Turning Point UK and moderate pro-Brexit groups will change the party system – but not for the better

Could Brexit be about to break the mould of British politics? There are certainly many who would like it to be so.

While some way away from registering a name and logo with the Electoral Commission, the establishment of a London office for the Trumpite Turning Point group is one sign that the radical neo-Thatcherite hard-Brexit wing of the Conservative Party is feeling increasingly attracted to a more exclusive, ideologically pure kind of political club.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, inevitably, is supporting it. Turning Point UK, which, given its name, presumably wishes to have a revolutionary edge to its counter-revolutionary activities, is planning to visit British universities, which its leaders say will cause a “disruption in socialist ideology”. No safe spaces, then.

Closer to appearing on a ballot paper is a new Brexit party, backed by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage and ready to put forward 200 candidates for any upcoming elections.

On the other side, there is much chatter still about a new “moderate” anti-Brexit/pro-EU party. Sir Vince Cable, who heads up a more venerable anti-Brexit/pro-EU organisation, has spoken about rebels from the Labour and Conservative parties coming over to work with him to win seats in the Commons at a future election.

As with the various hard-Brexit factions, they cannot hope to form a government, but they aim to hold enough seats to block any moves they dislike, or to intimidate candidates of the bigger parties into backing Brexit.

Such shifting of the tectonic plates has been canvassed a good deal since the 2016 referendum, but so far with relatively little to show for all the talk.

For all its obvious drawbacks, the two-party system is still working, just, and indeed the two major parties actually increased their share of the total vote in the snap election of 2017.

Ukip, even at the height of its surge, succeeded in winning only one seat at a general election, and Nigel Farage must be not far behind the Monster Raving Loony Party for futile tilts at a seat on the Commons.

If Theresa May is forced into a general election, in order to break what seems an eternal parliamentary deadlock, she may well see some of her vote disappearing into the arms of Mr Farage and, indeed, towards the original Ukip, now led by Gerard Batten, a man who makes Mr Farage look like a Belgian Green.

The centre-right vote, in other words, could be quite badly fractured by a double insurgency of Ukip and Ukip mark 2, even if Mr Farage and Mr Batten individually or separately agreed not to nest seats held by pro-Brexit candidates, usually members of the party-within-a-party Conservative European Research Group.

How they approach the parliamentary seats of pro-Brexit May loyalists in Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), North East Cambridgeshire (Patrick Barclay) and North Somerset (Liam Fox) will be an interesting test of past friendships and loyalties. Presumably they will leave Boris, Jacob and Priti Patel alone.

A new centrist pro-Brexit party would certainly attract some pro-EU Conservative voters but many more anti-Brexit Labour voters, especially in seats such as Vauxhall, where MP Kate Hoey is in marled opposition to an overwhelmingly Remain sentiment. In that case it is the Labour or anti-Conservative vote that will be split, with a net advantage to the Conservative Party.

In Scotland, where Labour remains woefully weak, the insertion of a pro-EU new party might well take votes away from official Labour candidates, with the SNP and Conservatives, variously, making a net gain.

In Northern Ireland, the DUP may or may not find its pro-Brexit stance a handicap in an anti-Brexit province, and one with much to lose from a hard border. It is interesting that the struggling Northern Irish SDLP has chosen to ally itself with the historic Fianna Fail party to the south.

In other words, the psephological effects of a series of cross-party, new-party interventions would be quite unpredictable.

On balance, much of it might cancel itself out, and the “noise” be little more than that.

The most likely outcome of the next general election, if held within the next few months, would be a hung parliament as incapable as the present one of deciding what to do about Brexit. As in 2017, Ms May would go to the country to seek a mandate, only to be denied one.

And after that? If Brexit is cancelled, or if it actually ever happens, the European issue that has split both parties so badly will, to a fair degree, fade away.

The next election is not scheduled until the summer of 2022. By then the labels Leave and Remain will seem less relevant, after the Brexit battles have been won and lost, and other issues will, as ever, supersede Brexit – not least the economy and public services.

Whatever their merits, new pro- and anti-Brexit parties will look like replies to a question that will have already been answered.

For now, instead of attempting to destroy the party system, and failing, both sides in this debate might consider that a Final Say referendum on the terms of Brexit might be a more straightforward and unequivocal way to resolve the Brexit issue.