Labour has more to fear from the Brexit Party than the Conservatives

David Cameron once said of opinion polls: “It’s a bit like asking a farmer, do you like the weather forecast? I’m sceptical – but you go back into them because you don’t have anything else to go on.” Although it seems highly likely that a General Election is only a couple of months away it is particularly tricky to rely on the opinion polls at present. That is because we don’t know whether or not Brexit will have taken place by then and if so what form it will take.

Even trickier is trying to project the number of seats each party will get in the House of Commons based on their percentage share in the polls. That is because it relies on the swing from the last election. But the Brexit Party did not exist in 2017 – yet they won the Euro Elections this year and still show up as having significant support.

Let us suppose that despite his best endeavours Boris Johnson is thwarted form delivering Brexit on October 31st. After some legal machinations we end up with an extension, and then the election campaign immediately gets underway to settle matters.

Some Conservatives regard it as crucial to secure a pact with the Brexit Party to deliver an election victory. I don’t see it as a realistic proposition. But even if they did it would not be a “silver bullet”. There are plenty of angry Brexiteers who would be willing to vote for the Brexit Party but who could never bring themselves to Conservative. These are mostly people who have previously voted Labour. If there was no Brexit Party candidate, they might abstain or, however grudgingly, continue to vote Labour.

If we take the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election last month we saw the Lib Dem candidate elected with 43 per cent of the vote, the Conservative was on 39 per cent. The Brexit Party candidate was on ten per cent. So some suggested that if the Brexit Party had stood down and endorsed the Conservative, then the Conservatives would have won. Very unlikely. Those on the ground say that the Brexit Party got most of their votes from Labour – who finished in fourth place with a collapse in their support.

So if a pact is out and is undesirable, it does leave a couple of options for Brexiteers. One is for the Brexit Party to unilaterally decide to stand down in some seats where there is a Conservative MP with clear Brexit credentials. Indeed this has already been agreed to for around 30 seats.

Then there is the matter if tactical voting. This is not new, but we are likely to have more of it than ever before. That is because many of us now identify ourselves primarily as Leavers or Remainers – party allegiance is an afterthought. It is doubtless transient, but that is the spirit of the age.

The Conservatives will hammer home the message that the only way for Brexit to finally happen is to vote for them. It might be that there is a deal with some disagreeable aspects. But the alternative is that some sort of Labour/Lib Dems/SNP Government has the chance to scupper the whole thing.

In the great majority of constituencies that will surely be a valid message. If Brexiteers want Brexit then the best course for them to take is to vote Conservative. Lifelong Labour voters might hold their noses, given the bonds of family loyalty. There we are. Needs must when the devil drives.

But might there not be other places where the shrewd tactical choice would be to vote Brexit Party? I think there some – they are often termed “safe” Labour seats. I have even gone to the trouble of identifying them. For my calculations I have relied on a couple of sources. First of all Chris Hanretty, a Professor of Politics, Royal Holloway has produced estimates of how people from each House of Commons constituency voted in the Euro Elections.

Across the UK, the Brexit Party got 31.6 per cent. But, of course, this was uneven. Hanretty can help us see where they did best. My interest is in the Labour seats where the Brexit Party performed particularly well. I have also looked at a website called Electoral Calculus which shows the projected results in each constituency according to national vote share. Here I am interested in seats where the Conservatives don’t have a hope – seats that would still be Labour even if there was a Conservative landslide.

Since the Euro Elections, Boris Johnson has replaced Theresa May. Even if the Brexit Party were thinking entirely of Party advantage (which I don’ think most of them are) it would make sense for them to throw the kitchen sink at the Labour seats which offer them the best chance. These are the seats where the Brexit Party has high support and the Conservatives are out of the game, and thus the Conservative vote can be “squeezed.”

The top three Brexit Party targets – where they got over 50 per cent
of the vote in May are:

Hartlepool
Kingston upon Hull East
Redcar

Those where they got between 45 per cent and 50 per cent. There are another 11 “safe” Labour seats in this cohort:

Barnsley East
Great Grimsby
Bolsover
Bassetlaw
Doncaster North
Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle
Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford
Barnsley Central
Wentworth and Dearne
Easington
Sheffield South East

These were the ones where they got between 40 per cent and 45 per cent. Another 21 seats:

Don Valley
Houghton and Sunderland South
Scunthorpe
Stockton North
Blyth Valley
Hemsworth
Makerfield
North Durham
Sedgefield
Blackpool South
Doncaster Central
Jarrow
Leigh
Middlesbrough
Blaydon
Darlington
South Shields
Stoke on Trent Central
Wakefield
Washington and Sunderland West
Workington

Finally, these are the most distant prospects for them – but where they still secured 35 per cent to 40 per cent. That was usually enough to beat the Labour Party. This gives us a further 34 seats:

Bradford South
Burnley
Lincoln
North West Durham
Wansbeck
Blaenau Gwent
Islwyn
Chesterfield
Denton and Reddish
Ellesmere Port and Neston
Heywood and Middleton
Hyndburn
Rotherham
Wolverhampton South East
Torfaen
Clwyd South
Chorley
Coventry North West
Gedling
West Bromwich East
North Tyneside
Wigan
Worsley and Eccles South
Newport East
Ogmore
Caerphilly
Ashton-under-Lyne
Batley and Spen
Halifax
Kingston upon Hull North
Newcastle upon Tyne North
Sheffield, Heeley
St Helens North
Newport West

My hunch is that in most of those 69 seats the Brexit Party will beat the Conservatives, and in some of them we will see Brexit Party MPs returned. I was surprised that the Labour MPs hoping to be returned in the above listed seats all voted for the Benn Act – or the “Surrender Act” – which effectively seeks to scupper Brexit from taking place. That will take some explaining on the doorstep. Some might regard the notion of Labour defeat in these areas where they huge majorities as absurd. Another way of looking at it is that they lost in May and have not done anything to improve their position since.

There are plenty of caveats. Is the Brexit Party candidate in a particular constituency any good? How vigorous is the campaign effort? How well-entrenched is sitting Labour MP in terms of a personal vote? Some Conservatives in these seats may have no wish to vote for the Brexit Party on principle. They might be concerned with other issues apart from the EU. They might have a personal enthusiasm for Boris Johnson and an antipathy for Nigel Farage.

Still, I think some of these seats that Labour have taken for granted for decades could prove competitive. Labour MPs who had complacently looked forward to a job for life might be getting a pang of nerves. That in itself is healthy for the democratic process.