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.

@singing💐
Hope you are having a better night tonight. Caring for someone like you do is very hard work.

On the Brexit paranoia: we are a democracy etc but I do hear you. Whilst going through the naturalisation process I caught myself thinking the same as you.

Remain 61%
Repeat:
61%

I read this wrong last night. I thought, "I've not heard of the Repeat party." Doh!

Going by the Sunday Express headline - so most Labour party or Tory party members won't be pleased, nor will the ERG, and the Remainers from those groups won't be pleased either. Someone needs to write a book on 'How to wreck a political party.'

re Remain in opinion poll vs local election results:

• Over 70% of Labour voters are Remain, but Labour only dropped about 7%

• Counting Labour votes as Leave is simply wrong

• The Remain % depends on what type of Leave option is offered.
  In polls, most Leavers prefer No Deal - wrongly presented as a "clean break" - so Remain is sometimes neck and neck with No Deal.

In the locals, dropping from 35% to 28% is a significant chunk of Labour voters, but it is still a minority of Labour voters who support Remain

i.e. party loyalty, or wanting to keep out the Tories, mostly won out

Singing Has your DH been referred for a falls assessment ? I imagine he probably has, but just a thought. Does he have a specialist nurse who you could discuss the insomnia with ? perhaps a change of when medications are taken might help. If no specialist nurse then a pharmacist might be able to give you some advice. I can only imagine how hard full-time caring is, without the additional strain of lack of sleep.

I wonder how long it is going to take before the HoC understand that the WA has to be signed?
Whatever May/Corbyn/Larry the cat (the brains of the outfit) come up with, everything starts AFTER the WA is signed.
And as for that link about the Farage rally, they makes 2 planks of wood look intelligent.

Counting Labour votes as Leave is simply wrong

This only happens because the politicians told us that a Labour vote = a Brexit vote. Until we were told that 80% of the electorate voted for a Brexit party (and therefore in their increasingly twisted logic voted FOR Brexit to happen), that wasn't an assumption / label. But if they're (the politicians) going to do that, then we have to see it the way they do (even if the person voting doesn't mean it that way, which the chance is they don't).

In the EP elections, polls suggest that many Tory Brexiters prioritise this issue over party
and in fact want specifically to punish their party for not delivering Brexit

So the CON vote is predicted v low and the BREX party vote high

So far, the LAB vote for EP is holding up quite well
and also the Remain vote is split in England among 3 parties, 4 in Wales

In the town elections here, at least one Green who didn't canvass got third place pushing the Tories into 4th & 5th place - which before now has been unheard of!

am yet to be convinced that Leave voting Tories voted for Remain parties to give May a kicking! I can well believe that Remain voting Tories gave them their votes - this was a Remain area, and I doubt if many people have changed their minds.

am yet to be convinced that Leave voting Tories voted for Remain parties to give May a kicking!

They'd have to be pretty bloody daft to do this! 🤔🤔🤔

I'm pretty sure UKIP's vote share would've been far larger if there was a protest, get on with Brexit, vote.

Choosing not to vote for Labour is one thing.

Being puzzled by 67% Leave in the EP polls because you counted Labour as Leave is quite different

To understand the polls, it is important to realise that most Labour voters - but possibly not most Tories - are still voting for a party

Being puzzled by 67% Leave in the EP polls because you counted Labour as Leave is quite different

To understand the polls, it is important to realise that most Labour voters - but possibly not most Tories - are still voting for a party

I'm assuming you're aiming this at me.

We and the rest of the electorate have to interpret the results in the same way that the politicians do, as that's the message that we've been told the Labour vote gives.

We're told that the majority of Labour voters actually support remain. As we've seen on here, the politicians' message about a vote for Labour = a vote for Brexit, HAS turned people away from the party (Twitter is full of it too), so I'd expect the politically-engaged / aware Labour voters to choose another party to vote for. Hence why I am a touch surprised their vote is holding up.

As far as I'm concerned, my position is legitimate and not to be scoffed at.

Until we were told that 80% of the electorate voted for a Brexit party (and therefore in their increasingly twisted logic voted FOR Brexit to happen), that wasn't an assumption / label.

Forgetting to tell us the next bit - that neither party won, so the public weren't sufficiently convinced by either party's vision of Brexit to give them a mandate. This needs to be said over and over again, every time the 80% mantra (which it's now become) is trotted out.

I suspect that in parts of the country, the Tory party thrashing and Labour failure, is to do with not delivering Brexit. In those southern places which went Lib Dem or elected Greens I am convinced that it is most certainly not.

Did I ask this before? I wonder where Boris Johnson's Oxfordshire house is. The Henley part of his District elected three Henley Residents Group people - who I would suspect were disaffected Tories in reality. Now his being represented by them and not a Tory would be almost as satsifying as Rees-Mogg having a LibDem District Councillor.

