Westminstenders: Fallout coming to a place near you soon

[RedToothBrush]

Once again not much to report on Brexit itself.

The sideshow of Gavin Williamson lots set to run and rumble on. The scandal further weakens May as she has lost a key ally. Despite his protests of innocence, May herself must believe he is guilty. Whether this is because she is indeed too heavily influenced by Sedwill is the question, but for her to sack him when she has failed to do so with other Cabinet Members so many times means she must feel there is good reason. Every other party has seen it as a good opportunity to put the boot in and demand an investigation. So far this has been paid lip service as the Cabinet Office must approve any investigation and this doesn't seem to be forthcoming from Lidington. This may not hold, if pressure grows. In truth the whole affair is unlikely to damage Williamson's leadership ambitions; he has raised his profile and set up a narrative of a Remainer Victim. Penny Mordaunt has been the other major beneficiary of the issue.

May now seems to have abandoned the idea that there will be a way forward found before the European elections and they are now definitely going ahead. This isn't a surprise as there is no incentive for Labour to have an agreement before the EU elections in which the Conservatives are certain to get a bloody nose. She also seems to be dropping hints they she will give into a customs union.

We have a visit from Trump to look forward to, which will be utterly joyous. There are rumours that he might meet Farage whilst he is here. His visit starts on 3rd June and finish on the 5th.

The Peterborough By Election is set for just a few days later on the 6th June. The Brexit Party have a very good chance of winning their first Parliamentary seat here - so the temptation to have a photo shoot with Trump will be all the more appealing to Farage. The hope must be that the Brexit vote will be split, allowing Labour to retain the seat. The previous Conservative MP, Stewart Jackson might well stand and he's very Brexity, George Galloway is trying to get the Brexit Party candidency though I think it unlikely and he will probably stand as a Pro-Brexit Independent anyway. There is also the prospect of Farage himself standing as its a winnable seat, but this seems unlikely as you can't be an MEP and an MP and its a high risk strategy to go for MP rather than a sure fire MEP. (Plus the pay is better for MEP).

May faces a challenge at grassroots level with an Emergency Meeting called by the Conservative Associations at her leadership. This will be in mid June. After the local, EU elections and Trump's visit this will be difficult for her to survive. Whilst she has survived this long, this will prove to be her biggest challenge yet.

It has to be said that there is no sign that we will get anything but no deal ultimately. There is an admission that May can't pass a Queen's speech with anything meaningful, so as long as she remains as PM parliament is even more paralysed that it has been to date. All things point to a new leader who is very Brexitty or accidental no deal because May can not do anything.

Meanwhile in the real world there are rumours that cancer treatments are now being delayed indefinitely due to Brexit... And so we continue to destroy ourselves and now, it seems, actively kill people in the name of Brexit.

Local Election results will start tonight with the majority tomorrow. Tories are expecting 700 - 1000 losses.

Hi lonely, thanks!

Advice on EP election voting from Edwin Hayward on Twitter.

Anyone heard from Fartage since results of pro-remain party boosts? I wonder if he is nervous...

It’s more difficult to organise cooperation in the EU elections for a variety of reasons. This is Chuka Umunna’s explanation, which persuaded me:
www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-european-elections-mep-change-uk-the-independent-group-remain-leave-alliance-a8881306.html
I also heard Molly Scott Cato (Green) articulating the same argument on (I think) PM on R4.
But I have heard some Remain politicians saying it’ll be OK because it’s a proportional system, which isn’t really true. The vote will split.
What we need is Led by Donkeys on Nige’s case 24/7. Reminds me to go and donate some more to them.

I've decided, barring scandal and pending top candidate background checking, to vote LD in the EP election. If they're generally over the 2015/2017 nadir, they've got a strong chance at the 6th Scottish seat.

NI* So far, Remain parties doing much better than Leave*

Results in full by this evening, so far 308 of 462 seats counted.

(pro-Leave)

• Unionist (all 4 parties) ....................... -16, of which -5 were DUP
• People before Profit Alliance (SWP socialist) +3

(pro-Remain)

• Alliance +12
• SF ....... +2
• Green +2
• SDLP -3 (continued losses to SF over decades)

oh and UKIP lost all 3 of their NI seats up for election

Given that so many councils have only a third up for election at a time these results are seismic at a council level. I think you shot yourself in the foot there Clavinova!

