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Nigel Farage and the Brexit party are extremely unpopular amongst all the other political parties in Parliament. The Conservative party has just rejected Farage's recent overture concerning a general election pact, confirming that Farage is persona non grata with them.

Therefore, it would be in the interest of all parties currently represented in Westminster to do the following:

  1. Avoid calling an early general election (i.e. before 2022). This would completely neutralize the current activites of the Brexit Party which are concentrated on mobilizing prospective MPs for all parliamentary constituencies.
  2. Get May's withdrawal treaty minus the backstop passed into law as a prelude to reapplying for EU membership, thus completely removing any raison d'etre of Brexit party (which is to achieve a clean Brexit under WTO rules).

There has been no discussion of these options anywhere in the Press, hence the question of whether this option has been put forward by any of the parties.

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  • I edited the question to make it more objective asking whether this option has been put forward by any of the parties rather than asking about whether it might in the future.
    – JJJ
    Sep 14, 2019 at 13:10
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    You've lost me with #2. How is passing May's agreement minus the backstop going to achieve any of that? Sep 14, 2019 at 18:18
  • Thank you for your points. I wanted to reply/expand but not possible with the restricted no. of characters. Sep 15, 2019 at 8:13
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    How is passing May's agreement minus the backstop going to happen? The whole point of the backstop is to ensure NI is indefinitely in a customs union with Eire
    – Caleth
    Sep 16, 2019 at 8:28
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    And reapplying for EU membership? Besides the fact it's not going to happen (too many burned bridges), it would reaffirm the raison d'etre for the Brexit party. " Elect us, we will do it. Not like the ToryLabour party."
    – MSalters
    Sep 17, 2019 at 10:08

2 Answers 2

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Of course the Brexit party is "unpopular" with the existing parties. It isn't their party

In any electoral situation, parties go against each other and the Brexit party is no different

The Brexit party does not represent an existential threat to the other parties. It could alter the outcome but there are several reasons why it will find it difficult to make headway

First, the first past the post system favours two large parties. New parties find it hard to get any seats at all. The previous vehicle of Nigel Farage, UKIP gained over 12% of the vote in the 2015 general election but only 1 MP

Second, psychologically the voters favour the parties they have always voted for. This is seen in the way that many constituency seats in the UK parliament are seen as "safe". Only marginal seats will change hands

See https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/first-past-the-post for a great discussion of these two points

Thirdly, their appeal is to (in simple terms) half of the population that favour Brexit. This already limits their voter base. The two big parties might be losing some coherency of ideas with their double speak over Brexit but the reason they do this is that people only hear what they want to hear and an inconsistent, illogical message makes more electoral sense than a firm position

So the parties will not hold off an election because they expect to lose to the Brexit party

You made a second point that a May deal without a backstop would kill their support This isn't going to happen as the EU 27 have repeatedly said the backstop or a similar arrangement is a deal stopper. For example see this report in the Guardian . Any EU country has a veto on the entire arrangement so the views of the Irish are critical

I'm sure if some kind of exit from Europe actually happened then the Brexit party would be out of business but if the May deal was viable it would have happened months ago

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Avoid calling an early general election (i.e. before 2022). This would completely neutralize the current activites of the Brexit Party which are concentrated on mobilizing prospective MPs for all parliamentary constituencies

Firstly, this is only a delaying action; they're not going to go away by 2022 unless Brexit happens. Whether they would go away after Brexit if it happens is unclear, but Farage has a platform and a following which he will no doubt use for something.

The Brexit party splits the Tory vote, and a bit of the Labour vote. This wrecks FPTP two-party politics, and that's something that's long overdue.

Get May's withdrawal treaty minus the backstop passed into law as a prelude to reapplying for EU membership, thus completely removing any raison d'etre of Brexit party (which is to achieve a clean Brexit under WTO rules)

This doesn't make any sense:

May's withdrawal treaty minus the backstop

.. is only half an agreement. The EU needs to agree to the other side (minus the backstop), which they have not and seem unlikely to. A treaty requires agreement from both sides.

as a prelude to reapplying for EU membership

Also doesn't make sense. If we're out, we're out. The agreements specify the "third country" relationship we'd have with the EU. Reapplying would probably take a while - perhaps decades - and could be vetoed by other countries whose time and money we've just wasted. It would at the very least have additional conditions imposed on it. Either way there's no sense in talking about it now.

The only circumstance in which quick re-entry might be possible is if there's a disastrous no-deal followed by collapse of the government and a new government demands to forget the whole thing before, say, Christmas.

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  • Thank you for your points.I wanted to reply but that is not possible in any useful way with the restricted number of characters. Sep 15, 2019 at 8:11
  • @RudeyardKipling you could edit a response into the original question, under a subheading?
    – pjc50
    Sep 17, 2019 at 8:53
  • Haha, as unlikely as it is, it would make for a great Christmas story to tell the grandchildren one day: And that year we were naughty and Krampus brought us Brexit. Then we drank a lot and on Christmas eve woke up to the gift of realising it was all just a bad dream. Also after a few more drinks, on new years eve we got another gift: Introducing a EU government, the Queen became Queen of the EU as well as the UK - for the remainder of her life-time. And that's why for the last 40 years, we've been the face of the EU. Sep 17, 2019 at 16:20

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