My attention was caught by this tweet [below], posted by the political scientist Matthew Goodwin (who used to block me on Twitter, I think, but we’ll say no more about that for now).
Eurozone economy slows to 0.2% in second quarter while trade between eurozone states just contracted at fastest pace for more than 6 years pic.twitter.com/9oubRSKAyq
In Germany, the economy is contracting. For the first time (as far as I know) since 1945, Germany is doing worse economically than the present Eurozone states as a whole are doing (and they are not doing well either). In Italy, the League (formerly Northern League) has a plurality of support. Italy is now actively standing against the attempt of the international conspiracy to flood Europe with blacks and browns.
Meanwhile, in Italy & amid delay to confidence vote latest poll puts #Salvini League on 36% — up from 17% at election last year. Alliance with Berlusconi + far right Brothers of Italy could be on cards. Would be even harder right coalition on continent drifting right …#EUpic.twitter.com/6iZHz8V8KB
A few years ago, it seemed possible that the EU was going to collapse politically:
Now, that seems less likely, at least in the short term and on the surface, if only because the System parties and politicians across Europe are hunkering down to protect “their” project (the EU-superstate NWO/ZOG project) out of which those parties and individuals have done so well for themselves. In addition, most of the insurgent parties are at present trying to destroy the EU from within, or to alter it radically, rather than pushing for their home states to exit the EU.
Britain is a major part of the EU not only because of its economic strength (even now), but also because the UK is the ideological, attitudinal, military halfway house between the mainland of Europe and the USA.
If Britain leaves the EU on WTO terms, the economic damage to the UK will be real, but do not underestimate the damage to the EU itself. The EU project is on a knife-edge both politically and economically. Brexit might well push the EU over the edge, especially now that the world economy as a whole is slowing. The EU may not “officially” fall to pieces for a while, but in reality it is like a tree, the trunk of which has been cut through, but which has not yet crashed to the ground.
Conclusion
We are looking at the resurgence, not far down the line, of the core peoples of Europe. I am not talking about “civil war” as experienced by people in recent decades or centuries. We are looking at culture war, socio-economic war, race war, religious war, all tied up together, entangled. This may continue for decades once it starts. Out of it may emerge, in the end, a society of a different kind altogether. God mote it be!
Afterthought
As far as the UK domestic political situation is concerned, we see attempts within the pathetic and incompetent British “political class” to stop “no-deal” Brexit. If one or other such attempt succeeds, then the major System parties are toast, first and foremost the Conservative Party. Brexit Party will challenge all Conservative MPs at the next, perhaps very soon, general election. That must unseat many of them, perhaps most of them. A Conservative Party of little more than 100 MPs is now a realistic possibility. As to Labour, its core vote now cannot be much higher than 25%. Brexit Party may not get more than a few dozen MPs in the short term, but it has the possibility of changing the face of British politics forever by weakening and perhaps destroying the two main System parties, now seen as colossi on legs of straw.
Well, now we know that there was a General Election (in December 2019). In that campaign, Nigel Farage stabbed his own party, Brexit Party, in the back, by standing down all Brexit Party candidates who were standing against Conservative candidates. This all but guaranteed a Conservative Party victory.
It now seems even less likely than before that the UK will leave the EU in reality. We have the much-discussed BRINO, Brexit In Name Only, maybe for years, in most respects. However, we now have an unexpected aspect: Coronavirus. This, or rather the panicky shutdown of several countries’ economies by their own governments, has placed the EU in even more of a pickle. Watch this space.
In the Notes, below this article, is the text of a Guardian piece by the well-known expert on the British Constitution, Vernon Bogdanor. Worth reading, but what struck me apart from its detail was that one possibility mooted as a way out of the Brexit impasse is a so-called “government of national unity headed by someone such as Keir Starmer or Yvette Cooper“. YVETTE COOPER?! You mean (he means) Yvette Cooper the expenses cheat and greedy careerist freeloader? Yvette Cooper the “refugees welcome” hypocrite, who thinks that British people should all have to put up with culturally-backward hordes invading their country, their neighbourhoods, even their own homes? (Needless to say, Yvette Cooper and her equally greedy, cheating, freeloading husband, Ed Balls, have somehow avoided sharing their own comfortable large home(s) with the migrant-invaders). Yvette Cooper, the total doormat for the Jewish-Zionist lobby?
That sounds to me more like a government of national disunity!
In fact, though it may be largely factually correct, the Guardian piece shows to what extent the mainly London-based chattering classes and msm milieux are out of tune and in fact completely out of touch with what I take to be the majority of the population.
A “government of national unity”? In order to deal with a crisis entirely inflicted upon the people by the political class and more particularly the Conservative Party? It is not so much about Brexit itself as about the way in which persons governing despite being unfit to govern have criminally mishandled Brexit. I myself favoured Leave and Brexit in 2016, and still do, but (in the immortal words of Johnny Mercer MP), this is “a shitshow” and most of it has been and is a Conservative Party shitshow.
I expect that many will see my view as unnecessarily apocalyptic. I disagree. Many opinion polls have shown how very disenchanted the voters really are, to the point where many are willing to vote for Brexit Party, a party which, apart from the UK leaving the EU, has no policies at all. That willingness, to vote for a new party without any real policies (even in outline) also supports my view that voters at present are voting against the parties they oppose, rather than for parties they support.
There is no social national party for people to support (obviously I do not bother to examine again the bad-joke “parties” of recent years: Britain First, For Britain, the rumps of the old NF and BNP etc). UKIP too, which —as I predicted since 2015— is now so “yesterday” that I almost forgot to include it. There is a political vacuum.
As it is, the voters are left, at present, with the LibLabCon parties, i.e. the System parties, and the Brexit Party. Anyone (meaning anyone white and English, or Welsh, the Scots having the faux-“nationalist” SNP) and discontented with the way the UK is, can only either refuse to participate or can vote Brexit Party as a protest (or vote of hate against the System parties).
How has it come to this, that instead of the UK leaving the EU in a fairly orderly fashion, the government and msm are now talking in terms of food shortages? This is unbelievable! Those responsible are mainly the ministers and MPs of the Conservative Party, who after all have been in power now for over 9 years, including of course the 3 years since the 2016 Referendum. It is they who have messed up the negotiations, they who have blithely said that everything will be all right, they who have been the Government. Not Labour, not the LibDems, not Brexit Party.
Now we come to Boris-idiot. Boris Johnson as Prime Minister is, to me, no more acceptable or believable than food shortages as a result of Brexit. To me, he is not a legitimate Prime Minister of this country. He is totally unfit to be a prime minister of anywhere. He is only there because of the flaw in the UK’s constitutional arrangements, by which flaw a prime minister can resign without that prime minister’s successor having to call an immediate general election. In the case of Boris Johnson, he is also there because spineless Conservative Party MPs thought (I doubt rightly) that Boris-idiot was or is more “electable” than any of his opponents in the Conservative Party leadership contest, and so would give all Conservative Party MPs a better chance of electoral survival.
When you see Boris-idiot, you have to factor-in to everything that he says or writes that his primary and often only purpose is his own selfish interest.
Now we are told that Johnson is set on either leaving the EU on bare WTO terms or (if he can frighten the EU enough) getting a better “deal” than did the absurd bad-joke PM, Theresa May.
Boris-idiot’s calculation is very very obvious: if the EU makes even a slightly better offer, Boris “Tribune of the People” and “Conquering Hero” presents that to the House of Commons, which then either accepts it (so anointing Idiot as “great statesman” who would probably then win a general election if held fairly soon thereafter), or rejects it (so casting Idiot as “heroic but conspired against”).
On the other hand, if the EU refuses to make a better offer, Boris The Poundland Churchill can shake his fist at Brussels, take or try to take the UK out of the EU on WTO terms, and if that is blocked in the Commons, hold a general election, casting himself again as that “Tribune of the People” against Remainer (especially Labour, LibDem and SNP) MPs and Brussels eurocrats.
Whatever happens, keep eyes focussed on the fact that Boris Johnson is doing whatever he is doing for short-term political advantage. Having supported the fake “austerity” of his fellow part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne, Boris Johnson now flashes the cash everywhere: NHS, police, whatever. Shallow 18th Century style largesse-politics.
Is Boris-Idiot correct in his calculations? Will be be borne back to power on a wave of anti-EU anger? I doubt it.
Let us say that there are food shortages (whether caused by Brexit, hold-ups at the ports, miscalculations by the large supermarket chains or panic-buying by the urban masses in the British cities). Who will be blamed? The EU? Perhaps, partly, at first. However, I believe that the people will also and in any event before long start to blame (and with reason) the “Conservative” government.
If the UK does not leave the EU on 31 October, then government remains paralyzed by its lack of a Parliamentary majority. If an election is then held, Brexit Party will stand in 650 constituencies and so enable the slaughter of dozens and even hundreds of Conservative MPs.
Boris Johnson is probably calculating that, if he can take the UK out of the EU on 31 October 2019, the voting public will see him (however ludicrous that may be to you and me) as a strong leader (when he is neither) who has kept to his word. He can then in effect call a general election and hope to win a Commons majority because either Brexit Party will fade away or not stand candidates, or will be sidelined by the electorate.
No doubt Johnson will hope that, like Pacific salmon who die after spawning, Brexit Party will expire, having reached its goal of a UK exit from the EU. Such a calculation may be misplaced. How Brexit Party would present itself if the UK really does leave, at least on paper, on 31 October, I am unsure. Perhaps by saying that the exit is not sure, not definite or that Brexit may possibly be reversed by an incoming government.
One thing is certain: Brexit is about more than Brexit and, that being so, Brexit Party itself, should its leader Farage so decide, could morph into a party of general faux-nationalist discontent. That sounds vague, but what is more vague than a party with neither policies nor ideology?
There is more going on than Brexit, of course. All the problems the UK has will still be there on 1 November: mass immigration (which will not stop after Brexit, far from it!), NHS decline, social security and housing defects and shortages, the increase in violent crime, social decadence and decline; and so on.
The msm and TV talking heads, the metro-“liberal” journalists, lawyers, media folk etc, all insulated by affluence, mostly London-centric, were shocked by the 2016 Referendum result, by the 2017 election results, by the immediate failure of their briefly-cherished “Change UK” pro-Jewish joke party, by Trump’s election too. In a word, these people are out-of-touch. Their experience of the years 2010-2019 is not the same as that of well over half the UK population.
My view is that a coming general election might produce a big shock again. The only thing preventing a landslide for a social-nationalist party is that, quite simply, no social national party exists.
In the no doubt upcoming 2019 or possibly early 2020 General Election, I believe that neither of the main System parties will do well. I believe that both the LibDems and Brexit Party could do well, if only as a reaction against the main two.
The two main System parties have both been losing not only loyal voters but their own raisons d’etre, and their heart.
