Election: Is Brexit No Longer Inevitable?

Dare to dream, Remain supporters, dare to dream!

It is still a long shot but there is now at least a possibility that British voters could get a second chance to vote to remain in the EU. The latest opinion polls showing that June 8 could produce a hung parliament mean that the next government could be forced to allow voters to have the final verdict on whatever package emerges from the Brexit negotiations over the next two years.

Here’s how it could happen…

The first requirement is that neither the Conservatives nor Labour win a majority in the House of Commons, as both parties have pledged to support the “Brexit” decision in last year’s referendum. It is the Scottish National Party, the Lib Dems and the Greens who want to hold a second referendum, and they could make such a referendum a condition of their support for a future Tory or Labour government.

At that point the major parties would not be bound by their manifestos, just as David Cameron had to ditch major promises in 2010 to woo the Lib Dems.

Theresa May called the snap election confident that she would increase her majority in the House of Commons, where the Tories won 330 seats in 2015. There are 650 seats, including four held by Sinn Fein, which has not previously taken up those seats, so a working majority is 323 seats.

May’s bumbling campaign, with its misfiring manifesto and her embarrassing decision to dodge direct debates with other leaders, means the latest YouGov analysis published by the Times suggests her party might now go backwards by winning just 310 seats.

Let’s say that the election does give the Tories 310, with another nine seats held by conservative-leaning Unionists from Northern Ireland.

The YouGov analysis gave Labour 257 seats, the SNP 50 and Lib Dems 10, for a total of 317, just half a dozen seats shy of that target of 323. The localised nature of Lib Dem support means they have a very good chance of scoring more than 10 seats, and any anti-Tory alliance would normally be confident of picking up the support of about 10 more MPs from  the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern  Ireland, Plaid Cymru, the Green MP Caroline Lucas and an independent or two.

Political convention is that as the leader of the largest party Theresa May would be given the first opportunity to form a government, either by stitching together a formal coalition with other parties, or by forming a minority government which would need to seek majorities in the House of Commons on a Bill by Bill basis. The only two “swing” parties which could give May a ruling majority would be the SNP and Lib Dems, which have both ruled out any formal coalition and would no doubt demand a second Brexit referendum as the price for informally supporting a minority government.

Dr Joe Tomlinson, a lecturer in public law at Sheffield University, says he would be surprised if the SNP did not also push for a second Scottish independence referendum as a condition of its support. “It is their overarching objective so you would expect them to put it on the table during negotiations,” he says. According to Tomlinson a hung parliament in which there was no formal coalition agreement “will be as close to constitutional chaos as we have seen after any British election.”

One possibility is that May’s right to form a minority government could be challenged by Corbyn putting his hand up and declaring that he had won the informal support of the SNP and Lib Dems and could therefore form a more stable minority government with the tacit support of a majority of the House. Tomlinson says that would put the Queen in the awkward position of having to choose between the competing claims of May and Corbyn.

“There are no clear legal rules for this situation but all the parties would try very hard to avoid dragging the Queen into having to make a political choice like that,” he says. “There is no appetite for having the situation resolved by the Queen so it would have to be determined in Parliament.”

In the past Theresa May could have resorted to a second election but the Fixed Term Act introduced by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition in 2011 means that now she could only do that if two-thirds of the House voted for a new election. The Tories want to repeal that Act but it is still in force and would restrict the options of a hung parliament. May would need to wait until the House resumed  under her minority leadership and try to win support for her agenda.

“There would be serious limits on what she could achieve and something as contentious as going through with Brexit would be very difficult,” says Tomlinson. “A minority Tory Government would have to negotiate with other parties, and even with a small majority she would find it very difficult to go through with something as long and complex as the Brexit negotiations.”

If May lost a confidence motion in the House then Jeremy Corbyn, or whoever is leading the Labour Party, could be given the chance to lead their own minority government, and the hope for Remainers would be for the SNP and Lib Dems to win that one big concession from him – holding a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

 

by Peter Wilson

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