Sir,
I decided last night to watch the Welsh by-election. As somebody who works from home, the time running up to the by-election results was not wasted. And I’m a night owl.
Well it got to 1:55 a.m. and Sky Television, the only channel said it would cover this event, started to show Liberal Democrat supporters with their diamond-shaped placards. Okay, there was a big cheer when the Pink Lady [Ed: the Loony Party] turned up.
Time moves on to the 2 o’clock news summary. From there to 2:17 a.m. when the results were announced the only visuals on screen were Liberal Democrats hugging, kissing, shaking hands with Ed Davey. Davey, the defeated Liberal Democrat leader, clearly jubilant a quarter of an hour before the announcement, looked like the cat that got the cream.
At this point the returning officer appeared, and gibbered away in Welsh. Still in Welsh, he gave the results:
Liberal Democrats – hoity-toity (silence)
Conservatives – whoJoc epiphany (silence)
Brexit party – gobbledegook (silence)
Labour – Yannis Ngami (silence)
UKIP – 242 (in English)
Monster Raving Loony Party 334 (in English)
Total silence.
‘I hereby declare Jane Dodds duly elected et cetera et cetera.’ Cheering.
Onto the winner’s speech. When at school I was forced to read Shakespeare. From the many hours and weeks that I will never get back, I decided never ever to read that rubbish again. Dodds used the Julius Caesar ‘play line’ spoken by Cassius – ‘Brutus is an honourable man’ – modified to ‘we demand better’.
It was only after the winner’s speech, that Sky Television started to get some voting numbers together, to put on the screen.
Liberal Democrats – 13,826 – 43 percent share
Conservatives – 12,401 – 39 percent share
Brexit party – 3,331 – 10.5% share
Labour – 1,680 – Retained deposit (!)
UKIP – 242
Monster Raving Loony Party – 334
Some background comments on the voting:
Plaid Cymru and the Green party both supported the LibDem and didn’t put forward a candidate of their own. On the other hand, Liberal Democrats, who are hell-bent on remaining in the current market, campaigned in this constituency that was calculated to have voted leave at the European elections.
The Conservatives negative was they put forward a deselected expenses cheat as though nothing had happened. It’s a sacking offence in practically any private industry company. Great tactics eh?
The Brexit party had a news blackout by all the media. They did, without doubt, pinch votes from both Conservative party and Labour party.
Poor old Labour at the back, might be slowly but surely getting the message that their leader, to the left of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is past his sell by date. As Jeremy Corbin himself might say – out brother out.
UKIP unlike many of the other candidates, parachuted somebody in. With no leadership, no money, and no local candidate, they are on a hiding to nothing, and gone past the point of drinking at the last chance saloon.
Was it worth staying up? Probably not, and that brings us back to Billy Shakespeare.
“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things,
oh you hard hearts, you cruel men of Brecon And Radnorshire,
knew you not Brexit?”
Respectfully, Brian Scott
~~~ OOO ~~~
Sir,
Here are the Brecon results in full (as reported by the Evening Standard):
Jane Dodds (Lib Dem) 13,826
Chris Davies (Conservative) 12,401
Des Parkinson (Brexit) 3,331
Tom Davies (Labour) 1,680
Lady Lily The Pink (Loony) 334
Liz Phillips (UKIP) 242
If the big issue is Remain versus Leave, as it actually is, the Remainers were smarter than the Leavers here:
The Greens and Plaid Cymru abstained from fielding their own candidates and backed the LibDem, forming a Remain Alliance, so as to get a win for Remain.
The Leave vote was divided, between Tory, Brexit and UKIP. And so the Leave side lost. If we tot up the votes in each “camp”, however, we get:
The Leave camp consists of: Tory + Brexit + UKIP = 15,974. If united on one candidate, we win – versus The Remain camp consists of: LibDem + Labour = 15,506. Even if united on one candidate, they lose.
Not unlike Peterborough, where Brexit + UKIP + English Democrats + P. O’Flynn’s tiny party, if united on one candidate, would have beaten the Labour candidate by 5 votes. Just 5 votes can be the difference between winning and losing a seat!
This is the implacable logic of First Past The Post (FPTP).
When will we learn? The British system is FPTP. This was confirmed in a referendum, so is practically graven in stone. Only a Parliamentary majority can change it. You can only get a Parliamentary majority by electing MPs, and you have to do that on the FPTP system. MPs who have won their seats on this system, are unlikely to vote to change it. So this is the system we have to work with, however unfair we may think it is.
With FPTP, the side that unites on one candidate, wins. The side that splits its vote between two or more candidates, loses.
This is a fundamental lesson, which any British politician must take on board, or face failure. The Remainers are learning it. Leavers must learn it too!
Respectfully, Torquil Dick-Erikson
Liberal Democrats – The party with no qualms about showing its very title is a downright lie!
PMB likes MWT’s post.
I have heard about mixed emotions, but have never experienced such, until this By-election result ! ….. I am angry that the Lib/Dems have this seat. – They are a Party that will do anything to get back to Power Politics ! ….. I can’t stop laughing at UKIP being trounced by The Looney Party. – I was a member of UKIP until their recent stupidity in their Leadership vote, and now consider them to be The Death Wish Party ! ….. Angry but Laughing, quite a mixed emotion !
