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These numbers are wild (but unsurprising). Rarely do the British people agree by such margins. Looks like the basic red lines of a US deal are likely to be electorally toxic.
Some thoughts... https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1273930187214856194
Some thoughts... https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1273930187214856194
Recent guff about an Australian deal is a distraction. The key political battle is likely going to be: close US or EU econ alignment? Tory Libertarian/Anglosphere types saw Brexit has their opportunity to secure the former. Labour’s most natural transition is to the latter...
The latter has many advantages. It will cause the least disruption + benefits of geographical proximity. It suits Labour’s social agenda (workers’, consumers’, and environmental rights). Sadly and ironically, as this polling suggests, many individual EU regulations are popular...
including the libertarian bug-bear of protected product names (e.g. Prosecco & Stilton). Many left-wing policies are popular in isolation; packaged together under the Lab brand they become unpopular. it seems EU regulations are popular until they’re packaged as an EU imposition.
The trick will be to package the arg for EU alignment as the defence of British standards - the British way of doing things. ‘We didn’t take back control to sell out our standards to the US’. Provocatively: ‘to become the next US state’. ‘Britishify’ the argument.
Wrapped in the EU flag, these policies were divisive. Wrapped in the British flag, and they unite the left and split the right. Labour and the NFU will be on the same side. If you make the defence of *our* ‘cultural standards’ into a sufficiently high impediment, the Tories will
likely back off a deep US deal of imperil their election chances pushing ahead. What then? They’ll likely scrape together skeletal deals with other countries and declare them great victories - but it won’t be a replacement for EU membership.
More work at this stage would need to be done, but close EU alignment will increasingly look like the default/only possibility (much like EC membership by the late ‘60s). Obviously the exact shape of such alignment could vary considerably, but yes.
Labour’s strategic objectives are ill-served by a close US deal and best (not perfect) by an EU. The project will likely be recreating as many of the benefits of EU membership as possible, but this will need to be carefully packaged as beneficial interaction as equals, not
an imposition. As I say, wrap the flag around the consumer/environmental rights we inherit from 40+ years of EC membership. Neutralise the patriotism/sovereignty argument (‘we are a close ally and partner, not member’; ‘protect British standards’). Split the Tories.
... wildly, maybe too optimistically, one could begin to frame the Q of patriotism around defence of consumer/environmental/workers rights.. as a defence of ‘the British way of doing things‘, etc. People clearly feel v strongly about this. Lab should think about channeling this.
(And yes, *academic brain engaged* I know how ahistorical the ‘British way of doing things’ is, but mythologies are powerful and Potent left/wing stories Need to be found and told)