Labour will keep the votes of the blacks and browns generally, as well as those of the public service workers and those dependent on State benefits. It may not keep the votes of those it has taken for granted for a century: the British (i.e. white) poorer people as such. They are now either voting with their feet (i.e. not voting) or voting desperately elsewhere. In 2005 or so, BNP; 2010-2015, UKIP. Now they vote, some of them, Brexit Party. I put the Labour vote as likely to be around 30%.
The Conservative Party cannot now appeal to Thatcherite-style “aspiration”. That was something real back in the 1980s. I remember sitting in a branch of Wheeler’s (fish restaurant) in Blackheath in 1986 or 1987. At the next table, a young plumber (the tables were not far apart and he was a little loud) and his girlfriend talking about his income, his house-purchase plans etc. Afterwards, my then girlfriend and I mused about the social changes then in train (a young tradesman and girlfriend eating at Wheeler’s and buying a house). Could that happen now? Perhaps, but it would be unusual, I think.
The Conservative vote nationally is now mainly that of the rich and affluent (nothing new there), which would be no more than 5% to (at most) 20% of the population. There are some older but not affluent people who still vote Conservative out of long habit, even against their own interests, but they are a dwindling stock. That is why the Conservative MPs backed Boris-idiot as their leader, because they hoped that this part-Jew public entertainer could jolly along enough unthinking voters to make up the numbers. All the same, I should not put the Conservative vote now much above 30%, and that might fall back to 20% if the UK experiences significant disruption or economic dislocation soon.
The LibDems may soon be able to corner the Remain vote in the South of England.
Brexit Party might just be the recipient of any further or renewed “roar of rage” from an electorate in pain. If that happens (meaning if Brexit Party gets at least 20% of the popular vote), then the Conservatives will soon be “an ex-party”, at least so far as government is concerned.
Many might say, so you get rid of a Conservative MP and put in a small-c conservative Brexit Party MP, what’s the difference? Well, it’s not that simple anyway (because LibDems and Labour might capture more Con seats than does Brexit Party), but the good thing is that many many evil Conservative Party MPs will be out of UK politics, many for good. Connections and career paths will be ruined. I don’t much like Champagne, but if that happened, I might make an exception. If the damage were great, I might even drink Bollinger instead of mere champagne-type such as Sekt.
A similar picture might emerge in the North as regards Labour (if Conservative voters vote Brexit Party to keep Labour out), but one thing at a time! The main thing is to cull the hundreds of Conservative Friends of Israel. And it could soon happen.
The way lies open, not far away, for social nationalism on a scale never before seen in the UK.
My analysis was right, but my prediction not right as far as the chances at an election of the Conservative Party were concerned. I failed to foresee that con-man Nigel Farage would stab his own candidates and Brexit Party members in the back, and stand down virtually all Brexit Party 2019 General Election candidates, thus gifting the Conservative Party and Boris-idiot an 80-seat Commons majority.
The LibDems won fairly decisively, but with a smaller majority than the betting might have been suggesting. I have posted several informative links below.
Why did the LibDems win, why did the Conservative Party not win?
For me, the most important aspect beyond the headline result is the fact that the Conservative ex-MP, Christopher Davies, would have won, perhaps even handsomely, were it not for the candidature of Brexit Party, which received 3,331 votes.
The LibDem majority over the Conservatives was only 1,425. In other words, had Brexit Party not been standing, the Conservatives would almost certainly have won, and probably by nearly 2,000 votes. The Brexit Party received a vote-share of only 10.5% (LibDems 43.5%, Conservatives 39%), but that was more than enough to sink the Conservative candidate.
The Labour vote has suffered a general decline in the constituency over the years (all-time high was 57.69% in 1964), but this was its lowest-ever vote-share (5.3%). I attribute that partly and perhaps mainly to tactical voting: Labour supporters voting against the Conservatives (mainly) in a situation where Labour had no real chance anyway (the Labour vote here has not exceeded 20% since 2001 (21.4%). However, the 5.3%, barely enough to retain the deposit, does tend to support my view that Labour is now the party of the blacks and browns, the public service workers and those mainly dependent on State benefits.
The Sky News Political Correspondent tweeted something interesting about the Labour vote in Brecon and Radnorshire, which had been in the 10%-18% range since 2005 and until this by-election’s collapse to 5.3%:
Lib Dem source tells me Labour vote is in freefall: “Lab vote in deposit losing territory. We will have been massive beneficiaries of that. Lots bringing up Corbyn as a reason for switching to us on the doorsteps – more than just a tactical squeeze.” #BreconByelection
Brecon and Radnorshire is almost entirely white British in demographic terms (Powys, the county in which is situated the constituency, is said to be 99.3% white British). In white British areas, Labour increasingly has no chance. Labour scarcely speaks to or for white British people now. This has implications that go far beyond Brecon and Radnorshire.
The Conservatives and Brexit Party down the line
Brexit Party is one of two parties that emerged in 2019 despite having no real policies (the other being the pro-EU, pro-Remain, pro-Jewish lobby party, Change UK, which sputtered to a halt almost immediately and now scarcely exists).
There is no doubt that the early promise of Brexit Party has somewhat blunted since its great 2019 EU elections success. The recent Peterborough by-election was nearly won, but not quite, Brexit Party losing to Labour by a mere 683 votes. Now we have another, though less unexpected, disappointment. Nigel Farage and his large meetings held before both the EU elections and the Peterborough by-election built up a head of steam and a head of expectation, but so far that pressure has just tooted into the void, at least as far as Westminster is concerned.
The political landscape has just suffered an earthquake. Boris Johnson (aka, to me, “Boris-idiot”) is now, incredibly, Prime Minister (or Fool posing as “King for a Day”), having been put there by about 92,000 Conservative Party members (out of about 50 MILLION voters, in other words by about 1 out of every 500 or so eligible voters). He has “pledged” (for what little his pledges are worth) to leave the EU “deal or no deal” by 31 October 2019. If that seems about to happen, I am assuming that the anti-“no deal”/WTO MPs will block it and/or vote for a no-confidence motion. That might in turn cause Boris Johnson to trigger a general election.
Alternatively, the EU might offer Johnson a form of words that he can present to the Commons as a workable “deal” (in the now familiar vulgar terminology). The UK can then pretend to leave the EU but in reality stay in, or kick the can down the road by means of an extension, which Johnson himself seemed to find acceptable recently. The Commons might block the former, but probably not the latter.
An extension (as mooted) might last until 2021 or even 2022. In 2022, new electoral boundaries will be in place in the UK. MP numbers are set to be reduced from 650 to 600. Those changes will hit both Labour and the LibDems hard.
If the Conservatives can hang on until 2022, their chances of survival (as individual MPs and as a party of government) look better. In the meantime, Boris-idiot can go on posing as Prime Minister, and his Cabinet of Conservative Friends of Israel, enemies of the people, can (with the help of their Labour Friends of Israel accomplices) pass more repressive laws to destroy (real) “democracy” and (real) civil rights in the UK…
That, at least, could have been the scenario had the Conservatives a majority or at least a working majority (reduced by Brecon and Radnorshire to 1 MP vote) and so able to continue as a government. As it is, whatever happens on 31 October, it cannot be long now before Labour moves a no-confidence motion. If not in November, then surely in December or early next year.
Brexit Party has not yet proven that it can win Westminster seats, but it has proven that it can prevent the Conservative Party winning. In Peterborough, the successful Labour Party candidate got 10,484 votes (30.9%). The Brexit Party got 9,801 votes (28.9%). The Conservative got 7,243 votes (21.4%). While it may be that not all of those who voted Brexit Party would, in lieu of that, have voted Conservative, most would have done; hardly any would have voted Labour, in my opinion anyway. It is clear that, without Brexit Party, the Conservatives would have won Peterborough. The same is true in Brecon and Radnorshire.
Boris Johnson may have shot Brexit Party’s fox by going all-out (supposedly) for a “no deal”/WTO Brexit if the EU does not play ball, but he has not killed that fox, just wounded it. If the UK leaves on a “no deal”/WTO basis, then Brexit Party probably will deflate to nothing, though it may reinvent itself even then. However, it seems unlikely that the majority of MPs of all parties will not block such a departure. If that happens, then Boris Johnson, however much he tries to play the Leave “tribune of the people”, will be seen by Leavers as a waste of space, “all hat and no cattle”. In that scenario, the anger of the Leave-preferring voters will devolve upon both Remain MPs and Boris-idiot. Brexit Party will then, like Antaeus treading on his native earth, be revived and take on new strength.
What Boris Johnson and the Conservatives would like is for Brexit Party to just disappear, thus leaving the Conservatives to trample all over the hopelessly-split Labour Party and the LibDems. What is more likely is that the UK will not leave the EU on any real basis by the beginning of November. Brexit Party will thus put up 650 MPs and the Conservative Party will be slaughtered. Most hard-core Leavers will vote Brexit Party, most hard-core Remainers (especially in the South) will switch to the LibDems. For Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, a two-front war. Apart from Brexit issues, anyone who believes in the Welfare State, in decent public services, in animal welfare, will not vote Conservative. Anyone hostile to Jewish Zionism, likewise.
The Brexit Party may only get 10%-20%, so say 15%, nationwide, but that alone all but destroys any hope for a majority Conservative government. My own efforts at working it out using Electoral Calculus [see Notes, below] indicate Conservative Party as largest party in Commons, but without a majority and quite possibly worse off than now.
Much depends on the LibDem vote. At present, the opinion polls show intended LibDem vote somewhere in the 15%-25% range, with latest educated guess (via Ipsos/MORI) at 20%.
That might give a Conservative majority of as much as 74. However, even if that poll is accurate, it is unlikely that the Conservatives will actually maintain a lead of 10 points over Labour. If Labour were able to achieve 30% instead of 24%, which is well within the parameters of reasonable possibility, then the Conservative Party would be 20 MPs short of a majority, i.e. worse off than now.
There again, even if Labour were still on 24%, but if Brexit Party could reach to 15% at the expense of the Conservatives on 29%, the Conservatives would be no less than 57 MPs short of a majority.
On the other hand, If Brexit Party can get 20%, LibDems 20%, Labour 25% and Conservatives 30%, the Conservatives would be about 35 MPs short of a majority.
It is a game one can play for hours.
Conclusions
The LibDems are back in the game, if only by default. They have much of the Remain vote, they have a (notionally) fresh and energetic leader, they have the votes of those disliking the other two main System parties as well as those of persons wishing to vote tactically. They have at least the possibility of a 50-seat bloc (again) in the Commons.
