32 Britain The EconomistSeptember 21st 2019
1T
he liberal democrats do not like
Brexit. To clear up any lingering doubts
about this, at their conference in Bourne-
mouth a batch of their freshly elected meps
strode on stage wearing “stop brexit”
t-shirts. Elsewhere, activists wearing blue
berets spangled with eu stars wandered
around hawking “Bollocks to Brexit” stick-
ers. For those who had still not got the mes-
sage, Jo Swinson, the party’s leader, un-
veiled a new policy: if the Lib Dems win the
next election, they will revoke Britain’s Ar-
ticle 50 request to leave the eu“on day one”.
While Labour has wobbled on Brexit,
the Lib Dems have dug in as the party of Re-
main. Their previous policy was to support
a second referendum, which they have
called for consistently since the first one,
in 2016. The party says it will still back a
second referendum if, as is almost inevita-
ble, it fails to win a majority.
Not all are happy with the revoke policy.
Grandees grumbled. Sir Norman Lamb, one
of the party’s more Eurosceptic mps, com-
plained that simply revoking would annoy
voters in the rural south-west, where the
Lib Dems hope to gain seats, and his own
constituency of North Norfolk. Brexit tore
up old electoral alliances. The Lib Dems
have historically relied on a mix of univer-
sity towns and well-to-do suburbs (which
tended to back Remain) and rural seats
(where Leave was popular). Wavering Tory
Remain-voters may think it a bit rum to
ditch Brexit without another vote on the
matter. And many of the Lib Dems’ most
winnable seats are Tory ones (see chart). Yet the move will please the party’s
growing base of Remainers. Remain-voters
prefer cancellation of Brexit to a second
referendum by two to one, according to a
poll by Opinium. A petition calling for the
revocation of Article 50 was signed by 6.1m
people—nearly three times more than vot-
ed Lib Dem in the general election of2017. Defenders of the revoke policy point
out that it has attracted attention to the
party, and contrast its clarity with Labour’s
evolving muddle. Labour would hold a sec-
ond referendum but its leader, Jeremy Cor-
byn, said on September 17th that he would
be neutral during the campaign.
Unless polls are wildly wrong, the Lib
Dems’ promise to revoke Article 50 could
prove as relevant as a Sunday-league foot-
baller’s plan for an elaborate celebration
should he score in an faCup final. If the
party wins its predicted 20% or so, Ms
Swinson will not go to Downing Street.
Still, optimism abounded in Bourne-
mouth. Normally the annual conference is
a form of therapy for Lib Dems, jokes Tim
Farron, who led the party in 2015-17 while it
was on life support, with 8% of the vote and
only eight mps. Now its mps are bombastic.
Chuka Umunna, who defected from La-
bour (via Change uk) this summer, sug-
gested that 200 seats would be in conten-
tion if the party got a 5% swing. When a
party wins more than about a quarter of the
vote, a deluge of seats follows, under the
logic of the first-past-the-post system.
Yet local politics can trump national
swings. Remainers are clustered in cities
and Scotland, whereas Leavers are scat-
tered more evenly, making it easier for pro-
Brexit parties to pick up seats. A modest
headwind could blow the Lib Dems off
course. Only one of their 18 seats—Orkney
and Shetland—is truly safe. The Lib Dems
are inches from both disaster and glory.
Either way, they may play kingmaker.
Ms Swinson has ruled out any formal co-
alition or pact with either Labour or the
Conservatives. Instead the party will vote
on a case-by-case basis, says Sir Ed Davey,
its finance spokesman. The Lib Dems were
burnt when a tie-up with the Tories in
2010-15 resulted in them losing 90% of
their mps in the next election. Breaking
popular manifesto promises, such as end-
ing tuition fees, did the most damage.
When it comes to Brexit, the Lib Dems will
try not to make the same mistake twice. 7BOURNEMOUTH
The insurgent third party gambles on a
promise to overturn the referendumThe Liberal DemocratsCtrl+Z Brexit
Winninghere?Sources:HouseofCommons;
ChrisHanrettyBritain*From 2017 election20 40 50 60 80020406080100Constituency support for Remain, 2016, %Percentage-point vote
increase* needed for
Liberal Democrats
to win seatMore winnable ↘↖ Less winnableConservative Labour
PlaidCymru SNP
GreenT
he home office’s waiting room
stretches the length and breadth of Brit-
ain. Somewhere in the queue is a 35-year-
old Nigerian called Kemi. When she ap-
plied for asylum, in 2016, London seemed
like heaven compared with the domestic
abuse she suffered back home. She came to
study but stayed after becoming pregnant,
fearing that her baby, like her other two
daughters, would suffer genital mutilation
if she went back. Now, Britain seems closer
to purgatory. She shares her flat with two
other families. Antidepressants offer little
respite. When her £38 ($47) weekly allow-
ance runs out, she sometimes begs for
money. Yet, like almost all those on the asy-
lum waiting list, she is banned from work-
ing. “I have my hands, I have my skills,” she
says. “I don’t need the government’s mon-
ey. I want to be able to make my own.”
The queue moves slowly. About half of
asylum applicants wait more than six
months for a decision, up from a fifth in- Applications fell during this period,
but staff were diverted to clear a backlog of
candidates waiting more than ten years for
a decision and to run the post-Brexit settle-
ment scheme for Europeans, says Jill Rut-
ter of British Future, a think-tank.
The logjam has rekindled opposition to
the work ban. Most rich countries allow
asylum-seekers to work within a few
months of submitting an application. They
can take a job straight away in Canada and
Sweden and after six months in America.
In Britain, they could work after six
months until 2002, when the then Labour
government imposed the ban after a surge
in asylum applications. Officials reckoned
making money while on the waiting list
encouraged applications, even by those
with little chance of success. Since 2010,
those on the list for more than a year can
work, but only if they take a job on the gov-
The ban on jobs for asylum-seekers
pleases nobodyAsylum and workEmployment-
seekers