Why did the remain parties not join forces for the European Elections???

[Desolate1]

So results for the North East are in.

Two Brexit Party MEPs and one Labour voted in.

Yet had the remain parties (Greens, Lib Dems, Change UK) clubbed together, one of the above would have been a remain MEP.

Just depressing and it’s going to be like that all night isn’t it .

Now having to listen to Rees-Mogg’s sister and Suzanne Evans crowing .

I don’t understand this either. It looks like the remain parties almost WANTED to be able to sit back and wring their hands as farage etc gloat. I despair.

I wish they had. And I wish labour had taken a strong position either way, even if they'd gone the other way.

Yes.

The Lib Dem guy saying that if you add the remain votes together, there is a strong remain message - stronger than the Brexit one. But it doesn’t have quite the same impact does it, and in terms of newspaper coverage it will do nothing .

I feel like people’s egos and party allegiances got in the way, but these elections are really only about Brexit / Remain, so couldn’t they have shelved those for a bit?

It's so confusing. Media had is believe leave vote is spilt, don't know what they want...all want different things, racist etc.

And yet the actual thug racists took over ukip.

And in merely 6 week's, this brexit party is thrashing all other parties?

Why is remain so weak?
You'd think remain would be most focused.

The major Remain parties are actual, real political parties that want to implement their own manifesto ideas.

The Brexit Party isn't; it's a single-issue party.

I'm more interested in seeing the vote share.

Yes, but given that we are leaving and they won’t be in the European Parliament for long, they could have come to an agreement and fielded candidates that they agreed on.

Remain share in the East has beaten the Brexit one.

Problem is parties only exist when people join them and vote for them.

Brexit p is single issue but at moment breixit is the over riding issue

Probably for the same reason that the pro brexit parties didn't club together - they don't agree on everything. What would have made more sense would be for the parties to tactically stand, so they didn't oppose each other, rather than forming any sort of pre-coalition, but I don't think they really had time to plan for that, under the circumstances, considering that 2 months ago, we weren't even expecting to have this election. Fully expected Jude Kirton-wotsit to get her seat - I follow her on twitter and she seems a decent sort, despite the current state of the Labour party. The other two simply don't surprise me. I despair of the Northeast as much as I love it, sometimes.

Shocking turnout. Less than 1/3 of eligible voters in the Northeast voted.

but I don't think they really had time to plan for that

No I suppose not. I guess Farage managed to organise himself in record time in part due to people like Arron Banks bankrolling him .

Well change uk were pricks tbh, they refused to join the libdems and while they only seem to have peaked at 5 percent of vote in some regions, imagine of that had been given to the lib dems or the greens, that extra 5 percent would have been hugely beneficial.

I think another reason is the lib dems and the green party are long standing official parties that have had proper separate agendas for years now, so you couldn't really get them to combine when they've both fielded completely different manifestos

Yes am annoyed with Change UK. Though I voted for them in London because that’s what the remain voter site suggested based on the fact that the Lib Dems would do so well - which they have. Not sure it was the best idea now.

—Suzanne Evans talks endless amounts of rubbish—

Parties have done it before however - decided on which of their candidates to put forward. Even in the last GE I think?? Not often it’s true, but totally possible.

Oops score through didn’t work

South West remain share is the largest as well.

However you can bet your bottom dollar that Westminster will only be looking at the Brexit party results and nothing else.

Ann Widdecombe saying that tonight reaffirms the referendum result. In the South West actually, it doesn’t .

Must go to bed .

Yes it was totally possible for them to do that. The Green Party had posters out at the last GE where they told people to vote Labour. They could easily have unofficially agreed on where they would stand as the remain ticket. The problem is that the Tory vote would need to be counted as leave votes, albeit a softer Brexit, otherwise they would have voted Brexit party, so if we are adding remain parties together, we'd have to add tory and ukip to the leave vote. Labour certainly aren't remain, so I don't know whether they would be also have to count as leave votes.

Yes I had forgotten that small detail - that votes for the main parties count as leave votes.

So overall (though NI results are not yet in) remain got about 40% of the vote, which is better than the Brexit Party’s 31.6, but obviously not enough.

Though turnout was low compared to the referendum.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/crjeqkdevwvt/the-uks-european-elections-2019

Having said that, maybe we can discount the Tory / Labour vote as being people who remain affiliated to their party in whatever circumstances?

Clutching at straws .

The Green Party did try to organise tactical voting for the last GE but didn't really gain anything, and lost political funding because of a lower share of the vote. There are also lots of people who will never vote for the Lib Dems because of the coalition so votes wouldn't necessarily have gone to the LDs, plus many Greens think that climate change is the biggest threat facing us, not Brexit. I'm struggling to see the point of Change UK though.

Now we are going to have to see Farage's smug face everywhere. I think I'd prefer to see JRM.

The Brexit party hasn’t gained much more compared to UKIP in 2014, yet others have gained more.

Ie the Tory and labour losses haven’t all fallen to Brexit

So I’m relieved that the Brexit party havent done as well as they’d like. But they’ll be crowing about it.

And they’ll have no clue how to implement Brexit.

Why would they though? Not sure I get it really. This was just EU elections, it doesn’t affect the vote to leave, wont change it and we’re still going and taking our MEPs with us, whoever they happen to be

I’m reading the posts on here today and wondering why it’s being treated like the second referendum or something?

So I guess it is not an easy experiment for parties to get involved in.

I kind of wanted Change UK to get off the ground, but have heard rumours that they are going to join the Lib Dems?

Having said that, maybe we can discount the Tory / Labour vote as being people who remain affiliated to their party in whatever circumstances?

And I guess the same can be said about the Lib Dem and Green vote, so I’ll get my coat .

Just hope we don’t have a no deal Brexit, and don’t get Boris 😱.

Fact is, it's shown lots of people have voted for the brexit party. This kind of puts the end to people saying if we held another referendum people would change their mind next time round.