I am going to blog about all of the significant parties which took part in these recent EU elections, even those that carry little political weight. I start with Change UK [CHUKUP].
Change UK is significant despite carrying little weight, in that its MPs (all ex-Con and Lab defectors, of course) and voters seem to be coming from a “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” direction and thus will be taking votes from other parties, notably Conservatives, as well as Labour and LibDems.
I have blogged previously about Change UK. I wrote in April that it seemed to be washed up almost as soon as it emerged into existence:
https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/04/23/the-new-party-change-uk-is-already-as-good-as-finished/
I see no reason to alter that view! However, the continued existence of CHUKUP does not mean that its relatively few votes will not have any effect. After all, a vote for CHUKUP is the absence of a vote for LibDems, Conservatives, or even Labour.
As to the EU Elections, Change UK ran a campaign that was a joke even by small-party standards. “Rallies” with audiences of 40, 20, 6, and even, in one place, 2 people! Pitiful. At the same time, Nigel Farage of Brexit Party was pulling in crowds of up to 3,000 people, sometimes twice a day! They were even paying for the privilege of hearing him!
Change UK, in terms of MPs, has been a kind of dustbin for a few MPs (I believe 11) most of whom were unwanted by their own local parties. Several were at one time barristers or solicitors. Others have other professional backgrounds. Few if any are poor or from impoverished backgrounds. That seems to be the case with CHUKUP’s supporters and candidates too. There also seems to be a very strong Jewish element. Twitter is the natural habitat for Change UK’s people.
I have previously blogged about the Hampstead/Highgate/Blackheath (etc) milieux in which the Change UK people seem to swim. Some wag tweeted weeks ago about how Change UK candidates all seemed to have come from the cafe at Waitrose.
In fact the above characteristics were all neatly displayed when a fruit-seller by Hampstead Heath overground station was rude to Jessica Simor QC, Change UK candidate for London:
Not everyone on Twitter could resist taking a dig at Change UK’s “Hampstead massive”!
Some tweets commenting on the above incident were more interested in the exotic plenitude of the fruit on offer from that shop! In fact, there’s no mystery about that: apart from being in an affluent neighbourhood and opposite one entrance to Hampstead Heath itself (where people might eat fruit while strolling), the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, is nearby. Do people still take fruit to patients? I assume so.
Well, in the event, Change UK only got 2.8% of the vote nationwide. It was at the bottom of the poll almost everywhere. In fact, it polled only 4.7% even in Broxtowe, the area where Anna Soubry is the MP (boundaries not perfectly aligned). Next Broxtowe election…goodnight Vienna.
Elsewhere, the Change UK candidates were trashed even more. For example, Kate Godfrey, the Zionist tweeter who once tried to blog and blag her way to a comfortable Labour MP career, became a Change UK candidate for the East Midlands, but has crashed and burned. I suppose that we shall see her try the LibDems next.
The day before the elections, the Interim Leader of Change UK, Heidi Allen MP, said that Change UK should “merge” with the LibDems. I doubt that that made a huge difference to the relative vote shares, but it certainly vindicates my view of last month that Change UK is doomed and, in fact, pointless.
Some LibDem/Remain partisans have made the point that the votes that went to Change UK deprived the LibDems of local wins and even MEPs.
In Wales, the LibDems would have gained another MEP had it not been for the votes going to Change UK.
As for the Twitter reaction, I have had much amusement reading the tweets of Remain whiners, all trying to prove that Brexit Party did not really win these elections at all, because if you add up the votes going to LibDems, Change UK and Greens (etc?), that total beats the Brexit Party vote. Some go further to aver that that means that the British people do not want to leave the EU and that the whole Brexit process should be halted…
and this well-known Jewish scribbler (see below) is experiencing severe angst as he pretends that the vote was about Leave v. Remain only (and that –guess what?–Remain won!). Ha ha!
So what now for Change UK? As I blogged previously, Change UK is doomed partly because it is just a dustbin for MPs unwanted elsewhere and for votes by well-meaning but very silly people with no political sense at all. I have seen this before, in the 1980s, when the SDP (which at least was a genuine party) failed very quickly.
Strategically, Change UK will get (has got) nowhere because
- politics is moving away from vague “centrism”;
- anyone wanting to stay in the EU and support a “non-extreme” party can vote LibDem.
Change UK may be able to merge with its more successful LibDem rival, but only if it acts quickly, while the CHUKUP MPs still hold their seats. After the next general election, there will be no Change UK MPs. Most of Change UK’s support, such as it is (about 600,000 votes, nationwide), will just go to the LibDems or to Remain-voting Conservatives anyway, and fairly soon.
Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_UK
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/crjeqkdevwvt/the-uks-european-elections-2019
Ha ha! Jessica Simor QC making herself look very silly (again)…
The delusion of Remain whiners, personified in the person of Anna Soubry:
A few tweets…
https://twitter.com/Tim_R_Dawson/status/1132769827616186369
and here [below] is a CHUKUP candidate, Emma Jane Manley, “celebrating” (with horrible Zionist careerist Kate Godfrey) the fact that the two of them, with three others, came seventh (!) in the election for the East Midlands area. 41,000 votes? Brexit Party got over 452,000! The LibDems got 204,000. Even UKIP, in sixth place, received 58,000. Brexit Party vote share was over 38%; even UKIP got nearly 5%; CHUKUP? 3.47%. Game over.
https://twitter.com/EmmaJaneManley1/status/1132794427859243008
I find myself unable to resist adding this tweet by Kate Godfrey, mainly because it really does show up the incredibly poor level of education today in the UK, as well as the kneejerk anti-“racism” of the brainwashed “millennial” airheads featured…As for Kate Godfrey, CHUKUP candidate, and Change UK, the desperation is palpable. Next time, she should try press-gangs to try to recruit voters. Anna Soubry would like that. Actually, though, there never will be a next time: Change UK will not survive the next general election, and I should not be surprised to see Kate Godfrey attach herself to some other vehicle, perhaps the LibDems, before that.
https://twitter.com/remainwithkate/status/1131574825565208578
Note the tone: somewhere between patronizing and self-deluding: “awesome” young women who are so bloody ignorant that they do not even know that EU elections are taking place! Let alone who Nigel Farage is! Oh, but “racism”…oh yes, they oppose that (whatever it is), because they have had their empty little heads stuffed —at school and in the msm— with the “anti-racist” drivel, for years. As for the idea that those bimbos are really, actually, going to vote, ha ha!
Here is another idiot:
https://twitter.com/neverheardofher/status/1135181765184806912
Meanwhile, in the real world, “Change UK” is running at 1% in the opinion polls for the next general election.
Update, 4 June 2019
Well, Change UK has now split in half, 6 of its MPs have left and will apparently be “Independents” again (having been elected as Labour or Conservative). I expect that they will join the LibDems in the end.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48515505
Anna Soubry, now the “leader” of the “party”, appeared on TV to talk about the split etc. She looked drunk (again). Sigh. Maybe she was just “tired and emotional”…
The only aspect that surprises me is that CHUKUP has 100,000 registered supporters, if the Independent report is correct.
Here we see Leave UK laughing at Anna Soubry and Change UK:
and looking at Anna Soubry on Sky News, it looks as if her red nose is presenting a challenge to the Sky make-up girl!
My advice to Anna Soubry is that she should just open another bottle and forget this idea that she is some kind of political leader and influencer, when she is little more than a political bad joke.
Douglas Carswell enjoys rubbernecking the car crash:
https://twitter.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1135951412880453632
Cruel jibe, Angela…
The Labour rank and file join in…
Some typically obtuse Remain whiners and metro-liberal idiots in the msm still have not learned any lessons, though:
Jane Merrick needs it presented A-B-C style: British-politics-has-less-and-less-space-for-vague-“centrism”…
As for the tweet below, I seriously thought it a parody, but it seems not!
Here’s another one. These silly silly people really think that Twitter is incredibly important! This one thinks that a bit of “rebranding” and some intensive tweeting and Change UK will somehow be resurrected! Ha ha!
https://twitter.com/EmmaKennedy/status/1135982705949196288
Below, a more erudite analysis (from February) than the tweets of the Remain whiners, but one which, unlike my own blog posting, did not predict the early end of Change UK with certainty.
Update, 8 August 2019
Usually, the Daily Express “newspaper” can be ignored, but the story linked below is not without interest. Drunken idiot MP Anna Soubry expresses her disillusionment with Fathead Chuka and says that she thinks that he “is the future of our country”! Whatever she is drinking today, I think that I need some too! In what parallel universe is that mixed-race, smug, dim nonentity and publicity hound going to be “the future” for any country? He has a meltdown trying to decide which louche nightclub to visit! Fathead Chuka is a dead loss, but even now it seems that Anna Soubry cannot fully see that.
In any event, Change UK, now a total dead parrot, with a new name which I have forgotten —not that it matters– is yesterday’s news. Not really worth updating, but the report amused me.
Update, 19 August 2019
End of the line?
Time for Anna Soubry to start drowning her sorrows (again)…
Update, 24 October 2019
https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1187406773000511489?s=20
Update, 21 October 2019
There are now only half a dozen Change UK MPs left, the rest having either decided to leave politics or join the LibDems.
Update, 14 November 2020
Late update. In the General Election of December 2019, CHUKUP, rebranded as Independent Group for Change, put up 3 candidates, each one losing badly (average vote-share 6%).
Five days later, Anna Soubry announced that the party was disbanding. She then went for a swim in another vat of booze.
Ian Robert Millard 