I agree. Since London and quite a swathe of other places had elections two years ago or only had 1/3 put up this time, who knows what it would have been like had there been elections throughout? Boris Johnson did vote in his South Oxfordshire District where he has a house, and the Tories lost Control.

In Vale of White Horse, yes the Green candidate got in. This is the person who was going to stand as MP for the Greens in the GE, but stood down in favour of the LibDem candidate, Layla Moran. A lot of discussion and negotiation led to her being put up for both a District and a Town Council seat, instead of a LibDem and she won both handsomely. There was something of a joint leafletting campaign, and a lot of other leafletting going on. In the Town Ward that I live in a different Green candidate didn't campaign much but still got third place pushing the Tories into 4th and 5th place. We have the usual Carbon Cutters and ecologically minded people, but I wouldn't say that we were an especially Green area, as say Brighton is.

As I said, some Tory councillors were perfectly good at the job, but others really were dead wood which needed to go. As a result there has been an influx of new names and quite a lot of younger people, which is good. I can't speak for Labour because they traditionally have never done well round here - this is Oxfordshire remember, which ought to be the truest of true blue counties.

Birmingham also had no elections.

As for the "collapse" of the UKIP vote ... was there ever a "UKIP vote" ?

It may have been genius of UKIP to harness the politically unengaged but as has been pointed out many times (by me at least ) there's a reason they're politically unengaged. And ultimately they are fucking expensive votes to buy if you work out spending per vote. Spending that UKIP (and it's lickspittle clones) can no longer afford now it's under the microscope.

Going back a while, there was a programme that analysed how much it cost to buy a vote in terms of party spending per vote received. For memory the better educated the voter, the more it cost.

UKIP was the extreme pro-Brexit vote
but has now been replaced by Farage's new ego vehicle

On Thursday, these voters mostly either stayed home or voted for a few pro-Brexit Indies

BUT
polls strongly suggest they will come out in force for the EP elections

BREX currently the leading party in the polls for EP, as Remain vote too split

Analysis piece from the state broadcaster saying that because there is a bigger swing to pro-remain parties in Leave areas than in Remain areas, this apparently means that voted for these parties aren’t about Brexit.

Because obviously these areas have somehow been purged of remain voters, and no one who originally voted Leave could possibly have changed their mind.

There was a UKIP vote DGR. At one time they did have a significant number of council seats, and even two years ago when London and Birmingham voted and they lost loads of seats, there were still UKIP councillors sitting in the seats which had elections on Thursday. But they mostly showed themselves to be pretty useless so got their due reward.

That's personally why I would be happy to have a PR system for Parliamentary elections - yes the UKIP types would get a share of the vote and get a few MPs, and we would be able to see if they were any good or not. As I have pointed out before, until the Referendum, a lot of people didn't even realise that Farage was an MEP, never mind that he was one with one of the worst attendance records going.

BUT
polls strongly suggest they will come out in force for the EP elections

This was before Thursday's results. I suspect that a lot of people will be having a quiet rethink - worth taking a punt on the Greens or LibDems?

Don't forget the last GE where the media had spent their time absolutely villifying Corbyn, who increased the number of MPs he had, and Theresa May did not get her 100 majority. (Yes I know, those voters wanted Corbyn's Brexit rather than May's - because all voters now want us to get on with Brexit! )

In other news, apparently two women are about to have babies. This is shocking news to me as I had no idea where babies came from, especially in countries with no significant stork population or spikey fruit bushes.
Tabloids saying that the voting says 'get on with leaving'. The lies continue........

EU recovers £200,000 from Ukip MEPs accused of misusing funds

They got some back from Farage and can get more back if he returns as an MEP - it seems dependent on the person, not the party.
However, they recover via not paying part of salary, so those MEPs not returned will evade repayment

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/eu-recovers-200000-from-ukip-meps-accused-of-misusing-funds

Time running out to recoup money from others alleged to have broken rules

I see the EU can also recoup from "transitional allowances" paid to MEPs who don't retain their seat,
but this won't be enough in some cases

As for the "collapse" of the UKIP vote ... was there ever a "UKIP vote" ?

There was, and there was even (at least) one UKIP council, in Thanet. There's an FT article about it today.

The Thanet kippers fell victim to internal wrangling and failure to deliver on their local manifesto promises (reopening Manston airport), and with the departure of Farage they lost any momentum or unity as a party. After running the council they were only able to find 3 candidates this time.

