Labour’s electoral success depends on whether it backs a Final Say – now is the time for it to show its support

The party represents many of the people most worried about Brexit, and millions are hoping that they will help deliver real choice for the country and its people

Theresa May’s Brexit strategy has become increasingly inward-looking. As the clock runs down each wasted day, the prime minister, rather than leading the nation, obsesses over holding together the fragile bonds of her own party. As Labour MP Hilary Benn put it, commenting on May’s offer of cross-party talks, “the prime minister said her door was open, but her mind was closed”.

Labour has at least partly grasped the nettle in a way the prime minister refuses to. In its amendment tabled after May’s Monday statement, Jeremy Corbyn’s party suggested that parliament should be able to vote on options to prevent no deal and that these options should include “legislating to hold a public vote on a deal or a proposition that has commanded the support of the majority of the House of Commons”. This is a welcome step by Labour, and gives them a serious alternative than that of being cornered into becoming an enabler of Tory Brexit.

Brexit was created to solve a Tory party management crisis, has imploded under Tory leadership and is only majority-backed by Conservative and Ukip voters. No wonder Corbyn looks like he wants Brexit to go away – most of his voters and members want an alternative to Brexit, and bringing the public in now is the right thing to do for a party batting for the many, not the few.

While the PM tries to railroad Brexit through parliament, across the country a different story is being told. Recent polling by Best for Britain, Avaaz and Hope Not Hate suggests that over 60 per cent of us now favour a referendum in order to break the parliamentary deadlock over Brexit. This support has built across regions and age groups to become real common ground between the many different kinds of people and communities in our country.

The majority of people that actively want to stay in the EU identify as Labour voters. One of the lesser-told stories of the surprise Labour gains of the 2017 election was the sheer level of tactical voting of people wanting to fight Brexit that drove people towards Labour. The figures show that the anti-Brexit tactical vote is very likely to have helped get Labour over the line in key marginals across the country.

Best for Britain set up a national tactical vote dashboard in 2017 making recommendations in nearly all English and Welsh seats. While we were and are a cross-party campaign, we also recognised that if May’s majority were to increase in the election the chances of fighting Brexit in parliament would almost disappear.

Over 1.2 million people used our dashboard in the run up to the general election - particularly in marginal seats where votes really counted. The British Election Study sets out the figures suggesting how much Labour gained in anti-Brexit voters, and Abigail Lebrecht wrote up the numbers in more detail – but on election night itself none of the pundits aired the possibility of the significance of the anti-Brexit vote.

In Canterbury, Rosie Duffield took the seat for Labour with a majority of 187, and over 1,300 people consulted our dashboard. In Dudley North, the 579 people that checked our dashboard to find out how to beat Brexit are likely to have helped Labour get over the line – the majority on the night was 22.

Labour will need to retain these seats and win more if they hope to overtake the Conservatives. But the gains made in 2017 could be very quickly overturned if Labour has a fudged party position, or one that explicitly state a pro-Brexit position to its majority anti-Brexit voters.

Every constituency in the country is a mix of different views, and most of the Labour electorate everywhere are pro-Remain. The evidence points to Labour losing more votes from disaffected voters if it would shift to a pro-Brexit position. Research from Best for Britain and HOPE not Hate’s partnership shows that most Labour voters think we would be better off remaining in the EU rather than having no say over the rules with a soft-Brexit deal. If Brexit goes ahead, the party it benefits is the Tories who have the most leavers in their ranks. If Labour fails to fight Brexit the new influx of voters it attracted could go elsewhere, and there are plenty of politicians circling, just waiting for the moment to pounce and launch one of several mooted centrist parties.

Moreover, it seems unlikely that the kind of large-scale investment for house-building or for the rebuilding of the NHS Labour’s would require to fulfil their promises would be possible post-Brexit. Official figures from the Treasury suggest that a post-Brexit British economy could have shrunk by 3.9 per cent in 15 years’ time - and that figure could reach 9.3 per cent in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

And let’s not forget - the Withdrawal Agreement even as it stands is simply an agreement on how we leave, if we leave. Discussions on the future relationship with Europe, the really difficult part - have not even started - another reason for Labour to leave the Tory problem of Brexit squarely in the Conservative back yard and seek an alternative path that could eject the country out of the Brexit mess altogether.

It’s clear that the political soap opera of the past year has led many to see that Britain’s future is not best served by Brexit. At very least, people feel they would like a say on what happens next.

Planning for life beyond the current deadlock is crucial for the country, and should be crucial too for our political parties. The entire process that led us here, from the promises of 2016 onwards, has been driven by short-termism.

There is a strong case for bringing ordinary people into this process in a way that learns from, and definitely does not repeat, the divisive and corrosive campaign of 2016, but instead builds on lessons from Ireland’s abortion referendum and involves a deliberative approach that the country as a whole can buy into. Labour is the party that represents many of the people most worried about Brexit, and millions of people are hoping that they will help deliver real choice for the country and its people.

Let’s bring the people in for this last phase of decision making, and not leave it to a few grubby back-room deals in Westminster to see which flavour of Brexit survives the political trade-offs and personality politics that are toxifying and over-politicising the Brexit debate when actually, it belongs to the people.

At Best for Britain, we have a point of view on Brexit: we think people in the UK will fare better as members of the EU. But we also think the only way through the deadlock now is for parliament to check in with the country after nearly three years of turmoil and take the people’s advice on whether Brexit should go ahead.

Eloise Todd is co-founder and CEO of Best for Britain