How Labour could haemorrhage votes to Lib Dems over Brexit

It's not just members that Labour may lose over Jeremy Corbyn's warmth towards Brexit (which, of course, echoes his life-long Euroscepticism):

Jeremy Corbyn would haemorrhage votes to the Lib Dems should Labour embrace Brexit at the next election, a new poll has revealed.

According to the HuffPost UK exclusive YouGov survey for the pro-EU Best for Britain campaign group, Vince Cable's party would surge to 18% of the vote if he pledges to oppose Brexit while Labour and the Conservatives remain committed to leaving the EU.

The poll, published on Tuesday, said a pro-Brexit Conservative Party would lead the polls on 32% with pro-Brexit Labour trailing a distant second on 22%. [Huffington Post]

You may notice that those vote share figures add up to much less than 100%. That's because, unlike most poll headline figures, they don't exclude the don't knows and wouldn't votes.

Herethen are the full details:

• Imagine at the next election the Conservative and Labour parties both support going ahead with Brexit, and the Liberal Democrats are opposed to Brexit. How would you then vote?

  Conservative 31% / Labour 22% / Lib Dem 18% / Other 5% / Don't know or wouldn't vote 25%

• Excluding the don't knows and wouldn't votes that gives:

  Conservative 41% / Labour 29% / Lib Dem 24% / Other 7%

Weighted also by likelihood to vote gives:

• Conservative 42% / Labour 30% / Lib Dem 22% / Other 6%

Good, bad or indifferent? Lib Dem election result analysed: Liberal Democrat Newswire #100

Liberal Democrat Newswire #100 came out last week, taking a look at the Liberal Democrat 2017 general election result. more

We have been here before with hypothetical poll findings showing plenty of scope for the Lib Dems to prosper with a pro-European message. What that highlights is that to benefit from this sort of potential the party can't simply carry on doing what it's done before; we need a different strategy, executed with greater skill.