Labour's meaningless referendum criteria

David Allen Green asks a good question. What is the purpose of the phrase 'option of' in Labour party statements about the conditions of a second referendum? It can't serve any useful purpose other than to give cover for failing to back one when the party's conditions for a second referendum are met. In truth, however, this is completely unnecessary. Labour's conditions for a second referendum are designed to be, subject to interpretations, impossible to fulfill.

Why is this? Labour sets out two conditions for a second referendum. The first is that the government is unable to pass what the Labour Party considers to be a 'good' deal. This used to have a clearer definition, in accordance with Keir Starmer's six tests, but these seem to have now been abandoned. The second criterion is that Labour fails to obtain a general election. This second criterion, absent either a time frame or reference to an explicit process, is completely meaningless. Strictly speaking, Labour has failed to obtain a general election the moment the policy is announced. Since the condition is not taken to have been met instantly, you would assume some degree of time has to elapse before Labour is deemed to have failed to obtain a general election. But how long? Until it is not conceivable that there will be one? This makes no sense either. After all, there will have to be a general election at some point. What's more, the fragility of the May government means this could always, quite plausibly, be not too long away.

Perhaps, one might argue, this is too literal a reading. After all, you don't need an explicit time-frame to have a shared general sense of roughly what it might be. But as Simon Wren Lewis writes, there is no reason to give the current Labour leadership the benefit of the doubt on this. After all, the understanding used to be that Labour would have failed to obtain a general election if they lose a no confidence vote. This happened on January 15th of this year, after the defeat, by enormous majority, of the withdrawal act in the so called first meaningful vote. The only other interpretation would be that this failure would occur at the last moment there is time to hold a second referendum. But even with the extension, the time allotted according to Article 50 ends in October. That time would sure be now, and the upcoming European elections surely a good occasion to announce this. If this is how the Labour leadership intends to proceed, they have no need for additional weasel words about options or tables. Their own criteria for a second referendum are sufficiently vague that, if acting in bad faith, they can never be fulfilled.