Brexit Party is not looking good as a potential party of government but it is looking effective as a way of blocking Conservative Party ambitions. A general election resulting in 30% Con, 30% Lab, 20% LibDem, 15% Brexit Party and 5% Green comes out with Labour as largest party, but 46 MPs short of majority, the Conservatives not far behind and the LibDems with perhaps about 50 MPs. On that basis, the LibDems could, as in 2010, be once again the kingmakers. Plus ca change…
Andrew Rawnsley predicting the demise, quite soon, of both Boris-idiot and the Conservative government (and party):
“As he [Boris-idiot] points the country at the cliff edge and depresses the accelerator, does prime minister Johnson have any idea where this will end? It is a mistake to think that he does. No one knows what he is really up to, including himself. In one breath, he tells us that this is “do or die”; in another, he sets the odds on a no-deal Brexit at “a million to one”;
“He [Boris-idiot] has to know that there is a strong possibility that it will mean an autumn general election. The least credible message from Number 10 is that it is not contemplating this outcome”;
“Tory strategy for winning an election makes some very big and risky assumptions. One is that the gains harvested by the Conservatives at the expense of Labour among Leave-supporting voters will outweigh Tory losses in Remain-supporting constituencies. Nearly every top Lib Dem target is a Conservative seat, while Scottish Nationalists are hoping to scalp Tory MPs north of the border. The other perilous assumption is that Nigel Farage’s party will fade away or fold up. The leader of the Brexit party is enjoying being the object of renewed attention and displays no signs of wanting to retire again. He declares that he does not trust the prime minister and he has a bitter history of mutual loathing with Number 10’s chief strategist, Dominic Cummings.”
“One lesson from the Brecon & Radnorshire by-election is that the Brexit party doesn’t have to do all that well – it polled barely a double-digit share on Thursday – to hurt the Tories. If the Conservatives could have added the Brexit party vote and that of Ukip to their tally, they would have held the seat with just over half the vote, rather than narrowly lose it to the Lib Dems. They’d hope to put a harder squeeze on the Brexit party in a general election, but couldn’t be absolutely confident. All the hazards of this strategy will be multiplied many times over if an election takes place after 31 October. In one scenario, we would still be in the EU, breaking the Tory leader’s “absolute commitment” to his party that Britain will be out “under any circumstances” and hugely boosting the Faragists.”
“In the alternative scenario, Britain has tumbled out of the EU without an agreement. That is no longer a threat or a promise. The countdown has reached zero and no deal is a reality. Even in the less chilling versions of a crash-out Brexit – the ones that don’t involve supermarket shelves being stripped bare by panic-buying and children dying for lack of life-critical medicines – I wouldn’t want to be a prime minister trying to make a case for his re-election when the country has just suffered a big economic shock and the currency is collapsing.”
“My suspicion is that the Armageddon Clock isn’t really there to count down the seconds to Brexit day. It is there to remind Boris Johnson how long he has left before it becomes too late to avoid his own doomsday.“
Of course, I myself have made, in the above and previous blog posts, similar points to those now made by Andrew Rawnsley. He, however, has the inside contacts (and public profile) which I do not have. I, perforce, have to use simply my own knowledge and powers of reason (also, I am doing this unpaid, pro bono publico!)
I should say that there is little incentive for the Brexit Party to form a pact with the Conservatives unless the Conservatives in effect gift Brexit Party at least 50 winnable seats in return for Brexit Party standing down in the other 600. Such a pact might backfire for the Conservatives in that it would
deprive the Conservatives of a number of seats which, even with Brexit Party standing, the Conservatives themselves might win; and
create a bloc of up to 50 “fourth party” Westminster MPs for the first time, so
making Brexit Party far more electorally credible in subsequent elections.
If Brexit Party candidates give up their candidature in seats where the Conservative candidates might lose if there is a Brexit Party candidate, then not only has the Brexit Party given up what might be good chances of winning in those seats, but it has restricted itself to standing only in seats where it has, arguably, little chance of winning.
In other words, a one-way electoral pact with the Conservatives almost wipes out Brexit Party’s reason for existing. It might confirm as MPs a few Conservative Eurosceptics, but no political earthquake is going to happen just because of that. The better strategy is to fight all 650 seats and see what happens. If it should be that 200+ Conservative MPs lose their seats, then good.
Update, 23 June 2020
My analysis was not too bad (as good that of Andrew Rawnsley, anyway), but nexpected events happened, as they often do: as we now know, duing the General Election campaign of December 2019, Nigel Farage, for whatever reason, decided to stand down all his Brexit Party candidates standing in Conservative-held seats. That killed Brexit Party stone dead and ensured a Conservative Party victory by default. 2017 Labour voters did not, most of them, vote Conservative, but some did, in some seats. A relative few defected to the LibDems or what was left of Brexit Party, but almost as many as all of those simply decided not to vote.
Result: a Conservative Party majority of about 80.
Nearly eight years ago, when I still had a Twitter account (read “before the Jew-Zionists prevailed upon Twitter to expel me”), I tweeted that the LibDems were finished. At that time, around 2011, the height of the Con Coalition, the LibDem careerists were signing up to pretty much everything required of them by the misnamed “Conservatives”. In fact, even now in 2019, new tales come to light about how totally supine the LibDems in coalition were: recently, for example, it was revealed that the LibDems agreed to screw down harder on the sick and disabled in return for a 5p tax on plastic shopping bags.
The public were so disgusted by the LibDems 2010-2015 that the LibDem support and vote in the country hit almost rock-bottom in 2015. The 2010 general election had seen so-called “Cleggmania” and a popular vote of 23%, resulting in 57 House of Commons seats. In fact, that 23% was only 1 point above the level achieved in 2005 under the LibDems’ former (1999-2006) leader, Charles Kennedy; the LibDems in 2010 had 5 fewer seats than they had in 2005.
Naturally, the UK’s unfair First Past The Post [FPTP] political system left the LibDems with far fewer Commons seats than they “deserved” by reference to their popular vote. 23% of the 2010 popular vote “should” have given the LibDems about 150 MPs, not 57.
The 2010 hung Parliament result gave the LibDems their chance to demand proportional representation, instead of which their leadership (Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and David Laws, mainly) accepted from the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron-Levita, the mere promise of a referendum on Alternative Vote [AV], a halfway house between FPTP voting and proportional representation [PR].
Gordon Brown, on behalf of Labour, the then Prime Minister, was willing to offer the LibDems immediate AV, via a new law to be passed by Labour and LibDem MPs, but the LibDems instead (and to my mind inexplicably) chose the Conservative offer of a mere referendum on AV over the Labour offer of immediate AV. When they did that, it was already clear that the LibDems (so called “Orange Book” LibDems, meaning pro-finance capitalist LibDems) much preferred to make common cause with the Conservatives.
This “Orange Book” “liberalism” underpinned what the LibDems did in coalition with the Conservatives from 2010 to 2015. The “Orange Book” itself took the LibDems far from the positions of the old Liberal Party and even from those of the LibDem party itself during the time when it was in the hands of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy.
The authors of the Orange Book favoured socio-political positions not far from those of leading members of the Conservative Party post-2000: effectively anti-Welfare State, pro-business, socially-judgmental, favouring so-called “choice” etc.
It is striking how many of the Orange Book authors have, in the years since its publication, been hit by scandal:
David Laws: found to have cheated on his Parliamentary expenses to the tune of about £40,000; many thought him fortunate not to have been prosecuted for fraud;
Chris Huhne: prosecuted and imprisoned for the very silly crime of perversion of the course of justice relating to a speeding offence [cf. Fiona Onasanya];
Mark Oaten, exposed as a coprophiliac and user of “rent boys”; since when Oaten has represented the International Fur Trade Federation, a largely Jewish body despised by animal-lovers worldwide. Oaten was also a supporter of fox-hunting.
“Only” three, but three out of only nine LibDems who wrote the Orange Book (Oaten admitted that in fact his research assistant had written his, Oaten’s, designated chapter, and that he, Oaten, had not even read that chapter, let alone the rest of the book). Of the other LibDems involved, Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg both lost their Commons seats in 2015 and 2017 respectively, gratefully then accepting lucrative directorships from transnational finance-capitalist companies.
The LibDem fortunes since the days of the Con Coalition
The LibDem popular vote crashed in 2015, sliding from its 2010 level of 23% to only 7.9%. MP numbers were slashed from 57 to 8.
In 2017, the LibDem popular vote slumped further, to 7.4%, though by the quirk of the FPTP voting system combined with the way boundaries are drawn, the LibDems actually managed to increase the number of LibDem MPs from 8 in 2015 to 12 in 2017.
The present situation
Nick Clegg took the Zuckerberg shilling (or should that be million?) and became an apologist for Facebook. He was replaced by Tim Farron, someone who was from an earlier, Nonconformist tradition within the LibDems and their ancestor-party, the Liberals. For example, “Farron was one of only two Liberal Democrat MPs to vote against the under-occupancy penalty (also known as the bedroom tax) in 2012.” [Wikipedia]. Farron was in the anti-Orange Book Beveridge Group [see Notes, below].
In 2017, Farron in turn was replaced by another Orange Book author, Vince Cable. Then, in 2019, Jo Swinson took the reins. She, though very much of the Orange Book persuasion, is more identified publicly with “socially liberal” than with “fiscally conservative” positions. Jo Swinson held the positions of PPS, and then Business Minister, during the Con Coalition period, but has managed to escape too great an identification with the social policies of the Coalition. Surprising, really, in that she
“Almost always voted for reducing housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the “bedroom tax”)”;
“Consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices”;
“Consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability”;
“Consistently voted for making local councils responsible for helping those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the amount spent on such support”;
“Almost always voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits“;
“Almost always voted for reducing the rate of corporation tax“
I have to say that I have always seen Jo Swinson as a ghastly bitch, who, like her husband (Duncan Hames, also a LibDem MP from, in his case only, 2010 to 2015) has been mainly a careerist type in politics; in Jo Swinson’s case, her brief period in provincial commerce before 2005 can only be seen as underwhelming, at best.
My view of Jo Swinson is, admittedly, mainly a personal impression based on what I have seen on TV etc. Her voting record on domestic UK issues must give pause, though, to those who see her as enlightened, socially compassionate etc.
Jo Swinson is a LibDem leader who does not frighten the Conservative horses. That could be key. In 2017, there were, if memory serves, 35 seats where the LibDems were in close 2nd place; there were many others where the LibDem was in close 3rd place. Most of those are Conservative-held seats. The implication is clear: if Brexit Party weakens an already-flagging Conservative vote, scores of (mainly) Conservative seats could fall, many to the LibDems. The Brexit Party is a major factor here.
Then we have the Remain vote. About 48% of the UK, famously, voted Remain. All three System parties were split in the 2016 Referendum, but the LibDems less so than the other two. As a party, the Conservative Party is now seen as basically Leave; the Labour Party is seen as sitting on the fence. That leaves the LibDems as the sole unalloyed Remain party. How that translates into votes and then into seats is another question. For one thing, people are likely to vote in any 2019/2020 general election on various issues, not only Brexit. However, Brexit is probably the one leading issue at time of writing.
The British electoral system is a bad joke. We know that a simple matter such as how the boundaries are drawn can alter everything:
In 2022, new boundaries will come into effect, along with the reduction of MP numbers to 600 (from the present 650). The Conservatives will be far less affected than Labour and the LibDems. It has been suggested that the LibDems will be all but wiped out by those changes. Perhaps, but any 2022 or later general election is still at least 2-3 years away. We are looking at the very strong likelihood of a general election within maybe only 2-3 months or so. The Conservatives would like to wait longer, but how can they, when they have a majority of one or none?
