Shropshire Star

Poll gives Brexit warning for Labour

A campaign group calling for a second referendum on Britain's withdrawal from the European Union has warned Jeremy Corbyn that Labour will lose considerable support in the West Midlands if it helps the Government deliver Brexit.

Published

Andrew Bannerman, spokesman for the People’s Vote Campaign in the West Midlands, pointed to a poll which showed that the only winners would be the Tories if Labour helped Brexit across the line.

The YouGov poll questioned 2,000 voters across the West Midlands about how Brexit would play out in the region's voting habits.

The survey, commissioned by the People's Vote campaign which calls for another referendum, showed that in teh 2017 General Election the Conservatives won 35 seats across the West Midlands, with 49 per cent of the vote, compared to Labour which took the remaining 24 seats with 42.5 per cent of the vote.

If found also showed that several of Labour’s target seats – the constituencies it needed to win in order to form a Government – were in the region.

The poll showed that support for Labour in the area had slipped since the General Election, with 47 per cent intending to support the Conservatives at the next election, while Labour was down on 36 per cent. The Liberal Democrats are on seven per cent, with nine per cent intending to support other parties.

But the poll has found that if Brexit happened with the support of Labour MPs, then Labour support would fall to 28 per cent at the next General Election, with the Conservatives rising to 48 per cent and the Liberal Democrats up to 13 per cent.

This was largely down to the fact that Labour voters were more likely to support remaining in the EU: the poll found that 70 per cent of Labour supporters across the West Midlands would now vote to stay in the EU.

Mr Bannerman, from Shrewsbury, said: “This poll is real wake-up call for the Labour Party in the region.

"It shows that if the party doesn’t stand up to Brexit, then it’s likely to be punished at the ballot box.

“The deep causes and issues that led to the Brexit vote will be made worse by a damaging and divisive Brexit that doesn’t deliver any the promises of those who supported it, and only divides us further.

“There is no form of Brexit that would be a better deal than the one that we already have inside the EU.

"Parliament must quickly hand this decision over Brexit back to the public with a People’s Vote, because only the public can sort this mess out.”

Mr Corbyn has said he would try to renegotiate a Brexit deal and recently suggested Brexit would still go ahead even if he won a snap General Election.

The poll showed that nationally, Labour would crash to a worse defeat than under Michael Foot if the party enabled Brexit.

A survey of more than 25,000 people across the country showed the party risked losing millions of supporters if it either voted through some form of compromise deal or failed to order MPs to oppose Brexit.

Pollster Peter Kellner, a former president of YouGov, said: “If Labour is seen to facilitate Brexit in any form, YouGov’s results indicate that the party would be deserted by millions of Remain voters – without gaining any extra support from Leave voters.

"Thus, Labour risks losing Remain seats where the party did well in 2017 – most famously Kensington and Canterbury, but also a host of other constituencies in and around London, and others with a large student population – while failing to recoup any of the ground it lost in the party’s traditional heartlands in the north and Midlands.”