OWhere do all the British voters hostile to Brexit hide? And why can not any party represent them? It is the unresolved mystery of the British election that will take place on December 12th. In June 2016, 17.4 million – one-third of the 52 million British citizens over the age of 18, with the right to vote – chose to leave the European Union (EU). In most democracies, a plebiscite modifying a country's constitutional, economic, social and foreign policy arrangements requires the votes of at least half of the electorate.
The 2016 referendum was a populist plebiscite on immigration. The "Leave" propaganda proclaimed that 79 million Turks were about to enter the EU and could live in the UK. The pro-Brexit camp won by 52% of the votes against 48%, but all opinion polls conducted over the last three years have shown that a majority of voters now want to stay in the EU.
In the 2017 general election, thanks to anti-Brexit voices, Theresa May lost her majority. In 2019, for the elections to the European Parliament, the liberal-democrats (LibDem), the Greens, the Scottish National Party (SNP, independentist) and the pro-European Welsh achieved good results at the expense of anti-European conservatives. But the Labor Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time Eurosceptic in the tradition of Jean-Pierre Chevènement or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, still refuses to join the anti-Brexit camp. Corbyn insisted that the 2016 Brexit referendum decision could not be challenged.
Giant protests for a new referendum
The Labor Party leadership has refused to join forces with the anti-Brexit parties in the House of Commons, despite the overwhelming support of the overwhelming majority of Labor Party activists and most MPs in the EU – 70% Labor voters voted no in the referendum.
In 2018 and 2019, giant demonstrations were held in London, bringing together a million citizens from across the UK to call for a new referendum on Brexit. One of the Brexit paradoxes has been to spark the biggest popular events organized for the EU ever seen in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Labor voters participated, but not Jeremy Corbyn, who ordered Labor leaders to boycott protests. This failure of the anti-Brexit forces to find political unity has weakened efforts to mount an effective multi-party opposition against the UK's exit from the EU.