Boundaries and other factors make the popular vote indeterminative. In 2005, Labour’s popular vote was 35.2%, and the Conservative vote was not far behind (32.4%), yet Labour ended up with 355 MPs, while the Conservatives won only 198!
If the LibDems can gather to their banner the bulk of the votes of those for whom the number one issue is Brexit and for whom Remain is the only way to go, and then add those votes to the LibDem core support (which may be as low as 7%), then it is not impossible to conceive of the idea of the LibDems under Jo Swinson getting a vote at least as high as Charles Kennedy’s 22% or Nick Clegg’s 23%, and possibly even higher. As against that, many voters will not support the LibDems under any circumstances, either because the party is pro-EU Remain, or because it is seen as weak on immigration (but are the other two System parties any better?) or because most voters remember the LibDems as doormats for the Conservatives during 2010-2015.
In order to form the largest bloc in the House of Commons, the LibDems would have to get a popular vote in the region of 35% or 34%, both Lab and Con getting below 30%. Even then, the LibDems would be or might be at least 100 seats short of a majority.
As I have blogged previously, I do not think in terms of a LibDem surge, but more a concatenation of circumstances —LibDems as sole Remain party, weakening of Conservative vote because of Brexit Party, disenchantment with Labour— drawing votes away from the other parties and so to the LibDems. LibDems as largest Commons bloc? Unlikely but, now, not totally impossible.
So there it is: Jo Swinson could never work with (be in coalition with? proffer “confidence and supply” to?) Jeremy Corbyn and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.
It’s against her “principles” to support any criticism of Jews or Israel, it seems. Pity that her principles did not extend to refusing to work with evil part-Jew manipulators such as George Osborne and David Cameron-Levita. She and most of the LibDem MPs voted for all or most of the measures which for a decade have demonized, impoverished and actually killed sick, disabled and poor people in the UK via the “welfare” “reforms” of evil part-Jap Iain Dunce Duncan Smith and the Jew “lord” Freud (etc).
I was right about Jo Swinson. My instinct told me that she is an evil bitch. I was right.
Some LibDems are actually saying that the LDs could get hundreds of MPs in the upcoming general election! Proof positive of their disconnection from reality. People are mostly going to vote LibDem (if at all) only as a way of hitting out at the more major parties. There is no “LibDem surge” as such, but (as I have repeatedly blogged) there is a desire on the part of many Remain partisans to vote against the Conservative Party (mainly).
I imagine that the LibDems will pick up some seats, maybe even 50, but what will prevent Jo Swinson getting 200 or becoming PM is that no-one really wants a LibDem government (well, about a tenth of the voters might…), but many more will vote LibDem negatively, to block other parties or to signal pro-EU Remain support.
Well, my analysis in the above article was right, but the basic facts changed in that Brexit Party candidates standing in Conservative Party-held seats were ordered by their duplicitous leader, Farage, to stand down. That order applied to all Conservative-held seats, even those held by the most committed pro-EU MPs!
That decision by Farage, which betrayed his own candidates and supporters, meant that dozens of pre-election Conservative Party MPs kept their seats when, had Brexit Party stood candidates, they would have lost them to the LibDems.
The LibDems were on track to win several dozen MPs until Brexit Party self-destructed.
Jo Swinson’s decision to push for a General Election, and Corbyn’s silly willingness to be shamed into going along with that, led directly to the victory of the Conservative Party at the 2019 General Election. It led directly to Boris Johnson, a part-Jew, part-Turk public entertainer, as Prime Minister. Disastrous.
My more recent pre-General Election blogging guessed the LibDem result almost exactly. I predicted that the LibDems would get fewer than 10 seats. They got 11. So nearly right, anyway.
As for Jo Swinson, her doormatting for the Jewish lobby paid off, in that she was made a fake “baroness” and elevated to the House of Lords once she lost her Commons seat.
We are where we are, in the now-ubiquitous phrase. The prime-ministerial chair once occupied by the likes of Pitt, the 1st Duke of Wellington, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher etc is now occupied by a public entertainer of mixed ethnic and cultural origins, born in New York City, brought up partly in the USA and Belgium, and until recently a dual passport-holder. A rootless cosmopolitan playing out a performance as an “upper-class” “Englishman” caricature. Am-dram Churchill. Poundland Churchill.
Boris Johnson, Boris-idiot, Boris the clown. More to the immediate point, Boris without a majority, soon. As a child of eight years, Boris Johnson wanted to be “world king” and has for decades schemed and cheated and lied in order to get to the nearest position (outside the monarch’s own ambit) that England allows: the rank of Prime Minister. However, he has not become “King of the World”, but “King for a Day”, the traditional role, in the Revels, of the Jester or Fool (“…for who but a Fool would be King for a Day?”).
The Conservative Party elected Boris Johnson its leader. Conservative MPs voted to reduce the field to two. Conservative Party members, some 140,000 of them, voted and 66% of them, about 92,000, preferred Boris Johnson. It is not my purpose of this article to rail more than en passant against the absurdity that allows a prime minister to resign and for her successor to be, in effect, elected by 92,000 (mostly very elderly, mostly rather well-off financially) Conservative Party members (out of about 50 million voters generally). This article is for the purpose of examining electoral chances.
First of all, we have the Brexit chaos. I favoured Leave. I still favour Brexit. However, the whole process was criminally mishandled by the Conservative government of Theresa May.
How will Brexit affect a general election? I assume that the House of Commons will not allow a WTO or “no deal” Brexit, and so any general election that is then called will see Boris Johnson parking his tanks on the lawn of Brexit Party and trying to go all out for, effectively, the Leave vote of 2016. There are dangers for the Conservative Party in that.
Brexit is not the only issue in a general election. Some more affluent voters may vote Conservative for tax or other reasons even if they oppose Brexit. Also, many in the population will never vote Conservative even if they favour Brexit. Many despise Boris Johnson and will never vote Conservative as long as he is the leader. This is, if chess, three-dimensional chess.
However, now that the Conservatives under Johnson present themselves as the “Leave”/Brexit party, it can be assumed that a sizeable number of former Conservative voters who favour staying in the EU will migrate, at least temporarily, to the only significant Remain-supporting party, the LibDems. Where else can they go? It might be argued that many Conservative MPs favour Remain, and that those MPs will receive a special vote based on that. Don’t count on it. The label is the primary motor, and if Conservative means Leave, many Remain voters will leave…the Conservative Party.
If the next general election is called without the UK having left the EU, or having left on terms dictated by the EU (Brexit In Name Only), then Brexit Party will be waiting to snap up the hard-core Brexit vote.
Brexit Party intends, at present, to contest all 650 seats. Its mere presence ensures that dozens, maybe even beyond a hundred, Conservative MPs will lose their seats, in some cases to Brexit Party, but in more cases to the LibDems or Labour.
There has been talk of a Conservative/Brexit Party electoral pact, but that carries the danger of gifting the Brexit Party a bloc of seats. which might challenge the Conservative Party more strongly later.
Labour, though now called by msm commentators a Remain party, is more nuanced. Corbyn’s fence-sitting tactic, though much criticized, is all that he can do in a circumstance where Labour-held seats were more often (about 60%) Leave-voting, though most Labour voters voted Remain (because, as I blogged recently, Labour votes are increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer seats).
It may be, anyway, that Labour voters have concerns other than, or as well as, Brexit: low pay, the Conservative attacks on the social welfare and benefits system, the burgeoning crime and disorder problem etc.
The composition of the Boris-idiot Cabinet and government will not attract many former Labour, LibDem or floating voters.
My conclusion is that the Boris Johnson government may struggle to attract the votes of more than 30% nationwide. Recent opinion polls have put the Conservatives at anywhere between 23% and 30%. Labour has been between 18% and 28%. LibDems around 16%-20% and Brexit Party 14%-20%.
If the Conservatives continue to lean towards Brexit strongly, they risk losing many of their pro-EU voters to the LibDems, but if they try to fence-sit or move more towards Remain, many of their previous voters will vote for Brexit Party or stay at home.
There is also the Boris Factor, but we see that, even though there has been a “Boris Bounce”, its effect has been slight. The Conservatives are still polling at or below 30% (as is Labour). Indeed, it could be argued that, for many former Conservative voters, especially in marginal seats, Boris-idiot is not an attraction but a turn-off. I concede that that is a guess, but it is at least an educated one.
I have fed various recent opinion poll results into the Electoral Calculus calculator [see Notes, below], and it is quite hard to come up with a Conservative majority in the Commons. Most results show a hung Parliament with either Lab or Con as largest party. Only one showed a Conservative majority (of one vote). In several cases, both main System parties were as many as 80 MPs short of a majority.
Now we all know that the “glorious uncertainty” of the Turf is carried over to the field of battle of British elections. It is hard to predict elections in Britain and “a week is a long time in British politics”, as Harold Wilson said. Also, Electoral Calculus is a fairly rough guide. Having said that, it seems clear that, at least in the short term, the Conservatives are on the back foot here. Any gamble to increase the Conservative majority in the Commons may well backfire, as in 2017. That would mean the end of The Clown as Prime Minister, but would also mean something of a political and even Constitutional crisis.
These should be fertile days for social nationalism, but we are as yet not even in the game…
David Cameron-Levita as Prime Minister always made sure that the interests of pensioners were prioritized, in particular by introducing the “Triple Lock” on State pensions. Pensions have been one of several issues taking greater prominence over the years by reason of the increasing average age of the population of the UK.
There were clear practical political reasons for this policy. Support for the Labour Party at elections is fairly even across the half-dozen usual age groups, whereas support for the Conservative Party is concentrated among the old and middle-aged: just under 50% of all Conservative votes are those of persons aged over 65 years. Hardly any young people intend to vote Conservative (in the 18-24 age group, below 4%).
The loyalty of the over 65s has been reinforced by pensioner-friendly policies. There are signs now that the Conservatives intend to, in the oft-seen phrase, “throw the pensioners under a bus”. In 2017 Phillip Hammond wanted to remove part of the Triple Lock, but the DUP insisted on its retention in part-payment for DUP “confidence and supply” support in the Commons.
The Conservative Party is already getting some flak from the elderly for the BBC’s announcement that free TV licences will be withdrawn for those of 75+ years. There are rumblings about bus passes for pensioners. Overall, it is clear that the free market crazies now in the ascendant under Boris-idiot want to target the elderly as they have already done the disabled, sick, unemployed etc.
The Labour Party is now the party of the blacks and browns, those dependent on State benefits, and of the public service workers. The Conservative Party is now the party of the rich, the affluent, the buy-to-let parasites and the like, and (many of) the elderly. If the elderly who are not particularly well-off desert the Conservatives, the Conservative Party is in big trouble, because only about 10%-15% of UK voters can really be described as rich or even affluent, certainly no more than 20%. In 2017, the Conservative vote amounted to 42.4% of votes cast. If half or more of those votes suddenly disappear, the Conservative Party is quite likely to disappear with them.
