How Labour can win a parliamentary consensus – and then an election

Start with some broadly agreed facts.

1. Theresa May’s deal is dead.
2. A ‘no deal’ Brexit would be a catastrophe.
3. Most MPs have no confidence in May.
4. Another three months of vacillation under Theresa May will get Britain nowhere.
5. Labour does not have the numbers in this parliament to form a stable alternative government.
6. We want an election so that we can address all the issues neglected by the Brexit-obsessed government.

Is there a way through? Yes. We should offer a deal, with these components:

1. A vote of no confidence in the current government.
2. An emergency government under Labour with a strictly limited manifesto.
3. An election within six months to decide who takes Britain forward.

What would be this strictly limited manifesto?

• We would make a serious effort to negotiate an alternative Brexit deal, scrapping May’s “no customs union” red line and accepting full regulatory alignment in trade (which eliminates the need for a backstop), plus whatever other changes we would hope to achieve, such as relaxation of constraints on state aid. In parallel, we would negotiate basic trading arrangements for a possible WTO exit to avoid the unthinkable consequences of total ‘no deal’. We would request, and expect to get, a three-month extension for this negotiation.
• We would hold a referendum offering three choices: Remain; any Brexit deal that we had been able to negotiate; and WTO exit. This could either be first-past-the-post (which Remain would probably win) or an alternative vote (which the negotiated deal might win). Party members would be free to campaign for whichever option they felt was in the national interest, and we would urge other parties to take the same course.
• In all other areas, we would only legislate where there was majority consensus, to include urgent issues such as freezing the Universal Credit rollout.

This cuts several Gordian knots.

First, it produces the potential of a Brexit deal that might work reasonably well. The EU has made it clear that May’s red lines are what has forced the current deadlock. We would give up chasing the fantasy of a glorious trade deal with Trump’s America and accept that our main trading partner will continue to be our neighbours.

Second, it delivers a referendum with a fighting chance for Remain, without grossly insulting Leave voters by omitting their option.

Third, it enables Labour to take power and fight the coming election with the advantage of incumbency. It will be much harder for the tabloids to portray Labour as wild Trotskyite wreckers after six months of sober, sensible and polite government under Jeremy Corbyn.

But fourth, it actually has the potential of a Commons majority. There are Tory MPs who are utterly despairing about the situation but not willing to sign up to five years of Labour government and genuinely worried by our programme. Fine. Our message to them will be simple: let us sort out the Brexit mess and otherwise govern by consensus, and then let’s leave it to the voters to decide how to go forward. Would that swing 50 Tory MPs? No. But it will swing enough.

There is also an offer to the DUP. You want to kill the backstop – we’ll do it and May really won’t. Sure, some of us sympathise with a united Ireland one day, but we’re not going to do anything to bring it about. They are hard-headed realists who entered coalition with Sinn Fein. They’ll take it.

The deal would be better for Britain than the current chaos. And it would give us the chance to show the responsible, coherent national leadership that will deliver an election win. It is literally a win-win approach in a situation where everyone is threatened with the worst of lose-lose outcomes.

Nick Palmer was Labour MP for Broxtowe from 1997 to 2010.