Why Lib Dem by-election result contains bad news about no-deal Brexit – Brian Wilson

A closer examination of the Brecon and Radnor by-election results reveals worrying signs for anyone hoping the UK will avoid a reckless no-deal Brexit, despite victory for the Remain-supporting Lib Dems, writes Brian Wilson.
Jane Dodds, centre, celebrates winning the Brecon and Radnor by-election, but the results suggest a no-deal Brexit is being normalised (Picture: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)Jane Dodds, centre, celebrates winning the Brecon and Radnor by-election, but the results suggest a no-deal Brexit is being normalised (Picture: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)
Jane Dodds, centre, celebrates winning the Brecon and Radnor by-election, but the results suggest a no-deal Brexit is being normalised (Picture: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)

The voters of Brecon and Radnor have spoken – but what did they say? Nothing, I fear, which gives succour to opponents of the Johnson juggernaut.

Following brief celebration of the most dramatic Lib Dem revival since the last one, anyone capable of simple arithmetic can establish a more significant truth which also confirms what a dubious enterprise the “second referendum” campaign has been all along.

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This Welsh constituency voted 52-48 in favour of leaving the EU in 2016. Like the rest of us, it is now being offered not just that generalisation but the specific prospect of a “no deal” exit. In theory, it should have recoiled in horror, not least in sympathy with the yeoman lamb producers of Wales.

It did no such thing. Add the Tories’ 39.5 per cent on a decent turn-out to 10 for Farage’s outfit and you get 49.5, as opposed to 43.5 for the victorious Lib Dem/United Remain. The rump Labour vote, reduced by the glories of Corbynism-McCluskyism to 5.2 per cent, must be categorised as “maybes”.

Enter the usual caveats about by-elections not being fought on a single issue, new Prime Ministerial bounces and all the rest of it but the logic remains pretty obvious. The urgent priority for the Tories is to marginalise Farage if they are going to sweep to victory in an early General Election.

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That points in only one direction – which is to plough on with cranking up “no deal”. As viewed from the Tory bunker, the biggest danger lies in facing the electorate without delivering on Johnson’s Brexit rhetoric. Kill off the Brexit Party and they win. Leave it with ten per cent in every seat and they lose.

This is a set of circumstances which the “second referendum” campaign never seriously considered. The working metropolitan assumption was that given the opportunity, many who voted to Leave would recant in the light of hard evidence of their folly. There is not much sign of it.

We have now had barely a fortnight of intensive propaganda aimed at normalising the idea of “no deal” and “turbo-charging” the exit process.

To many of us, each pronouncement sounds more deluded than the one before, each dismissal of impacts on businesses, communities and jobs more reckless and irresponsible.

That, we need to recognise, is far from being a consensus. Even the Scottish “difference” works only up to a point.

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While the 44.7 who voted for Scottish independence are sainted as a persecuted minority, there is a studious pretence that the 38 per cent of Scottish voters who favoured leaving the EU did not exist. They did and they do. Johnson’s next few weeks will focus on delivery – a can-do approach to every problem, a generous distribution of largesse, the message that if only this Brexit thingy can be disposed of, the future is golden. Most of it will prove to be nonsense but it may take more than a few months for that to become established truth.

With a Commons majority reduced to one, can Johnson carry on towards “no deal”? That remains the default position and options for changing it narrow by the day. Opposition MPs who repeatedly voted down “the deal”, on the tenuous basis that somehow the whole thing would go away, increasingly look like donkeys led by asses who greatly over-estimated their own procedural cleverness.

I believe that Johnson would prefer to leave with a deal rather than without one and his rhetoric will become more subdued if even cosmetic changes can be presented as a triumph of aggressive diplomacy. Though there is not much sign of where that might come from, it is an option which should now be encouraged rather than dismissed.

For the time being, however, it is not consequences which will lose those around him a moment’s sleep. It is the dominant question, reinforced by Brecon and Radnor, of how to marginalise the potentially fatal threat of Farage in advance of a General Election.

That is not a great starting point for wisdom or reason but it is a political reality which will drive events.

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