A victory for Remain in the most prosperous, middle/upper class, media working, actor employing, gap year taking, remain voting, long term liberal leaning constituency in the land, is still a significant victory.Tempting as it is to suggest that this result is the equivalent of a red rosette on a donkey in the North East, it actually isn't.
The Liberal Democrats received a very deserved and painful disemboweling at the last election. The former coalition partner, taking the Mussolini role in the Tories electoral pact of steel, had lied its way into power, and paid the price for those very public lies that it made directly to its own supporters. Reduced to just 8 MPs the Liberal's have been the irrelevance they should have always been. Labour-lite for wealthy social conscience types.
However, just a few years ago there was {wildly excited, breathless media} talk of Nick Clegg being Prime Minister. If you recall much of that talk was based on a labour meltdown that didn't really happen.
The Richmond win is significant for the Liberals because it will obviously re-energise them. Will show that their ignored leader can win victories. They overturned a massive majority of a very popular local MP. And, despite the Democrats now claiming that wasn't totally the case, they won because of BREXIT.
The importance of this, apart from adding an additional Remainer MP to Parliament, is that it does show the LDs have found their Iraq War 2 moment. Tim Farron took the decision to not just stick with the usual Liberal Euro-Lovein, but to also suggest that Brexit can stopped.
Some of his advisers no doubt warned him that with the vast majority of England and Wales wanting out, it would be limiting to try and channel a path back to something noticeable that really only exists in labour leaning cities. That being a protest party will only allow them to scoop up protest votes.
Farron has realised none of that matters. What matters for him and his sandalistas, is survival. Brexit has given them a path back from the mountain retreats to the village plains. It doesn't even matter if his message is the impossible contradiction of remaining in the union while being out of it. The deluded notion that the only a soft Brexit is acceptable to the British people.
It doesn't matter a jot if the Tories push on with Brexit while Labour ignore it, leaving the Lib Dems to fight an ever lonelier rearguard action as the time until A50 ticks down.
Winning isn't important.
Stopping Brexit, isn't important.
Delaying Brexit, ultimately, isn't important
Campaigning, for truth, justice and the European way, is.
Anyone unhappy with a leave decision, outside of Scotland, can look to the Liberals.
Hang on to your Local Education identity lanyard...The protest party is back.
What is says is that remainer MPs in a leave constituency are vulnerable.
ReplyDeleteIt says leave MPs in a remain constituency are vulnerable.
Don't dispute that at all. I agree with you and I do think it very clearly points to that.
ReplyDeleteAn awful lot of supposedly pro-Brexit Tory MPs came out for Remain in the referendum. They should be advised that an Independent { former Tory }or a strong Kipper candidate could cause them sleepless nights if they have been less than enthusiastic about leaving the EU.
In that constituency, 70% voted remain on 23 june and did not get their way and are mightily p-od.
ReplyDeleteIf you can make the election about brexit, and are on the remain side, in a place like that (i.e. London) you win.
In most of the rest of the country, they got their way and are thinking about other more important things like house prices and productivity and the local bypass plan - things that staying or leaving the EU have close to no impact on.
We need a pro-eu party and good luck to them as even if brexit does well, it will never do as well as the brexiters said it would.
imo you are providing more pointers to the thought that in the uk left/right has become less important than remainer/exiter and will remain that way for the next few years.
if you like brexit you have a choice of Cons/UKIP
if you like remain you have a choice of LibDems/SNP
i wonder what the Momentum party will do.
It was interesting to hear the spin put on the result on the Today programme this morning. Tim Farron was comparing the LimpDems to the SNP saying that even though they have so few MPs like the SNP did years back, they can still have a lot of influence and inferring they could make a huge comeback.
ReplyDeleteJacob-Rees Mogg gave him a bit of a reality check by pouring cold water on that idea.
The girl they elected looks a bit bonkers to me. Is that really the best candidate the Libs could find?
ReplyDeleteWhat it says is very little indeed. It's a by-election in what used to be IIRC a (fairly) safe LibDem seat with the sitting member espousing a cause which a majority of his constituents didn't like.
ReplyDeleteHowever, fewer electors in Richmond voted Remain (if the LibDem vote can be viewed as a proxy) this time than in the referendum. As you write, the sole result here is that the LibDems may be re-energised: not to win seats but to spout more and louder lies about Brexit and what losing the referendum and what those voting for Brexit really meant. The BBC and the London Evening Standard will repeat those lies ad infinitum.
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ReplyDeleteNot sure whether this by-election result means much but it confirms Zac as one of the dimmest politicians for a long time. Now instead of having some influence with which to put forward his niche views he will have to go back to publishing a magazine for all six of his gang.
ReplyDeleteAs for Brexit the government is in danger of pissing everyone off. By talking about leaving while not actually leaving. The UPC thing has been a turning point for me and I now believe that May has no intention of leaving the EU except perhaps in name.
ReplyDeletei wonder what the Momentum party will do.
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Try and have it both ways, pissing off both sides.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/728805/If-MPs-voted-on-Brexit-the-same-as-their-constituents-Article-50-WOULD-be-triggered
ReplyDeleteChris Hanretty, a politics lecturer at the University of East Anglia, used statistic analysis to work out how the results for local authorities transfer onto constituencies.
He revealed 401 out of 632 MPs represent constituencies which voted for Brexit in the referendum.
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Are there going to be any more turkeys like Goldsmith? I doubt it.
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ReplyDeleteWonder just how many libdim feminazi voters will be feeling "remorse" today after listening to the tail end of a car crash interview between the newly elected MP & Julia HB on LBC ?
ReplyDeleteAn absolute massacre, Dave.
ReplyDeleteThat was a shocker. I had it on when it happened.
ReplyDeleteShe might as well have said "its my first day."
Just for a moment, Blues, I thought you meant David Cameron!
ReplyDeleteLoved the car crash clip! I'm surprised it lasted that long, as every four minutes, there's a rather unpleasant roar from a few feet up in the sky.
David - sorry.
ReplyDeleteIf you wished to play with the numbers in the same way that journalists tend to, you could easily claim that, in fact, the "Remain" vote collapsed in Richmond...
ReplyDeleteReferendum, 69 or 70% for remain.
By-election, 49 or 50%...
Pogo
One of the consequences of the vote in Richmond -- apart from the spectacle of little Cleggie and Tim Farron jumping up and down on BBC sofas -- is that it is likely to embolden Remain-supporting judges of the Supreme Court to put a further block on Brexit.
ReplyDeleteWhat would follow from that is unlikely to be pleasant.
One point of interest with the Supreme court. If they rule that parliament has to vote, then Brexiters should fund a court case to say we were never in the EU. That was done under a prerogative power, later ratified.
ReplyDeleteThe supreme court has a problem. Say you need a vote, and that means we were never in the EU in the first place.
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ReplyDeleteStuff like this is exactly why May cannot afford to call an early election - it would be, in effect, a re-run of the referendum, and anything, anything at all, might happen.
ReplyDeleteShe needs to get on with getting out, and soon.
"Don't give your enemy time to get prepared" is a good military maxim.