Monday 27 May 2019

The United Kingdom is as disunited as ever after the Euro elections

No matter what Nigel Farage says - demanding to be involved in the Brexit negotiations with the EU (HA!) - the only relevant fact that has emerged from the disastrous European parliamentary elections is that the United Kingdom remains totally divided. But now the division is not between Remainers and Leavers but between No-deal Leavers and Revoke Article 50 Remainers. Farage and his six-week-old Brexit Party beat everyone and reduced both Conservative and Labour parties to ruins. But that doesn't make him a power in the land. It just shows to the future Tory prime minister and to Parliament that the voting population - well about a third of them who bothered to vote - is split as much as ever except now it has got nasty. Now the majority want to follow Farage out of the EU without a deal and to hell with the consequences. And not that far behind, those who want to stay in the EU voted for the Liberal Democrats or the Green Party both of which campaigned to remain in the EU. Neither the Liberal Democrats nor the Brexit Party are going to take over governing the UK. Farage and co don't have any MPs in the House of Commons and the Greens have one. But their message was loud and clear. OUT whatever the consequences with the former and IN for ever with the latter.The Conservatives and Labour were beaten to a pulp because they never gave the leadership that was required. Theresa May tried hard but she spent her whole time tryng to appease the bad boys in her party, just as David Cameron did before her, and ended up pleasing no one. And Labour under Jeremy Corbyn just flounced around pretending to have a policy but actually had no such thing. Did Corbyn and his henchmen want to stay in the EU or leave it, did they want a second referendum or not, did they want a softly sofly Brexit or a tough one? No one had a clue, least of all Corbyn. So the voters spat on them - Tories and Labour - and went for the parties who had made up their mind what they wanted and told everyone from day one. It convinced me all right. I voted Liberal Democrat, joining two unlikely political heavyweights, Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine), former defence secretary under Maggie Thatcher, and Alastair Campbell, former high-profile director of communications for Tony Blair, both of whom declared they had deserted their life-chosen parties and had switched to Liberal Democrats. So I'm in good company. How on earth the successor to Theresa May is going to sort out this nightmare I have no idea. And I suspect none of them do either!

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