Well, we all now know that, in December 2019, Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party won a supposed “landslide” at the General Election. In fact, the Conservative Party vote was only 43.6% of votes cast, but Labour’s vote fell to 32.1%, and that decided the matter.
Key was the decision of Nigel Farage to stab in the back his own candidates and supporters by withdrawing Brexit Party from serious contention. That was the key act that ensured a Johnson/Conservative win.
Brexit Party ended up with 2% of the vote nationwide. Had Farage and Brexit Party gone all out to win from the start, Brexit Party might have got 15%, which though giving Brexit Party few if any seats, would have tipped the balance back to hung Parliament territory.
Other factors were the elderly and late middle-age voters sticking with the Conservative Party, and the relentless and mainly Jewish anti-Corbyn campaign in the msm, which helped to crush Labour’s chances.
Jared O’Mara [Lab, Sheffield Hallam] finds his way to these pages not, as have previous MPs so honoured, merely by being stupid or ignorant (sometimes and in fact usually combined with arrogance and dishonesty) but by expressing his mental and physical afflictions through his behaviour.
I suppose that most people feel, or feel that they should feel, sorry for those born with or otherwise suffering from physical or mental disabilities. However, my view is that, notwithstanding those feelings, I do not want such people entrusted with, inter alia, flying passenger aircraft, carrying out the duties of a surgeon, or helping to rule the United Kingdom.
O’Mara graduated from Staffordshire University, one of the least convincing of the new wave of “universities” in the UK. I have no idea what a degree in journalism involves or consists of, but I do know that since the proliferation of courses in that subject, thousands of semi-literates have been let loose in the msm, with the result that one now sees egregious errors in spelling and grammar everywhere, but especially in the online versions of the old print newspapers. The Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror are among the worst offenders, replete with sentences including “he was stood at the back” and “she was sat at the back of the bus”. As for real knowledge of history, geography etc, forget it.
These new “journalists” often have no idea how to report accurately, either. Often, one has to scan a newspaper report several times before locating the salient facts. That is especially true of the court reports.
Enough of my discontent. Suffice to say that Jared O’Mara graduated in journalism, with a “first-class” degree, whatever that now signifies (my opinion: not much). He did not attempt to do any actual work as a journalist, however; he started, with friends, a bar with music, in Sheffield. He was engaged in that activity, it seems, for more than a decade until the 2017 General Election. At any rate, there is no other work or activity known, except for attempts at local elections and a stint as a local school governor.
At the General Election of 2017, O’Mara, with 38.4% of the vote, unseated Nick Clegg, the then LibDem leader (and 2010-2015 Deputy Prime Minister), who received a 34.7% vote share. The Conservative came in a moderately-strong third, with 23.8%.
“Labour whip suspension over offensive online comments
O’Mara became a member of the Women and EqualitiesSelect Committee in September 2017.[3] Following revelations of offensive comments he had made before becoming an MP, he resigned from the committee the following month.[34]
A series of derogatory comments about women and gay men posted by O’Mara on websites over a decade before he became an MP were revealed by the Guido Fawkes blog on 23 October 2017.[35][36] He commented about the Girls Aloud pop group: “I advise you to sack Sarah and the remaining four members (Nicola, Cheryl, Nadine and Kimberley) come have an orgy with me”; and he said that the 2003 winner of Pop Idol, Michelle McManus, had “only won because she was fat”.[6][35][37]
He has also been accused of making homophobic comments including referring to gay men as “poofters” and “fudge packers” and referring to jazz musician Jamie Cullum as a “conceited cunt” who should be “sodomised with his own piano”.[6][38][39] O’Mara apologised “if his comments caused offence” and resigned from the Women and Equalities Select Committee.[6][39] In a later speech, O’Mara said that the homophobic words he used were part of an Eminem record he listened to at the time.[40]
The following day, O’Mara was accused by Sophie Evans, a Sheffield bar worker whom he had met through an online dating app, on BBC Two‘s Daily Politics of having “made transphobic slurs” towards her in March 2017, and of saying in the same incident that she was an “ugly bitch”.[41][42] O’Mara denied the allegation.[43] On the same day, it also emerged that he had been posting derogatory comments about children in Sheffield and appeared to advocate corporal punishment to deal with delinquent youth.[44] Following the emergence of the comments to Evans, the Labour Party announced an investigation into O’Mara’s conduct, but stopped short of suspending him from the party.[45]
Further revelations were made public on 25 October 2017. On a Morrissey fan site in 2002, he was found to have made xenophobic insults, saying that Danes were “pig shaggers” who “practised bestiality” and referring to Spaniards as “dagos“.[46] O’Mara, when reviewing the Arctic Monkeys in November 2004, made several sexual comments including how “sexy little slags” danced to the band’s songs.[47] These revelations resulted in O’Mara being suspended from the Labour Party and therefore having the party whip withdrawn.” [Wikipedia]
Recently, it has emerged that the now “Independent” MP has completely abandoned any constituency work, does not bother to answer enquiries from his constituents, and has no staff, having sacked some, while others quit, unable to bear O’Mara and his behaviour. The most recent (and last?) staff member, the “chief of staff”, left very publicly, tweeting that O’Mara was “the most disgustingly morally bankrupt person I have ever had the displeasure of working with“, and “a selfish, degenerate prick“. The employee had only worked for O’Mara for 8 weeks! He added:
“We’re left with a situation where there’s people in Sheffield Hallam who are not being represented, there are people who are waiting on their immigration status, there are people who are not getting houses, there are people having their benefits stopped and all these things stopped just because he’s not prepared to do his job properly.”
Despite the above, O’Mara has stated that he intends to stand again at the next general election. Some idiots have been defending him. The tweet below is typical of modern Britain, not just because the tweeter is non-white and painfully politically-correct, but because she seems to have no understanding of the fact that an MP is supposed to be there to serve his constituents, not use his status as a well-paid holiday or mental and physical therapy opportunity:
So there we have it. For me, the most important part of this story is how it has somehow come to be expected that, if an MP is disabled or mentally unwell, then the House of Commons should change to accommodate that, or if a woman has a small child, then the procedures of the Commons should be interfered with in order to make her daily life easier. Maybe mentally-ill, addicted or incapable people should simply not be MPs? Same with women MPs who have small children. They serve the country better by dealing with them, not by grandstanding in the House of Commons.
What about Sheffield Hallam, the unfortunate constituents of which now have even less help from their MP than is the norm? They must await a general election. There is no prospect of Jared O’Mara standing down, not while he can get about £80,000 a year plus expenses (London flat, utilities etc) paid.
Obviously when there is an election, O’Mara is gone, even if he makes some quixotic attempt to stand as Independent. The LibDems are probably in a good position to recapture the seat now. The Conservatives will be weakened by their national situation and by the Brexit Party (which threatens to stand in every English and maybe every UK constituency). Labour has little chance. O’Mara was the first and may be the last Labour MP elected for Sheffield Hallam (the seat was created in 1885). The Conservatives held the seat until 1997.
The present House of Commons; look upon its members, ye confounded…and despair.
“Statement regarding my mental health and recent events
In a few weeks, I will be making a follow-up statement regarding my position, until then I will be taking time out to receive professional help to deal with my mental health and personal issues regarding self-medication. During this time I would appreciate you could give myself and family privacy.
This is what I would like to say in the meantime:
I would like to start by apologising to my family, my friends and my constituents. I have not been honest with you about the depths of my depression and self-loathing. When I started this job in 2017 I was a different man: a confident and passionate man that wanted to help others. Sadly, I was unable to do that because very quickly I was bullied and mistreated in a harsh and unforgiving environment and that led me to be weak.
I wasn’t even meant to win the election. I stood because I wanted to give my time to support the democratic process and because I was inspired by Jeremy Corbyn and everything he had to say. Particularly about “Equality and Fairness”. I voted for him twice, was a member of his group ‘Momentum’ and practically idolised him.
But I got no support from him or the National Labour Party during the campaign. The previous Labour candidate Oliver Coppard (who I think should be the MP for Sheffield Hallam and I think is a top bloke) got funding and support nationally but I did not. The efforts of a small group of dedicated grassroots activists working to help me with the campaign I lead won that election for us. I will always be grateful to those amazing volunteers and all who voted for me. I don’t get many people backing me, helping me and supporting me in my life so it means so much when you do.
One person who constantly snubbed me and treated me less favourably than other people was Jeremy. He was the biggest shock of that election; not my victory. He has not been the man I thought he was nor that he appears to be. To the point that he and his team lied to you all last year. I was never let back in the Labour Party as they said. Nor was I ever ordered to go on training or “warned”.
They wanted me to act like I was when I was not provided with any details in writing about anything and they wanted me to act like I was guilty of those allegations from the two women from the pub when I had submitted hard evidence and witness details that showed I was not. So I had no choice but to leave the party I loved.
Within months of my appointment as MP for Sheffield Hallam the smears happened and I fell into a self-destructive nosedive. During my suspension Sam Matthews his team were consummate professionals but then Jeremy’s office took over the case and I had to get a solicitor involved because of disability discrimination in order to get it back on track.
The discrimination made things even worse. My mental health deteriorated further and I isolated myself from family, friends and constituents. My actions became erratic and my thoughts became incoherent to the point where most recently I suffered a delusional episode.
In May this year, I sent an email to Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn asking them for help with getting Equality in parliament. Some MPs were parents who were not getting support and Maternity/Paternity cover and I wasn’t entitled to my rights under the Equality Act for adequate support for my disabilities and as such was not provided with the safe and necessary environment for me to speak in the chamber. This was to serve as my olive branch to Jeremy for the bullying he and his staff had put me through which caused me to leave the party in July last year.
Jeremy and his office then offered me a meeting by letter and by my parents’ observations I was visibly excited. Jeremy’s office then promised to get in touch with me and offer a selection of dates on a certain day but did not fulfil their promise, so I emailed the next day and let my disgust at their disrespect be known. Jeremy’s response was to make false reports about me being a mental health danger around parliament with a delegation of Labour safeguarding representatives and his staff. I know this because I have it in writing from the parliamentary doctor.
I was not then a mental health risk at that point but such gaslighting ultimately made me one.
About two weeks ago I told a staff member I was in love with her during the aforementioned delusional episode. I’d been paranoid for weeks that if I was mad like Jeremy and his team said I was then I’d do something like that. The messages I said that were not of a sober or rational mind and felt like an out of body experience when I sent them but I know that does not excuse my actions because I should not have been self-medicating with a drink to get into that state. It was my lowest point and I will be apologising personally to her and her family.
I want to become a better person again; like I was. I feel I’ve become unrecognisable and I want to make amends. I need treatment for my mental health and rest first though. I will make a further statement about my future in a few weeks.
