Will Remain parties split the vote at the European parliament elections?

Politics Explained: With everyone standing on Brexit lines, pro-EU parties could be undone by all campaigning on the same issue

Splitting the vote means inadvertently dividing your supporters and letting the other side, who are not making the same error, win. It is an occupational hazard for all political parties. There are two main dangers.

First, assuming you have much the same views, you can quite easily confuse the voter and campaign less effectively across a number of parties than via one unified organisation.

Today, when one political issue dominates the headlines to the virtual exclusion of all else – Brexit – and many parties share the view that the UK should not leave the EU, it seems odd that they cannot form some kind of “alliance” in order to demonstrate their own solidarity, and invite the general public to do the same.

In the UK there are many such anti-Brexit, pro-EU parties: the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Change UK nationally, plus Sinn Fein and the SDLP in Northern Ireland, and the SNP and Plaid Cymru in Scotland and Wales respectively, among others. In any given European parliament constituency they could each get something like 10 per cent of the vote, sometimes much more, adding to more than half altogether; but each could be “defeated” by a Brexit Party candidate polling, say, just 27 per cent (this is especially the case in parts of England).

At the moment, the Leave side is much less divided then the Remain side, but there are still rifts. Arguably – very arguably for some – the Conservative is a Leave party and, in addition, Ukip is competing for much the same voters that Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party is now attracting.

As things stand, the hard Brexit vote is coalescing around one party – the Brexit Party – while the Remain vote is divided between any of its various components. This, of course, is assuming that Labour is not a fully committed Remain party, with even its support for a Final Say referendum lukewarm. Labour’s stance is a matter of intense debate and scrutiny.

In a Westminster election, such as the one for the Peterborough constituency on 6 June, such splintering of the Remain vote could well let the Brexit Party in, or a Conservative, or indeed the Labour Party, which won the seat in the 2017 election. First-past-the-post has the effect of punishing smaller groups and, as here, possibly delivering a perverse result.

In light of that, the Lib Dems, Greens and Change UK were talking about forming a multi-party Remain alliance for the by-election, which might or might not have amounted to something greater than the sum of the parts.

Those talks have now collapsed, but they might be reconvened for the next general election. If they all work enthusiastically for their erstwhile political opponents they might do rather better than if each ploughed their own furrow. However, voters are not sheep willing to be ordered into some predetermined pen, and elections can be unpredictable, indeed chaotic. If, for example, the Brexit Party did exceptionally well at the next general election, they could rob the Tories of vital votes and seats, and thus allow Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister – and engineer a permanent customs union with the EU, the last thing hard Brexiteers want.

There are other potential hazards. If the various partners in a Remain alliance start to argue publicly, it might turn the voters off. The unspoken assumption is that a Remain alliance/party would necessarily beat a Brexit party – but the risk of losing a supposed proxy referendum for reasons unrelated to Brexit remains.

For the elections to the European parliament, on 23 May, the system of proportional representation makes splitting the Remain or Leave vote less of an issue – but it will still happen where there are relatively few MEPs being elected in a given seat. Being proportional between, say three or four MEPs where five or six parties are standing is much more difficult than if there were, say, 100 to divide the votes into. British Euro constituencies return between three (North East England, Northern Ireland) and 10 (South East England) MEPs.

Tactical voting, last seen in any strength in 1997 and 2001 when there was a strong anti-Tory movement, might be a substitute for a formal electoral pact, but it would need for the voters to be able to identify which party is in front from their point of view in their own constituency. With new challenger parties such as Change UK and the Brexit Party this may be more of a challenge to identify.

Other things being equal, the British electorate tend to prefer united and well-disciplined parties with strong leadership and a clear message. At the moment, the voters are not spoiled for choice.