Sarah Olney wins the Richmond Park by-election on an anti-hard brexit campaign.
The tide is beginning to turn.
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Sarah Olney wins the Richmond Park by-election on an anti-hard brexit campaign.
The tide is beginning to turn.
Hardly surprising when Richmond voted 75,000 to 33,000 to remain in the referendum
This changes..................nothing.
People are so OTT with their wording. "Odious".
What has Goldsmith done that is odious?. Apart from that media campaign to claim he was a raging xenephobe.
London voting liberal leaning politicians isn't really surprising is it?.
Labour lost their deposit :xmaswave:
Not really a surprise. Tactical voting in a former Lib Dem seat.
By the way, I can recommend the books by the Labour candidate Christian Woolmer on British railways. 'Fire & Steam' is fascinating, especially the early chapters on the navvies who built the railways, tunnels and bridges. Most came from Ireland, Scotland, Lancashire or Yorkshire and lived in labouring clans that were hard as nails, wore fancy clothes (hats, waistcoats and boots) and on average drank 8 pints of beer a day. They also died young.
Little Timmy Farron has got the breath back in his lungs today claiming this is some kind of political awakening, maybe among the liberal elites that live in leafy Richmond but the rest of the country are fully behind Brexit. I am pro Brexit and pro Heathrow expansion, Goldsmith lost his seat due to some absurd publicity stunt. In both the last GE he stood on an anti expansion ticket and won both. When all the other candidates agree with him on Heathrow of course they are going to look at other differences and his stance on Brexit and his doomed mayoral campaign were a manna from heaven for the LDs.
Olney said that all remain voting areas should have remain voting MPs. I quite agree, it means Timmy Farron and Clegg would lose their seats plus a high number of Labour MPs and Brexit would be sure to sail through.
Timmy Farron earlier - "This result shows Brexit is not inevitable". How deluded.
Life imitating art?
Attachment 1112
What is a "walk of life"?
This data clearly shows that the UK is divided between the working and work-less, the young and the old, white and black, working class and middle class, and between the university-educated and those who haven't had that privilege.
Attachment 1113
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06...voted-and-why/
Well to you maybe life is simple, the 48% are all liberal elites who live in places like Richmond. Is stockport full of liberal elites? Leeds is packed full of liberal elites. Northern Ireland also? Even in Harlow, a place where a polish man was beaten to death for not speaking English just a few months after the vote, 31% voted remain, was that just the liberal elites too?
What all of that data shows to me is that even in the so called smallest grouping (18 to 24 year olds who voted leave), more than one in four of those voting in that age group favoured leaving the EU. When you consider that twenty seven per cent is more than the party which has an overall majority in parliament currently got out of the eligible vote in the 2015 General Election, then the picture painted doesn't look quite as dramatic as you try to paint it - I'd be interested to see what a breakdown between the parties based on the groupings used there looked like after a closely fought General Election (e.g. 2010).
One thing the data shows absolutely clearly is that in all but one of the categories (the one I mentioned earlier) at least a third of those who voted did not go with the overall verdict for their grouping. Given that over thirty three and a half million people voted in the referendum, we have to be talking about very significant numbers who voted against the grain so to speak in their grouping, so I think it's entirely reasonable to argue that people from "all walks of life" voted for both sides - it's certainly more reasonable than the assertion that all of those who voted remain were "generally speaking" from places like Richmond.
Finally I couldn't help but note the interesting use of language in the analysis of figures you provided where it says "Among private renters and people with mortgages, a small majority (55% and 54%) voted to remain". While it's true that the majorities involved there were on the smallish side, they were a fair bit bigger than the one in the overall referendum and, yet, increasingly, I hear leave voters arguing that there is a clear majority for the version of Brexit they favour - there is no evidence at all that this is true.
I would also add the the younger voters have probably been exposed to some sort of pro EU propaganda while at school.
Perhaps I shouldn't have specified individuals but areas. In England and Wales the more middles class, urban areas voted to remain and the poorer post industrial areas voted to leave. Places like Richmond voted to remain whereas places like Romford voted to leave. Both suburbs of London but have very different socio-economic make up. There are the odd exceptions off course but the poorest constituencies voted to leave and the richest to remain.