Lastly, to my dear, old friend – the Noel to my Liam – Gareth: Thank you for sticking with me like I am sticking with you. How anyone put up with for this long is a mystery! That’s what mates should do. I wish you a good break, you have earned it.
I am so sorry to everybody for everything. You have put up with so much; all of you all my staff, my family, friends and constituents.
Well, only a day or two after I blogged, another twist in this story: O’Mara has now indicated that he will stand down as MP for Sheffield Hallam when the Parliamentary Summer Recess is over (3 September 2019).
So I was wrong in assuming that O’Mara would cling on as MP for financial reasons. He has done the right thing, or promised to do it. Credit where due. He has made the honourable decision to fall on his sword.
If only other MPs who have lost all legitimacy would follow O’Mara’s lead: Anna Soubry, Fathead Chuka Umunna and the other “Change UK” defectors, sex pest Israel lobbyist John Woodcock etc.
As to the by-election which will now occur in Sheffield Hallam (and which the LibDems must, even speaking so far in advance, have a good chance of winning), that will probably be held in October. I shall blog about it once the candidates are announced, which will probably not be until some time in September.
Update, 23 August 2019
Seems that my general suspicion might not have been quite so wide of the mark after all…
Now O’Mara wants to “postpone” his standing down until the next general election! He may be a “fuck-up” mentally and physically, but he is cunning about money…
So now, O’Mara is going to keep getting the pay, “expenses” (inc. free London housing or hotel costs, utilities, food, taxis etc) for further weeks or even months. He has already said that he will not be doing any further actual MP work (not that he has ever done much), so all the money he gets will have been extracted on a basis of total dishonesty (regardless of whether he is ever charged with fraud as such).
* Lab majority in 2019 was 712; O’Mara’s majority in 2017 was 2,125. LibDem leader Nick Clegg’s 2015 majority was 2,353; his 2010 majority had been rather better— 15,284!
I suppose that I should write a brief piece about the LibDems, now that they have elected a new leader. Somehow an underwhelming topic. First of all, the new leader.
Background
Jo Swinson MP was born in Scotland in 1980, went to a local state school and then to the LSE, graduating, it seems, aged only 20, and with a degree in management. She then worked briefly for a small enterprise in Yorkshire before becoming marketing manager with public relations duties for a local radio station in Hull, called Viking Radio.
Elected as MP in 2005 [LibDem, East Dunbartonshire], she was PPS to Nick Clegg, then a PUS, then a junior minister, all during the time of the “Con Coalition” of 2010-2015.
Jo Swinson voted for all or almost all of the Con Coalition policies, and has endorsed both zero hours contracts and “flexible working”. I am not a LibDem, but I have to say that Jo Swinson is really rather far from the LibDem traditional stance on such matters. She comes across as almost “libertarian” as far as worker rights are concerned.
The other candidate, Ed Davey, is not far from Jo Swinson, ideologically, though I should say that Davey was the more intelligent candidate of the two, so it makes sense for the LibDems to go for the less-intelligent and less-educated Jo Swinson…Davey was also the more experienced candidate, being about 15 years older and having been in Parliament for longer (since 1997, compared to Swinson’s 2005); Davey was also the only one to have served in the Cabinet.
Both Swinson and Davey lost their seats in 2015 (Davey to a Conservative, Swinson to the SNP), but were re-elected in the same constituencies in 2017. Both are “doing rather well” financially outside politics too: Davey is director or consultant to a number of companies, while Jo Swinson’s husband, Duncan Hames, an accountant (and also a LibDem MP from 2010 until 2015), now works for Transparency International, a well-funded NGO.
The LibDems’ situation and chances
2010 was surely the high point of LibDemmery. 57 MPs (out of 650) and a share in government: the Con Coalition. In 2005, under the egregious Charles Kennedy, the LibDems had won 62 seats out of 646, but were not in government.
The LibDems got 23% of the popular vote in 2010, but only about 9% of the MPs.
I believe that the LibDems could have demanded electoral reform from the Conservatives. They did not. They sold their chance for a few ministerial places, for official cars, red boxes, rank and flummery. In return they (Ed Davey and Jo Swinson among them) voted for every misconceived “Conservative” measure: the appalling regime of hounding of and cruelty to the poor disabled, sick and unemployed; the whole nonsense of “austerity”, which left the UK economy almost alone in advanced states in being mired in recession and/or low growth for years; the near-destruction of the armed services as an active and effective global force. For all that and more, for being doormats for the Conservatives, the LibDems were punished by the electorate.
In 2015, the LibDem vote slumped to 7.9% (8 MPs), then slumped again in 2017, to 7.4% (but, by the vagaries of the British electoral system, the LibDems ended up with 12 MPs).
In the 2019 UK European elections, the LibDems came second. I blogged about them then:
I do not think that I have a lot to add to what I then wrote. My view is that there is and will be no “LibDem surge”, but what there might be is a LibDem gain from the decline of both of the other main System parties, as well as an electoral benefit arising from the Brexit Party surge —if it happens— in the South of England, mainly, where the LibDems are not infrequently in 2nd or close 3rd place.
If the Conservative Party is hit badly in the South, its voters split between Con and BP, the main beneficiary is likely to be not the Brexit Party, and not Labour (in most cases) but the LibDems. In those circumstances (and “Change UK” having died shortly after birth), it is not now impossible to imagine the LibDems again having a bloc of 50 MPs, something that I admit I thought, until very recently, would be impossible. The LibDems may not deserve it, but might in any event get it. In fact, thinking of —inter alia— Boris Johnson, that might just be the epitaph of our present age.
New Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, said here that she regretted *some* of the Tory Lib Dem murderously brutal austerity cuts — the bedroom tax for example. So why did she vote for the bedroom tax, ELEVEN times, and how come our MSM NEVER point this out.pic.twitter.com/MT72zqPjKi
We now know that there was the 2019 General Election only 5 months after I wrote the above assessment. At that election, my initial judgment, rather than my later speculation, was vindicated: the LibDem vote increased from 7.4% to 11.55%, but the FPTP system resulted in the LibDems losing 1 MP. That MP was Jo Swinson, who exited political life, having led her party for less than 5 months (144 days).
After the departure of Jo Swinson, Ed Davey was elected leader.
The LibDems had 12 MPs after the 2017 General Election, which reduced to 11 after the 2019 General Election. However, since then the LibDems have had three by-election successes, taking their number to 14.
Today, the Labour Party committed suicide. It decided both that it is going to back a “second Referendum” or “people’s vote”, and that it will be supporting Remain in that vote. In other words, the 2016 EU Referendum result will be dishonoured and quite possibly overturned if Labour has its way.
I have been predicting this System move for a long time; in fact, my first opinion published after the EU Referendum itself was that the Remain side, which is basically the System’s preferred side, would try every method to overturn the Referendum result. After all, the EU has “form” in this regard, making numerous countries re-take referenda which came up with the “wrong” result, even refusing to deal with governments which contained the “wrong” type of elected politician (in Portugal and Austria etc in the past).
The idea (held by most Remain whiners) that the EU is some kind of “democratic” and “liberal” entity is completely naive. The EU was set up by or under the influence of the sinister Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi
Part of that is the so-called “Great Replacement”, effectively the replacement of the white Northern European peoples by those of other race (blacks and browns etc) and those, in the future, of mixed-race, the outcome of mass immigration into Europe.
My view, published numerous times in these blog pages, has been that the System in the UK and EU would delay Brexit, try to keep Britain in the EU by means of various strategems, or if necessary, to give the UK a “deal” which would effectively be “Brexit In Name Only” (BRINO). Ideally, remaining or BRINO would then be falsely validated by a “second Referendum” under such name as “People’s Vote” or “confirmatory” referendum. So it seems to be happening. I did wonder how long Corbyn himself could sit on the fence.
The possibly deliberate mishandling of the post-2016 Brexit process by the Conservative Party government has now led to the position in which the pro-Remain majority in the House of Commons is determined that the UK will not leave the EU on a “no-deal” (WTO) basis.
I despise Boris Johnson as a politician: he is a charlatan and mountebank, to use old terms, and I have very little faith that he will honour his “pledge” to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October 2019 “if necessary”. However, it is possible that, to save his own skin, if he cannot persuade the Commons to accept a “deal” similar to that the EU offered Theresa May, that Boris Johnson will either cave in to the demand for a second referendum or will appeal over the heads of the parties to the electorate, and hold a general election in an effort to strengthen his hand. A gambler’s gamble.
Alternatively, Johnson may be sidelined quite soon by a no-confidence vote, which will either mean a general election or even his replacement without general election by someone else, presumably Jeremy Hunt. The British Constitution is so vague, relying as it does on a few sentences in Bagehot etc, that that would not, stricto sensu, be unconstitutional.
Labour in a general election
Labour received nearly 13 million votes at the 2017 General Election, 40% of the votes cast. In terms of percentage, that was Labour’s best since Tony Blair in both 2001 and 1997, and before that, Harold Wilson in 1970 (Labour scored over 40% in every general election from 1945 to 1970).
When it comes to House of Commons seats, however, it is a different story. In 2017, Corbyn-Labour won 262 seats with its 40% vote, not much better than the 258 seats won by Gordon Brown’s Labour in 2010, when the Labour vote-share was only 29.1%. In 2001, Tony Blair-Labour won 413 seats on a vote-share of 40.7%.
I think that something more is going on here than just the “glorious uncertainty” and illogicality of the UK First Past The Post and eccentric boundaries electoral system. It is clear that the Labour vote is becoming ever-more concentrated in fewer and fewer constituencies.
Harold Wilson in 1974 (twice), James Callaghan in 1979, and Neil Kinnock in 1987 and 1992, all scored well below 40% in general elections, yet ended up with more seats, considerably more, than Labour won in 2017.
As stated above, it is believed that, out of Labour’s nearly 13M voters in 2017, perhaps 3.5M, though perhaps as high as 4M, had voted Leave in 2016. In other words, about or around 70% of Labour voters voted Remain.
The inference is plain: not only are most Labour voters generally clustered in a relatively small number of constituencies, but the number of 2017 majority Labour-voting constituencies that also had a majority for Remain is even smaller, somewhere around 100.
Labour as a party has been growing distant from its roots, from its core vote, for decades. The industrial proletariat is virtually non-existent, replaced by the “precariat”, economically insecure, politically both apathetic and volatile. The trade unions, though often still linked to Labour, are likewise almost without importance now, all but powerless to help employed persons much, and focussed on “diversity”, “equality”, anti-racism” etc and on ever-more convoluted codes of conduct, politically-correct nonsense, and on support for mass immigration.
As I have commented previously, the Labour “core vote” is now not really the English and Welsh (or Scottish) “working classes”, but the post-1945 immigrants and their offspring and, after them, the public service workers generally, as well as most of the unemployed and/or disabled persons reliant on State benefits.
There are many many seats in the North of England particularly which were rock-solid Labour but which are now less-solid Labour, or are marginal. These are areas which voted Leave, where the English majority (in some cases now, minority) are sick of mass immigration, of cultural decay, of crime and lawlessness, of the patronizing callousness of the self-regarding and self-described “elite” in the msm and Westminster and in the City of London.