The Monster Raving Looney party is not so crazy: it has imparted several truths in a fun way: that TMay as Brexit negotiator was no better than Noel Edmonds would have been, and that we would be better off with a cat in charge of the country than with the mainstream parties !!! Meaning that the mainstream parties are totally pernicious: I can’t disagree with that . Pity the electorate didn’t wake up to these facts a long time ago. The MRL’s were also giving out free apples at the campaign: well what’s that against the gerrymandering and scams on an epic scale by the mainstream. As for UKIP IMHO the leadership vote wasn’t stupidity by the Tory snakes who have infiltrated , it was sabotage; you won’t be laughing when there is no more UKIP- for all its shortcomings- to counter mainstream lies. So well done Brecon mainstream voters all, you’ve voted for our armed forces to be subsumed into a single EU command point, and to give the EU the right to take all our money and liberty away etc etc.
The thing that struck me was, as Viv pointed out, the Monster Raving Loony Party got more votes than UKIP!
It struck me too. Sad isn’t it. Think I’ll google them – find out if they actually have any policies. Unfortunately the referendum on proportional representation was about just one system, which even with my high I.Q. I couldn’t make head or tail of. Unfortunately the Leavers are slow to band together as Remainers do and Tories seemed not to care whether the candidate could win. Just read a John Redwood Diary where he says Boris will get us out 31/10 and makes the point that there will not be a Remain coalition in Parliament.
Torquil; You are assuming here that the Tories are a Leave party. I hope I’m proved wrong, but IMHO in spite of all the current optimism, having purported to be a leave party for years, they will somehow or other betray Brexit. . This having been their intention all along. Over the past 3 years, behind our backs, they signed up to the UN Global Compact for Migration (voters will get the shock of their lives when that kicks in) and various military- security stuff. When voters finally wake up to the truth, if they ever do, and find also they pick up the bill for Deutshe Bank and other eurozone meltdowns , the Tories will have been safely voted back into power for a further 5 years, with new PM Savid Javid who is incidentally a former senior Deutsche Bank official. As for Brexit Party; I call this the Tory Party mark 2, created to save theTories and intended to eventually merge back with it. (don’t forget Farage voted for article 50 to be extended). As for UKIP, certain individuals are currently trying to turn it into Tory Party Mark 3 in the same way ; if they succeed, the Tories will survive having betrayed Brexit and neutralised all protest by Leavers. QED. Cynical, moi?
Mary, I am not actually assuming that the Tories ARE a Leave party, even under Boris. I am simply assuming that the public now perceives them to be that. BoJo’s remark about staying in the single market and the customs union for a transitional period of two years more has not been broadcast enough, and it was too early for this indication of his intention to betray to sink in. If it had sunk in, the Tories would be perceived as a Remain party, as they were during the Peterborough by-election, when TBP received many more votes than the Tories. That they are now perceived as a Leave Party is due a) to the fact that so many Leavers WISH that they were, and are victims of wishful thinking, and b) Boris’s propaganda has been massive “do or die”… etc.
Brecon voted to Leave in the referendum. But has now elected a hardline Remainer. This is the paradox.
It is not as obvious as people think that TBP and Tories divided the imagined leave vote. Some Labour voters, disaffected because of Corbyn but who could never Tory, may have voted TBP (it was at 10% to Labour’s -12%) but TBP probably picked up some former UKIP voters (3338 in 2015). In any case, the Tories re-selected a crook so may have lost all by themselves. The TBP was a mix of these but no-one knows the proportions. TBP’s support is no more homogeneous than their rallies are.
The Lib Dem % was lower than in their 2005 and 2010 heyday in Brecon and that despite no Plaid or Green party neither of whom ever had any significance (Plaid 4%, Greens 3%). Not all Plaid or Green voters will have been happy with the `pact’.
Basically, Brecon has been a Lib Dem/Tory marginal since 1987. It still is. No solid inferences from the result can be drawn other than it being yet another example of how hard it is for a third party to break into a two party marginal.
Rumours continue to grow that Boris will settle for a reheated version of May’s WA. For that reason alone we still need the Brexit Party and we need the Tories to continue to feel vulnerable. The loss was a good result for Brexiteers.
At least no-one can say the Tories don’t give their crooks amongst them a second chance.
Conservatives Recycling the same thief? I thought suicide was illegal in the U.K. Clearly I am wrong!
The Tories lost because of their sheer arrogance. They thought ordinary voters would be so committed to the Tory party that they would even vote for a convicted fraudster. It says a lot about the Conservatives that they were unable to find one honest Tory member to stand for election in his place.
I don’t think the people involved in UKIP or TBP are so deeply complicit in the managed decline of the Uk economy, the destruction of our civil liberties or the imposition of a brave new world order seemingly based on the fiction of Aldous Huxley.
If uniting the Leave vote means the Conservative party working with the Brexit Party then the Conservative Party will argue all the way to its grave that only Tories can beat Labour. They think democracy is great only when it suits them. Allowing a recalled fraudster to stand again is just stupid. Respect for The Rule of law is for the birds.That’s the hollowed out shell of the organised hypocrisy once known as the Conservative Party.RIP
Matt,
You think UKIP or TBP are any different ?. Even slower on the uptake. No body dare speak. The dreaded NEC might pronounce
And some are terrified.
Suspect resubmitting the disgraced incumbent again was a Maybotch booby trap left for Boris to ensure his pro-leave majority gets even smaller. Luckily like everything the Hag touched it will likely backfire.