Just another point for discussion, do any of you agree with me that Brexit is the best thing to ever happen to the Lib Dems? If we had voted to remain what the hell would they be talking about now? Brexit has given them a new burst of life and although I find him frustrating and hopelessly deluded Timmy Farron has really put them back on the political map.
I would consider the poor Labour vote more than just tactical, they have not lost a deposit in that area for quite a while..
Another by election soon.
Very, very inexperienced. Zach Goldsmith would have been able to accommodate the difficult question far better but then he ran a hateful campaign to become mayor and didn't represent the majority of his constituency in the referendum.
The Leave Campaign's defence seems to be that the Remain Campaign set out what Leave would mean and thus Leave vote was informed and the process and negotiations do not need to be commented on further.
I just don't think this washes. The Leave campaign stated time and again that the remain campaign's proposal for leaving was "project fear", as leaving went from being a serious hit to our economy to the start of WWIII, and that they wouldn't comment on which trade agreement would be modeled upon because the UK would have "The British Model". Yanis Varoufakis stated that there was no precedent for the UK leaving the EU and yet still no one asked how the varied response to "why do you want leave?" would build into a negotiating platform or the process for building that platform in the first place. I don't think you can use the range of possible consequences as stated by the opposing argument as justification for not having your own set out idea during the referendum and seemingly still not having one today. Beyond "Brexit means Brexit" of course.
How many voted for a "hard brexit"? Even if it is the majority of teh majority then that could still be the minority of the country. This government has the difficult position of speaking for 100% of those who voted (and those who didn't or couldn't) but there seems to be a real risk that they intend to only speak to those who favoured a UKIP version of Brexit....except UKIP MEP's are saying the government looks as if it intends to go too far right.
This has been a referendum of double think where politicians became friends with traditional enemies, MP's opinions changed (or voices raised/lowered) based on what they thought would put them into the best position in the long run and reasons for voting out of the EU (unrestricted control etc.) was spoken out against in the Scottish referendum, for in the UK referendum and now against again in the aftermath (British courts for British law seems now to be British courts are filled with pro-EU Brits and therefore cannot be trusted). The Lib Dems position is not the only example of double think so this radio interview should not be damning to their position, although it still needs thinking upon.
I don't know if anything can be done for this decision, but in any future referendum decisions someone must ask (and be answered) about how the country will come back together and if needs be the process for deciding how the decision will be made and what that process should lead to.
The Leave campaign was ultimately that the end of the leave process the UK would be in a stronger position than if it stayed in and the majority agreed with that, for one reason or another. But we always needed to go through a process to get there and this time-consuming debate is part of that.
You are still missing the point though. I have said all along has been that even in really strong leave/remain areas, 30% of people have voted the other way.
Yes the Lib Dems have been given an open goal really. Labour cant touch it because their potential vote is so split between leave/remain. Tories become the party of Hard Brexit, Lib Dems become the party of 'Remain', UKIP moan about the government and Labour hide in the middle somewhere trying not to upset people.
Now that does take some doing ,not even all there members bothered to vote ,priceless and bizarre , the last election saw them poll about 7,500 so quite a dip ,need Jon Snow and his swingometer to see what this means .
Next comes Sleaford
2015 Result :
Conservative Stephen Phillips 34,805
Labour Jason Pandya-Wood 10,690
UKIP Steven Hopkins 9,716
Liberal Democrat Matthew Holden 3,500
Lincolnshire Independents Marianne Overton 3,233
This one is interesting. Cons will win but would be good to see how the UKIP vote holds up. Let's see if the LD resurgence can be replicated in leave voting areas, whether they can hoover up the middle class liberal remain vote ahead of Labour. LDs aren't going to win here but a strong increase in their vote will be a far more positive sign for them than winning Richmond. Beating Labour into fourth would be a great result for them and spell disaster for Corbyn.
Green Party denies taking £250,000 'bribe' in return for supporting Lib Dems in Richmond Park by-election
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a7458871.html