It's the classic trajectory of far right politics in much of Europe: elected on populist manifestos that they are unable to put into practice and then a descent into in-fighting and (usually - don't know about Thanet specifically) criminality.

polls strongly suggest they will come out in force for the EP elections

I'm very dubious about polling. Very hard for pollsters to make sure that their samples are representative.

Farage does well in all his incarnations because essentially the focus is on one thing. Other parties have policies on everything, which makes decision making more difficult. For example, I have always voted LD despite having reservations about parts of their manifesto, recently being very uncomfortable with them as a gender critical woman. And UKIP itself had a manifesto that I couldn’t entirely disagree with.
The genius of the Brexit party is that it’s raison d’etre is boiled down to one thing and it’s not even a party in the usual sense, just a Farage vehicle. So it’s very easy to vote for. If you agree with its main aim, that’s it. It’s the perfect option for the ignorant.
Perhaps all parties should have slimmed down manifestos. (Actually, I think this has been happening somewhat recently.) If I’m thinking of voting for a party I’m not going to be bothered on its position on hedgehogs unless that’s my particular thing. The older parties have positions on everything because various factions within them push them at conference. If I were heading up a new party I’d deliberately discourage this and develop policy on a more ad hoc basis, which is possible now with the aid of social media.

Yet another Labour ought to do better story from the Guardian.

Come on, start reporting the real story - the Tories had a melt down on Thursday night, and dig out why. The only real thing I agreed with in the article is that in the South east there is a lot of nimbyism going on.

Who is having the other baby?
BTW the current Royal threads are a good laugh, featuring some interesting history and a Sex Chair.

{Farage does well in all his incarnations because essentially the focus is on one thing}

I think a significant problem is that the UK NEEDS to have a clear referendum where either revoking is one option or leaving is the other.
The fact that the process of leaving will take at least a year and will cause significant cost to the UK (for the reasons we have discussed here so often).
Tying it up with elections with other issues dilutes the message and will not get a decisive 'result'.
The fact that the WA WILL be signed if the UK leaves, under any circumstances needs hammering home. Of course this would be far too sensible so won't happen, as voting for things is not democratic (?).

borntobequiet
Someone called Keira?, I wasn't really paying attention as it is almost as non newsworthy as the fact you get wet if you go out in the rain.

As expected, the Conservatives lost Waverley. They also lost Guildford, Mole Valley and, I think,
Tandridge.

Waverley is now NOC. It’s worth noting that, in several wards, the candidate:seat ratio ensured that at least one would go to a Conservative. In two wards, a Conservative was unopposed. The other parties couldn’t afford to field a candidate for every ward and so had to target them. I wonder if those seats would have been so secure had an alternative been available.

A lot of votes went to a local residents party. I’m guessing that the previously Conservative council’s enthusiasm for concreting over their pretty market town with ill-considered housing developments is responsible for that.

I’m not sure how far this applies to other areas, but in Surrey there has been fury at the desire to build ever more housing in totally unsuitable areas - Green belt land has even been reclassified in order to do so.
It’s easy to dismiss this as NIMBYism, but I think it has more to do with the incompetence and corruption of the council in allowing housing to be built with no supporting infrastructure: no schools, no doctors, no facilities, poor roads.

I think it was this that UKIP managed to tap into a few years ago, before they were revealed to be racist thugs. Now people in this area are turning to Green and environmental parties. Perhaps something to bear in mind for the EU elections.

{I’m not sure how far this applies to other areas, but in Surrey there has been fury at the desire to build ever more housing in totally unsuitable areas - Green belt land has even been reclassified in order to do so. }

With a possible shakeup in 'industry' when the real effects of Brexit hit (significant job losses) and the need to rethink, it would be good to redevelop the north rather than pile ever more housing into the south east. There is an assumption that there will be minimal change due to Brexit, is this really going to be the case?
There are many brownfield site opportunities in other parts of the UK and to develop them and reinstate 'industry' would be better for the UK as a whole.

I'm very dubious about polling. Very hard for pollsters to make sure that their samples are representative.

I agree with this. The samples are so tiny in comparison to the population eligible to vote that I simply cannot see how they can be representative.

Haven't there been polls that the intention to vote is higher amongst Remain voters than Leave voters?

So even if the turquoise (or is it pale blue?) party is highest in the polls, what matters is whether those protest votes can actually be bothered listening to their over rated leader and making the effort to go out and vote.

(I'm trying not to give either the party or its over exposed leader name checks )