Labour and the Lib Dems are more similar than they care to admit

They may attack each other in the heat of election battle, but Labour and the Liberal Democrats have much in common.

Both parties are quietly changing their strategy in the middle of the game, after misjudging each other. The Lib Dems believed Labour would go “full Remain”, and so outbid it by pledging to revoke Article 50. It was not liberal or democratic and backfired, so the party has now reverted to campaigning for a Final Say referendum. Labour feared the Lib Dems would hoover up the Remain vote, but overestimated their threat. So now Labour is redoubling its efforts to woo Leave voters in the north and midlands who are being lost to the Tories.

At the start of this election, the Labour leadership believed it could have won power in 2017 if only it had targeted more Tory seats. But it was fighting the last war: this time, it was attacking everywhere when it needed to shore up its defences. Labour candidates tell me the party’s campaign is chaotic. “A shambles; there’s no plan,” said one. “Too many cooks, no direction,” another groaned.

Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson are unpopular with voters, according to the opinion polls. Both have made mistakes too. Corbyn is trying to ride two horses on Brexit and in danger of falling off. Staying neutral in the referendum he proposes looks weak and fuzzy compared with Boris Johnson’s clear Brexit stance. Corbyn compounded claims of weak leadership by stubbornly refusing to apologise for antisemitism in his party.

Swinson probably had no alternative to her presidential campaign because the public did not know her. But she overshot by presenting herself as a candidate for prime minister, which she now concedes is “pretty unlikely”. Unfortunately, some voters are not liking what they see: her manner grates for them. However, the Lib Dems insist her ratings are much better in their target seats.

In public, Labour and the Lib Dems are more optimistic than the polls suggest they should be, but in private they are gloomy. The very fact that they are changing course is a sign that Johnson is on track for a majority. Their jitters were there before the YouGov survey, based on a model predicting the result in every seat in Great Britain, pointed to a Tory majority of 68.

While Nigel Farage’s decision to stand down Brexit Party candidates in 317 seats has allowed the Tories to soak up the Leave vote, the Remain vote is split between Labour and the Lib Dems.

Although both these parties support a referendum, there is growing hostility between them. Swinson declares Corbyn “unfit to be prime minister”, because her target is the moderate Tory vote, so she cannot contemplate cosying up to Labour.

It’s a pity that Labour is not part of the Remain alliance between the Lib Dems, Greens and Plaid Cymru, under which only one of them stands in 60 seats. A referendum alliance including Labour would probably have forced the Tories out. But the Lib Dems gambled they would make a breakthrough by going all-out Remain, which meant portraying Labour as “not a Remain party”. Swinson may have overreached. If Johnson wins a majority, the history books will look back at this missed opportunity to stop Brexit.

Meanwhile, Labour attacks the Lib Dems for the 2010-15 coalition’s cuts, which have rather unfairly come back to haunt Swinson, given that the Tories sharpened the axe and the Lib Dems tried to blunt it.

Despite the mutual loathing between Labour and the Lib Dems, there could be a surprise twist in this tale of two parties. If a relatively small number of their supporters vote tactically in marginal seats, they could succeed where the two leaders are failing by denying Johnson victory. It would take as few as 117,314 pro-EU voters voting tactically to prevent a Tory majority, according to Best for Britain’s analysis of its own polling.

Speculation that Corbyn might be forced out if that happened is fantasy politics. I suspect the Lib Dems would join the SNP in keeping a minority Labour government in power. “The glue of a Brexit referendum would hold us together,” one Labour insider told me. “Is Jo Swinson going to give up her one chance to secure that? No.” He said a minority government could be sustained by the Lib Dems even after a referendum took place. “There is more common ground than we can admit now, such as a green industrial revolution.”

There’s still an outside chance of this scenario coming to pass. But Labour and the Lib Dems are not going to make it happen. If voters want it to, they will need to do it by themselves.