A recent opinion poll put Labour on only 18%. Critics said that that was an “outlier” and (perfectly true) that another poll the same week put Labour on 25%. My feeling and view is that Labour will struggle to get even 30% in any general election, i.e. where Labour was in 2017. The big question is where that 30% will be.
Labour’s new unambiguous Remain stance will alienate anyone who regards Brexit (not just Brexit, but the bundle of issues around Brexit) as important. That could be a third of 2015/2017 Labour voters, and particularly in the more marginal seats.
Fortunately for Labour, it looks as though Brexit Party will cripple the Conservative vote nationally. However, Labour too is on thin ice. There is every chance that the new Remain policy will rob Labour of the formerly solid seats in the North.
The Conservatives will fight the next general election against three enemies, but Labour will also be fighting against at least two (Brexit Party being one) in formerly safe seats.
Labour may gain votes in its new core areas, among the blacks, browns, public service people and millennials of London and elsewhere, but at the cost of traditional Labour areas of the North etc. They will not vote Conservative, but might vote Brexit Party out of pure anger. Beware.
If Labour’s new voters are fickle or volatile (as I think that many are), Labour will have lost formerly solid support in exchange for what could be fair-weather votes, leaving Labour, somewhere down the line, with next to nothing.
At present, I still think that Labour might be the largest party after a general election, if held this year or next (the Conservatives are all but on their knees) but I have the feeling that, looking at the medium term (from 2022), Labour has just committed suicide.
Update, 21 September 2019
…from the Independent, “reporting” on beach patrols at Dover; all too typical of the sort of persons now prominent in “Labour” and what is left of the trade unions:
“Riccardo La Torre, firefighter and Eastern Region Secretary of the Fire Brigade Union, branded the coast patrol “despicable” and said: “These have-a-go, racist vigilantes have no place in any kind of enforcement or emergency activities and will only serve to make conditions and tensions worse.”
So “Riccardo La Torre” (que?), a regional secretary of the Fire Brigade Union, thinks that migrant invaders from Africa and the Middle East are “working class people”, who are “trying to get to safety”?!
Safety from, er, France? There you have in a nutshell, the craziness that is much of “Labour” now. Alien migrant-invaders are “working class people”, who should be allowed to occupy the UK at will (and be subsidized too)! Note the fag-end “Marxism”, trying to shoehorn the facts into some 1980s polytechnic back-of-postcard Marxism-Leninism.
A by-election is to be held in Brecon and Radnorshire constituency (formerly Brecon and Radnor, 1918-1997). Unusually, this by-election has been triggered by the conviction for (what amounts to) fraud relating to the Parliamentary expenses of the sitting MP. Christopher Davies, who had held the seat since 2015, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 hours of community service and a fine of £1,500.
The relative leniency of the sentence may reflect the fact that the £700 wrongfully claimed by way of expenses by Davies could have been claimed legitimately (whether approved or not); the way in which he went about it (creating two false invoices amounting to the sum in question) made it unlawful. On a kind interpretation, Davies was stupid or incompetent more than (very) dishonest. Still not very good for him, I would have thought.
The position of the MP and the calling of the by-election
The events around this by-election raise interesting issues.
The news reports say that the seat “has been vacated”, but I have seen nothing about the Speaker declaring it so, a problem which previously arose during the Fiona Onasanya case, when that MP, despite having been sentenced for perversion of the course of justice, and despite a recall petition having been approved by more than the requisite 10% of eligible voters, still sat and voted as MP for Peterborough (including, crucially, in a significant Brexit debate and vote), also getting paid for months.
Davies may or may not, at time of writing, still be an MP. Even the more serious newspapers and the specialized websites (eg Politics Home) have not clarified the position. The Wikipedia entry for Davies says that his removal as MP was “automatic” once the results of the petition were known, but such is not the case. Wikipedia also says that “the seat was declared vacant on 21 June 2019” (today). Perhaps.
The Conservatives must “move a writ” to start the by-election process. In Britain’s unwritten or (more accurately) uncodified Constitution, this is supposed to happen within (usually) 3 months of the seat being declared vacant. After that, the by-election usually happens within 27 days (of the writ having been moved).
In other words, while in theory this by-election could happen by the end of July 2019, it might not happen until late October or, if the Conservatives really stretched the Constitutional proprieties to the limit, even later. Parliament rises for its Summer Recess on 25 July, so if the writ is not moved by then, the very earliest date on which the writ could be moved would be 3 September, after the Commons return, making the earliest by-election date one in late September.
If Davies is still nominally the MP, then he is entitled to his salary and expenses until such time as he is declared (by the Speaker) not the MP.
Christopher Davies, remarkably (bearing in mind that he pleaded guilty to the charges), seems to be breezy about the matter, and has invited his constituents to his local office, in the small Welsh town of Builth Wells, to view and enjoy the 9 landscape photographs which were the subject-matter of the expenses claims in question! I daresay that many of his constituents might wonder why Parliamentary expenses cover such purchases anyway (surely he or the local Conservative Association should have paid?).
Even more remarkably, Davies says that he intends to stand again! The local Conservatives, meanwhile, have not pronounced on whether Davies will be allowed to stand as a Conservative Party candidate! One can see their difficulty: if Davies stands as Conservative candidate, their chance of success is weakened, contaminated by his candidature, but if Davies stands as Independent Conservative or some such, he may draw off at least a few hundred, maybe even a thousand or more otherwise “Conservative” votes. None dare call it blackmail?
Still, one would have thought that simple ethical standards might have come into play, but in the contemporary Conservative Party, it seems not.
Another strange aspect: one would have thought that the two contenders for the Conservative Party leadership would have condemned Davies for his offences, or at least mumbled something neutral, but it seems that both have been “very supportive”.
The constituency
Before 1939, the constituency, under its Brecon and Radnor name, had as MPs persons from the Labour, Liberal, Conservative, Unionist, National and National Liberal parties (the latter three effectively Conservative coalition candidates).
Labour held the seat between 1939 and 1979. From 1979 to 2019, the Conservatives won 3 times, the Liberals/Liberal Democrats 3 times.
The post-WW2 Labour vote peaked in 1964 at just under 58%; its lowest was 10% in 2010. In general, the Labour vote has declined over the years, having not exceeded 20% of votes cast since the General Election of 2001.
The LibDem vote peaked in 2010 at 44.8% (1st placed), since when it declined to about 28% in 2015 and about 29% in 2017; however in both 2015 and 2017, the LibDems were placed 2nd.
In 2017, the Conservative candidate, Davies, achieved a vote of 48.6%, a post-WW2 record for Conservatives in the seat.
The only other (slightly) significant party contending over the years has been Plaid Cymru, which however has rarely retained its deposit in recent decades. Its typical vote share in recent years has been 2%-3%, though it reached 4.4% in 2015 (3.1% in 2017).
A few other parties have stood over the years. UKIP got 8.3% in 2015 (its best in the seat), but slumped to 1.4% in 2017.
The joker in the pack is Brexit Party.
Conclusion
There are some uncertain factors here: will Christopher Davies really stand again, and if so will it be as Conservative Party candidate or as some type of Independent? Will Brexit Party put up a strong candidate? Whatever happens, the Conservatives must be toast here. If Davies stands as Independent, and with Brexit Party now standing, then the Conservative vote will (probably though not necessarily) be even lower than if Davies brazenly stands again as Conservative. Davies does seem to be quite embedded locally, as a former livestock auctioneer, Royal Welsh Show ring commentator and manager of a veterinary practice.
The LibDems are currently strong favourites. The only thing that would or might upset the applecart would be the Brexit Party, now (announced today) entering the fray. Looking at 2015/2017, the LibDem core vote in the seat is below 30%. Even so, the LibDems must be in pole position here. It’s their election to lose.
Further factors
It is plainly in the Conservative interest to delay this by-election as long as possible. Their notional working Commons majority, even with DUP support, is now only four. If Brecon and Radnorshire goes LibDem or Brexit Party, that will reduce to three. Some Conservative MPs are ready to abandon support if Brexit no-deal looks likely. Boris Johnson may be a very short-lived Prime Minister.
The Brecon and Radnorshire Conservatives have reselected Christopher Davies as their candidate.
Davies faces an uphill struggle. While his offence was only marginally dishonest, it was still dishonest. It also showed Davies as both lacking in judgment and as simply inept. Apart from that, there is the point that the Conservatives have rarely if ever been lower in public estimation. Also, this is a by-election and the Conservative Party is in government.
The position has now been clarified. Davies is no longer the MP and the writ is expected to be moved today, Thursday 27 June, having failed two days ago. The by-election is now or soon will be set for 1 August 2019.
In a sense, I am surprised that the Conservatives did not play this more tactically, in view of their situation re. the numbers in the Commons, but there it is.
Now that Brexit Party is standing, the chance of the Conservatives actually winning (especially with a rather discredited candidate) has shrunk accordingly. If Brexit Party gets half of the 2017 Conservative vote, that would give them about 24%. The LibDems are unlikely to get less than the c.29% they got in 2017. Labour got over 17% in 2017.
If Labour does better than it did in 2017, and if Brexit Party does well too, and the LibDems do at least as well as they did in 2017, then all four serious contenders might well get vote shares in the 20%-35% range. If the Conservative vote were to collapse to, say, 10% or 15%, then the other three parties in serious contention might well end up getting about the same vote shares as each other.
This might turn out to be quite close among LibDems, Brexit Party, Labour, and maybe Conservatives too, with the likelihood of placings in that order.
Meanwhile, minor Remain-friendly parties look like not contesting the seat, in order to give the LibDems a clear run. Green Party, Renew, Change UK (probably, if they even bother to make a statement, they are already so marginal), Plaid Cymru (maybe).
Renew has never contested this seat, though it scored about 4% in Newport West recently; Change UK is already a “dead parrot” party, marginal, negligible in support (below 1%); the Greens last contested this seat in 2015, scoring 3.1%; Plaid got 3.1% in the seat in 2017.
If Plaid get on board the non-contest train, the boost to the LibDems must be worth several points, maybe as much as 7%, though more realistically about 5%. Worth having, anyway.
There are so far 4 candidates standing (LibDems, Conservatives, Brexit Party, Labour), with less than 48 hours until nominations close. Plaid Cymru has “indicated” that it will not be standing, in order to give the pro-Remain LibDems their best possible chance. The other pro-Remain parties, meaning Greens and Renew, are both not standing and for the same reason. Any late entries are likely to be vanity or joke candidates and will not at all change the outcome of the by-election.
The LibDems must be in an even stronger position to take the seat now that the smaller parties are not standing. In the last few elections, minor parties accounted for between 5% and 10% of the total vote.
Update, 4 July 2019
My eye was caught by the latest YouGov national opinion poll, as reported by Britain Elects.
