I'm a Labour supporter—but I still wish Change UK had been more successful

Change UK’s all-but-demise is hardly unexpected. It was a poorly conceived and inadequately run outfit from the start. Given that it was apparently planned for months in advance, that it was so shambolic throughout its short life was even more telling of the failures of those who ran it. Yet even though I didn’t expect it to succeed, I never expected it to fail that badly, that quickly.

I was never going to vote Change and I would never have suggested anyone else do so. I want a socialist government and I vote for a socialist party. But I want that socialist government to be internationalist in its outlook, and an essential part of that for me is campaigning to keep us in the EU.

So, while, as a Labour supporter, I couldn't join in the chorus of laughter and “I told you so.” The truth is that it is in some ways a shame for Labour members who—like me—want to see our party taking a stronger stance in favour of remaining.

I am reminded of the time I had a meeting with a Labour minister while a demo was taking place outside his office. “This noise helps me” he said. “It helps me push the government in the right direction.”

External pressure can be very useful in making what was once unthinkable obvious. As I look at how badly Change UK has done, and how the hopes of Remain voters have been lodged with the previously untouchable Lib Dem’s, I think about that conversation a lot. Change UK demonstrated all the political nous of the Remain campaign of 2016. It was designed to please a few noisy people in SW1 and on Twitter and had exceptionally limited appeal elsewhere. A party seemingly designed in the letters pages of the Financial Times, it spoke to the country in a way that managed to combine a patronising ‘we know best’ attitude with a level of smug condescension that was hard to take from people who were polling so low.

Change UK said they were going to do politics differently, but they didn’t. That was their biggest mistake. They tried to behave as ‘big beasts,’ lacking the infrastructure that reminds most parties to avoid behaving like that. If they’d had a membership out there getting a hard time on the doorsteps, they’d might have had a better understanding of what they were getting wrong. But this was never a bottom up outfit and it showed.

So what now? The pressure from Change UK may be off Labour, but the resurgence of both the Lib Dems and Greens is a more serious threat. They will continue to eat into their remain-supporting voters everywhere in the country. Corbyn’s intransigence in failing to support what the vast majority of Labour members and voters want may be shaken, but is not yet stirred into action.

Labour’s continues to decline in polls (and elections) and remainers who aren’t part of the SW1 bubble still have no major left-wing party to support. However, any sense that this means they will come home to Labour is looking increasingly fanciful—unless Labour have a stronger message on what is to many the only issue that matters.

Even if Labour were to become more explicit in supporting a public vote, and if that were then passed by Parliament, that would only be half of the challenge. For Remain to win, any campaign will have to look, feel and be completely different from 2016. The Lib Dems’ approach will appeal to the people who desperately want to remain. The Brexit Party’s to those that are staunch in their desire to leave. They will turn out their respective core votes well. But that is not where a referendum will be won.

Labour has to speak to those who are open to being persuaded. It has to be led by the working class—those who will be hit hardest by Brexit—not the middle class excited about winning in Islington but ignoring losing in Warrington. Analysis shows that even in heavily leave voting, seats the majority of Labour voters also voted to remain. But that doesn’t mean everyone did. Nor that they were well represented or their concerns addressed during the campaign.

Brexit has delivered a sense of optimism to places that haven’t felt that in years. It is my strongly held belief, much backed up by data, that the optimism is misplaced, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real and visceral.

Change is needed in so many communities in the UK—so no wonder people voted for it. It will only be by centring the campaign on places like Sunderland, Swindon and Stoke and it being led by voices from those places that remain would have a chance of succeeding.

Winning a second referendum isn’t impossible. But it was never going to be won with the Change UK approach. Labour have had their fun at Change’s expense. Now it is time for them to show how it is done.