The left and centre left of British politics are currently involved in a bitter dispute over Brexit. This is not, for the most part, a question about what the ideal outcome of the whole affair would be. Most involved agree, in principle at least, that continued EU membership would be the ideal outcome if it were politically possible. The disagreement is largely about what is in fact politically possible and the relative significance of Brexit as opposed to other domestic issues, austerity in particular. The tragedy is that this is all completely unnecessary. Opposition to Brexit and to austerity should go hand in hand.
The reason for this is twofold. The first argument is intellectual. Both Brexit and austerity are terrible ideas. They both have obvious, significant harms, and almost no credible upsides or intellectual justifications. The arguments about Brexit are too well known to go through. On austerity, the case against running higher deficits in the short run to counter persistent low growth was flimsy in 2010 and is even flimsier now. What's more, even if this were not the case, it would still be possible to significantly raise social expenditure through taxation, which would not end austerity in the economic sense, but still alleviate a some of the social harms which it is associated with it. Not only are both austerity and Brexit bad ideas, but it makes sense intellectually for an opponent of one to care about the other. Brexit will depress government revenue, meaning that whoever is in government will face a series of worse choices and trade offs than before in terms of taxing and spending. While it might still be possible for a government to have better priorities than the current one, the available options will still be significantly worse, and there is not any guarantee that a future government will indeed have better priorities. Conversely, for those primarily concerned with EU membership, the social and economic consequences of austerity are likely significant contributing factors to the political success of nativism, right wing populism and ultimately Brexit itself.
Secondly, politically opposition to austerity and Brexit should now be politically self reinforcing. Most remain support comes from those on the political left and centre left. In 2015, 31% of remain support came from Conservative voters, and almost all of the remaining 69% from Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the SNP. Shifts in voter preferences since then have strengthened this trend further. Conversely, the overwhelming majority of supporters of these parties want to remain in the EU. But even if most supporters of EU membership also would like to end austerity and vice versa, they may see these two things with different senses of urgency and differing levels of emotional attachment. The consequence of this divide is straightforward. Opposition to Brexit cannot gain the breadth of support required for political success without opposition to austerity. And opposition to austerity alone is unlikely to succeed politically without strong, committed opposition to Brexit.
The problem is that the leadership of each respective positions does not appreciate the importance of the other or see the political symbiosis of the two. The leadership of ChangeUK and the Lib Dems still have not properly digested the case against austerity, and still do not fully appreciate the public anger over it. The leadership of the Labour Party is either in denial of the electoral costs of its position on Brexit, or, in the case of Corbyn and perhaps McDonnell, are simply in favour it. The Green Party is something of an exception, but there are very significant barriers to them capitalising on this.
Both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats therefore have a historic opportunity. They are fortunate enough to be faced with a situation where doing the right thing on the two big issues of the day is also politically advantageous. The costs electorally in Tory europhile votes for the Lib Dems or Lexiteer votes for Labour pale in significance to the gains to be made by uniting the bulk of the left of centre. And the path to electoral victory has been made even easier by the split of right wing votes between the Conservatives and the Brexit Party. It would be a tragedy this opportunity were squandered.
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