If this poll is in any way accurate (and Ipsos Mori put out a very different result only a week ago, which shows how volatile UK politics is becoming), then Brexit Party would actually be the largest party in the Commons after a general election:
Brexit Party 196 seats (130 short of Commons majority), Labour 148, Conservative 169, LibDem 66. That would mean a Brexit Party government with, almost inevitably, Conservative support; possibly a coalition government. Large numbers of both Conservative and Labour MPs would be gone, including half of those recently vying for Conservative leadership.
Thinking about how that might apply to the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, it may be that most of the 2017 Conservative votes in the seat will go to Brexit Party, but they might not. There is uncertainty. Personality often means more in rural constituencies than in urban and suburban ones. Much depends on whether voters regard the Conservative, Christopher Davies, as an “expenses cheat” and/or “fraudster” after his criminal conviction, or whether they will “forgive and forget” his sin/error because they (do they?) regard him otherwise as OK and his offence a technical one.
My view is obviously no more than an educated guess, but I should think that many locals will think that £700 is a ridiculous sum to pay out for 9 photographs anyway. Others will see the dishonesty aspect; yet others may think that the former MP should be given a second chance. Much depends on his personal vote, on his local popularity.
I find this by-election hard to call. However, it must be done. On present facts, I think that Labour has no chance, realistically. It is seen as the party of the blacks and browns now, for one thing. They are few in number in that part of the world, unless it has changed hugely since I was last there. Also, Remain voters will go LibDem here, not Labour, whereas committed Leave/Brexit voters will go Brexit Party or maybe Con.
I think that it is quite possible that at least half the 2017 Conservative vote will defect to Brexit Party. The LibDem vote will be solid now that the party is bouncing in the polls; also, in this seat, the LibDems are not seen as a wasted vote, Brecon and Radnorshire having had LibDem MPs from 1997 until 2015.
If the LibDems can build on the 29% they got in 2017, and I think that they will, then they are in with a very good chance. They might get a vote between 30% and 40%.
I doubt whether Labour will get more than 10% or so.
The Conservative vote may collapse, though I remain unconvinced that it will go much lower than 20%.
Brexit Party, if it can capture disaffected Conservative votes, might go as high as 30%. There is another point, which is whether people who prefer Conservative or Labour will vote tactically for Brexit Party. Hard to say. The LibDems must get at least 30% and may get 40%, so Brexit Party has to get around 40% to have a chance of winning.
Provisional Conclusion (with nearly 4 weeks left to run):
LibDems
Brexit Party
Conservatives
Labour
Update, 5 July 2019
With weeks left to run, the online betting market shows the LibDems as heavily odds-on (about 1/5), Labour (oddly, but the market is thin) on 2/1, Conservatives on 9/1, Brexit Party at 12/1. Political betting is a minefield. The favourites often go down. Labour on 2/1 looks like exceptionally poor value! Brexit Party, however, looks like fairly good value at 12/1. My own valuation of the odds would be nearer to: LibDems 1/2, Brexit Party 2/1, Conservatives 3/1, Labour 10/1, but we shall see.
The confirmed final list of candidates shows the four expected parties (Con, Lab, LibDem, Brexit Party) and two late entrants, namely UKIP and Monster Raving Loony. The UKIP entry will obviously eat into Brexit Party’s chances; to what extent we shall see, though even 500 or 1,000 votes might be enough to sink Brexit Party in the by-election. Looks more like a spoiler than a serious candidature.
The Guardian interviews locals. One part stands out:
“Given that 19% of the local electorate signed the recall petition, almost double the 10% threshold, a surprising number of locals of different party allegiances express sympathy for Davies’s plight. Yet there are some who are adamant that he should have stood down. One council worker tells me that, owing to her job, she’s in electoral purdah and can only speak off the record. “I signed the petition against Chris Davies because he tried to shaft a friend of mine who works in his office, by blaming the expenses mistake on her,” she says. As far as this council worker is concerned, Davies, whom she voted for in 2017, was given a second chance for cynical reasons. “Everyone knows that they didn’t want to put any promising new candidate in,” she says, “because they know they’re going to lose the seat.””
Had a look at Oddschecker betting array. LibDems are hugely odds-on (1/9), Conservatives second at aroung 7/1, Brexit Party about 12/1, Labour 100/1. Not noted were UKIP and Monster Raving Loony. I expect that anyone wanting to throw away a few pounds could ask for and get 500/1 against either of those.
Betting is not always a sure indicator of a election or referendum result, but the LibDems have, as previously said, a lot going for them here: a fairly recent history of providing the local MP, the fact that the Conservative candidate is damaged goods, the fact that those who would have voted for the parties that have voluntarily withdrawn (Green, Plaid Cymru, Renew) will vote LibDem in a contest where Labour is anyway a wasted vote.
Well, “the moment of truth”, meaning that the by-election will be held tomorrow, Thursday 1 August 2019. This blog post has so far had, in about 5-6 weeks, 600+ views, far above the norm for my blog. Brecon and Radnorshire is having its 15 minutes of fame…
The LibDems are in pole position, hugely odds-on with the bookmakers (1/20 in some quarters), with the Conservatives in 2nd place (about 9/1) and (perhaps surprisingly) Brexit Party in 3rd position (as high as 50/1, which may be, at those odds, a value bet); Labour seems out of it at odds of 150-1.
A month ago, I was predicting, provisionally, LibDems to win, followed by Brexit Party, Conservatives, Labour, UKIP (a pure spoiler candidature, it seems) and the inevitable joke candidate, a Monster Raving Loony calling herself Lily the Pink (presumably after the comic song of 1968).
I see no reason to think that the LibDems will not win Brecon and Radnorshire. They have all the Remain votes and so many of the votes of the highly-subsidized local farmers, though no doubt some of the latter will remain loyal to the Conservative Party and its recently-convicted candidate. I do not know what sort of campaign Brexit Party put up in the constituency, but I should imagine that BP might still come second, notwithstanding the bookmakers. If it does not, Brexit Party’s balloon deflates a little more, but many will be looking at the result of the by-election to see whether the Conservative might have won were there no Brexit Party candidate. If the Brexit Party candidature alone meant that the Conservative could not win, alarm bells will sound at CCHQ.
Update, 1 August 2019
Polling day. The betting odds, for what they are worth are (best odds) LibDems 1/18 odds-on; Conservatives 7/1, Brexit Party 100/1, Labour 150/1. The bookmakers, at least, think that Brexit Party is heading for 3rd place. Perhaps.
It may well be that tactical voting is taking place, in particular that Labour supporters, recognizing that Labour has no chance here, are going with the LibDems in order to ensure defeat for the Conservatives (and Brexit Party).
The only significant changes in the betting are the Conservatives taking closer order (yesterday 8/1 or 9/1, today 6/1 or 7/1, and Brexit Party sliding from 50/1 to 100/1.
Looks as if the LibDems have probably nailed it and that the Government’s majority, even with DUP support, is now 1 MP vote.
The LibDems won fairly decisively, but with a smaller majority than the betting might have been suggesting. I have posted links here below.
For me, the most important aspect beyond the headline result is the fact that the Conservative ex-MP would have won, even handsomely, were it not for the candidature of Brexit Party, which received 3,331 votes.
The LibDem majority over the Conservatives was only 1,425. In other words, had Brexit Party not been standing, the Conservatives would almost certainly have won by nearly 2,000 votes. I shall be blogging separately later about the by-election and the implications of that Brexit Party aspect for the national political picture.
The Labour vote had suffered a general decline in the constituency over the years (all-time high was 57.69% in 1964), but this was its lowest-ever vote-share (5.3%). I attribute that partly and perhaps mainly to tactical voting: Labour supporters voting against the Conservatives (mainly) in a situation where Labour had no real chance anyway: the Labour vote here has not exceeded 20% since 2001 (21.4%).
The Monster Raving Loony Party got 1% (334 votes), the UKIP spoiler candidate (or was she just irredeemably stupid?) only 0.8% (242 votes).
There is not much sunshine for the Conservatives in this result. Still, ex-MP Christopher Davies can always return to auctioning cattle; and he has some lovely landscape photographs (the subject-matter of his criminal case) for his Builth Wells office. Something to think about as he endures his community service serf-labour…
Ynys Mon, a constituency which (sub nom Anglesey) goes back to 1545, was won by the Conservative Party at the 2019 General Election, only the third time a Conservative Party MP had been elected there, and only the second Conservative MP (the first having been the multikulti supporter, Keith Best [MP 1979-1987], who was convicted, while MP, on charges of having made fraudulent share applications).
As to Brecon and Radnorshire, the Conservative Party won easily, with a vote-share of over 53%, at the General Election. Brexit Party had not stood (rather, withdrawn) a candidate after Nigel Farage stabbed his own supporters in the back.
The present MP for Brecon and Radnorshire is Fay Jones, a rather obscure and youngish woman (34/35 y-o) whose father was also once a Conservative Party MP (and is a prominent freemason in Wales).
After their overall 2nd place in the EU elections, there was much talk about (another) LibDem revival, which echoed the chatter of 2010 and (as Liberal Party) right back to Orpington in 1961.
I was unconvinced by the talk of LibDem “revival” or “surge”, despite the post-EU elections polling which (in one case) made the LibDems the most popular party re. the next general election.
I also covered the LibDems, inter alia, in a piece about the Peterborough by-election, written a few weeks before polling day:
So what now? Well, I still think that there is not and will not be any LibDem surge or revival, as such. What I do think will or may boost the LibDems is the Brexit Party surge, if it happens.
In the 2017 General Election, the LibDems won in 12constituencies and came second in37. If the Brexit Party continues to grow stronger and if it gets at least 15% nationwide at the next general election, many of those seats will see a significant fall in the Conservative vote-share by reason only of the existence of the Brexit Party, in addition to any fall for other reasons. In many, perhaps most cases, the beneficiaries will be the LibDems. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the LibDems will win seats. They might win 20 or 30, they might win 50. They might even win many more. However, this will mostly not if at all be a surge in enthusiasm for the LibDems as much as a victory by default, the result of Brexit Party taking Conservative votes, together with a more general fall in support for the Conservative Party.
Having said the above, if the LibDems win seats, they win seats, whatever the reason.
Well, my analysis was right but —as at other times— “events” meant that my conclusion proved to be wide of the mark. At the 2019 General Election, Brexit Party was stabbed in the back by its founder and “owner”, Nigel Farage, so fell out of serious contention, gifting “Boris Idiot” with an 80-seat Commons majority. The LibDems, let by Jewish-lobby puppet Jo Swinson, crashed and burned; Swinson lost her own seat in the process.
Today, in 2024, we relive 2019. This time, Farage has “Reform UK”, and the Labour Party is far ahead in the opinion polling. Present forecasts show Labour possibly getting 300, 400, even 500 seats, the Conservative Party falling back to 150, 10, even 50 or fewer seats.
A side-effect of the above is an unmerited LibDem rise, from their present 15 seats to 30, 40, even 50.
Ian Robert Millard 