George Kerevan: It’s far from game, set and match as Brexit tactics draw Labour supporters

Two polls that came out yesterday are more significant. A poll by the Opinium company put Remain on 44 per cent to 42 per cent for Leave, with 13 per cent undecided. This is an online poll; i.e. conducted over the internet, with a panel of respondents working through a set of options. Online polls have shown Leave and Remain neck and neck for some time. This latest is within the statistical margin of error, so it’s still a dead heat with everything to play for between now and June 23.

The same verdict comes from yesterday’s YouGov online poll, which has Leave on 43 and Remain on 42. That’s a reversal of the YouGov poll of the previous week, but we are well within margins of error so the real finding is still a draw. Yet it’s not as simple as that, folks.

Results obtained from telephone canvassing perennially yield a different result from online polls. Telephone polling asks binary questions, without giving the respondent any chance to make a nuanced reply. In this case, you have to say whether you are pro or con staying in the EU – no ifs, buts or don’t knows. Which nudges waverers to take sides. Result: in telephone only polls, Remain has had a clear lead over Brexit all year. Certainly, this lead has been narrowing of late, suggesting the Brexit side is gathering momentum. On the other hand, telephone polling suggests that in the ballot box, when you have to put your cross against one side or the other, it will be Remain that squeaks home.

All set and match then? Far from it. For one thing, there has been a rush to register to vote, in recent days. I do not detect a massive enthusiasm – even in most Remain voters – for the institutions of the European Union. My hunch is that there are a lot of folk signing up because they want to vote Brexit as a protest.

Second, there are signs of movement in the way voters are thinking and responding to the debates. This “churn” in opinion is keeping the final outcome of the referendum open. Which may explain why the Prime Minister, far from giving up on his wholly negative style of campaigning – learnt from ace right-wing political strategist Sir Lynton Crosby – has instead redoubled his efforts. Cameron’s latest cynical ploy is to suggest (with not a shred of proof) that British pensions are threatened by a Brexit vote. Voters in Scotland will remember this crude but effective weapon.

However, the same Lynton Crosby has crossed to the Brexit camp after masterminding the Tory general election campaign last year. Those same dark arts that Cameron learned from Crosby are now being deployed – with damning effect – by the Brexit crowd. Chief among these is the use of the immigration question, targeted at Labour-leaning voters. The end of the Brexit campaign is now almost wholly focused on frightening English Labour voters into believing their jobs, wages, and access to both the NHS and decent housing are all imperilled by unrestricted immigration from the EU. This crude tactic contains a double whammy.

Not only does it seek to mobilise the Brexit vote using a toxic xenophobia and racism that could, in the final push, overwhelm even Cameron’s lurid scare tactics. Playing the immigration card also targets Labour voters in the certain knowledge that this is where the Remain camp is most vulnerable. The Labour Party – divided and gripped by civil war between its myriad Corbyn, centrist, opportunist and Blairite factions – has been incapable of offering any decisive lead during this referendum.

At the weekend, Jeremy Corby was campaigning in… er, Aberdeen. Why waste his time in Aberdeen when it is in the heartlands of north and central England that Ukip is breathing down Labour’s political neck, using the referendum to play the immigration card? Instead, Jeremy should be mobilising support in places like the Bassetlaw constituency in Nottinghamshire, where last week the sitting Labour MP, the irascible but very effective John Mann, came out for Brexit. In working class Bassetlaw they used to weigh the Labour votes. Last year, John Mann – from the anti-Corbyn, trade union right of the party – was still a comfortable winner. But the Ukip candidate came from nowhere to increase their share of the poll by 12.4 per cent.

I serve with John Mann on the Treasury select committee. Just before he came out for Brexit (in an unashamedly anti-immigration piece in The Sun) Mann had been doing vox-pops with his voters on the streets of Bassetlaw. He told me that the overwhelming view (“over 90 per cent”) was to vote for Brexit. I dare say that is an exaggeration but it is clear that Labour’s core demographic is being scared into the Leave camp. Last week I overheard even a very senior Corbyn supporter bemoan the upsurge in pro-Brexit views among his own constituents.

Even if, as polls suggest, we see a narrow victory for Remain, the verities of British politics have been shattered forever during this campaign. It’s been coming for a while, of course. Scotland’s continuing drive for independence is but one aspect of the decay of the British state. Britain’s ruling elite is no longer united around a single project, for the first time since the end of the 19th century.

The City banks and big multinationals want to stay in a compliant EU while swathes of small manufacturers plus some of the more rapacious hedge funds want freedom from the Community’s social protections – and God help ordinary people if they succeed. Politically, the Tories are split. On one hand, there are those who want to rebuild a new mass base around English populism, capturing Labour’s working class voters. On the other, those who want to consolidate a middle class, “social liberal” bloc by regrouping with the old Blairites and LibDems. Regardless, Labour’s political carcase is being devoured even while the beast is still alive.

If it is Brexit on June 23, all these political tectonic plates will collide in a gigantic political earthquake. Unfortunately, that is far from being the best terrain for launching a second independence referendum, as the political climate will be wholly negative and the economic picture gloomy. That will distract and frighten those Scottish voters the SNP needs to win over. On the other hand, a victory for Remain and a defeat for the populist, racist right make better grounds to pursue independence. The Tories and Labour will still be tearing themselves apart but the SNP will have the breathing space to develop a positive case for Scottish freedom based on solidarity and genuine economic progress. It’s coming yet, for a’ that.

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