsistent. This is the calm of stalemate, of insignificance, even of looming death.”

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On Monday Len McCluskey, the leader of the Unite union and one of Corbyn’s staunchest supporters, suggested the Labour leader and John McDonnell, his shadow chancellor, would feel obliged to step down if there was no change in opinion polls currently showing Labour lagging behind by about 12 points.

Speaking to the Mirror, McCluskey said it was necessary to consider “what happens if we get to 2019 and opinion polls are still awful”.



“The truth is everybody would examine that situation, including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell,” he said, adding: “These two are not egomaniacs. They are not desperate to cling on to power for power’s sake.” However McCluskey later insisted he still supported the Labour leader.

The Fabians’ report identifies a coherent response to Brexit as one of the main obstacles facing Labour. Using YouGov data, it calculates that the party has lost a net 400,000 votes since the last election among pro-leave electors, and 100,000 among those who backed remain, making its backing more strongly pro-remain than before.

This poses a “Brexit dilemma”, the study says, pointing out that Labour needs to somehow appeal more to leave voters without alienating existing supporters who opposed Brexit.

In such a landscape, the report stresses the need for Labour to accept the impossibility of outright victory in the next election and prepare instead for an era of “quasi-federal, multi-party politics”, where it relies on the assistance of other parties.

To gain an absolute Commons majority, it calculates, Labour would need to beat the Conservatives by more than 3m votes, a higher margin than in 2001. “Even before Labour’s current problems, this was unlikely,” the study argues. “It is currently unthinkable.”

While the proposed shakeup of Commons constituency boundaries would further disadvantage Labour, it is only likely to affect about 10 MPs, the report argues, making this a “sideshow”.

Overall, Harrop says this is “not a story of victory or death … but, whenever an election comes, the party must fight for every vote and every seat, because there is a huge difference between winning 150 and 250 MPs.”

A spokeswoman for Corbyn said: “Rebuilding Labour support after its fragmentation at the 2015 election was always going to be a challenge. But Labour under Jeremy Corbyn will be taking its case to every part of Britain in the coming months with a radical policy platform, offering the only genuine alternative to a failed parliament political establishment and the fake anti-elitists of the hard right.”