Voters who prioritise Leave seem to have rejected UKIP - possibly because of Farage slating them, as well as the internal squabbles

So since there was no Brexit party, they stayed home or voted for other parties, including some of the far right / Indie ones

The EP elections look to be quite different in voting intentions, but let's see how well the pollsters can predict BREX.

However, be prepared for Leavers to treat this as another referendum

• in which BREX will have one clear policy & party, so former non-voters are motivated to come out,

whereas Remain will be divided again and most Remainers will stick with Labour

I fear Remain will again mess up an actual vote for Europe

The EP election results, if BREX gets the largest number of seats, could seriously damage the chance of getting a PV.
It woud be an excellent excuse for Corbyn to kill it

We're told that the majority of Labour voters actually support remain.

I think we are told a lot of Labour Members support Remain, which isn't the same. A lot of Labour voters may well not do, and won't like a London-centric Labour party, but would have to think very hard and long before they voted Tory. I suspect that this is what a lot of the Independent votes are about in places like Bolsover.

We really need a lot more analysis about the Independents - locally they are usually people who have fallen out with their existing party.

I'm not scoffing at anyone

However, pp were querying how one poll could hve 61% Remain, while the Remain parties total so much less in party polls

Accepting that most Remainers voted Labour in the elections - and will probably do so in the EP elections - is essential in understanding the polls

whereas Remain will be divided again and most Remainers will stick with Labour

Or in places like Winchester, and Vale of White Horse, and parts of the South West will stick with their very capable LibDem/Green MEPs and hope for more. (Fingers crossed.)

I suppose, the problem that we have / the situation we're in is that there are huge swathes of people who do simply vote for a party, regardless of the message they're being told it gives. And a good proportion of those simply won't care about that supposed message.

The biggest question / unknown we have about the EP elections is how many Brexit-voters are genuinely so disillusioned with the political classes for NOT delivering - a no deal - Brexit, that their intention to vote BREX is actually meaningless as they've decided to not bother voting again because 'democracy is dead' (something the gammons love to spout). That's where polls may be wrong, when those people just don't bother going to vote, particularly if it's not convenient to do so.

Of course, if it is seen as a second - pseudo- referendum, then it becomes more interesting as to the engagement of the electorate as a whole.

It seems that Brexiters are more likely to vote for Brexit and ignore any other issues, or scandal about their leaders & candidates
They are single issue voters

They also aren't worried if their vote lets in the Tories - which is what keeps many Labour Remainers voting for party

Accepting that most Remainers voted Labour in the elections - and will probably do so in the EP elections - is essential in understanding the polls

Yes, that was me. And I do think that this is strange and does show that some people will vote without thinking about the message their vote is giving to the politicians.

Though, given that they've spun votes against them as 'get on with it' votes, it appears we're damned if we do and damned if we don't right now, which is terrifying in a way.

Pollsters could be hopeless at predicting the BREX vote,

if they can't get representative samples, or they can't accurately weight for likelihood to vote

• both essential for acurate polling

Unfortunately, the EP elections will be the first test of this, which is nerve-wracking

They also aren't worried if their vote lets in the Tories - which is what keeps many Labour Remainers voting for party

Yes, there is that consideration too, which I hadn't properly considered, truth be told.

What percent of the population is even considering the same things we are regarding the EP vote showing a remain message? It's possibly very small.

From the Lewis Goodall thread posted by Loonvan I went off on a bit of a tangent and looked up Farridge at Companies House (one of the Twitter replies mentioned that the Big Blue Arrow party is a registered limited company and connects this to it not having members, just supporters / donors that send money).

He has a personal services company, Thorn In The Side Ltd, that he uses as a vehicle to avoid paying personal tax on his media earnings. The accounts lodged in Feb 2019 show that in the year ending May 2018 there was £420k sat in company, up from £94k the year before and £62k the year before that.

Someone is making a lot of money from Brexit eh?

And interestingly, both Catherine Blaiklock, having resigned as leader of the Big Blue Arrow party, and Michael McGough, having been removed from his position as treasurer, are still shown as active directors.

Unfortunately, the EP elections will be the first test of this, which is nerve-wracking

It's nerve-wracking because this is about the people we're electing to represent us at the table of the 'club' we wish to remain at, and of course it reflects badly on those of us who aren't racist idiots. I do hope that the EU27 is intelligent enough to look at vote percentages (which I'm sure they are; they don't share the pig headedness of our 'leaders') to see the share of the remain vote, which will be split.

But, I'm also glad on the other hand that we aren't having a GE, as that would mean that TM has gone and we have a new - possibly ERG - leader and the country will be even more fucked than it already is under TM's astounding level of incompetence.

It's a frankly shit time to be living through. I hate the feeling of being powerless and totally out of control.

Does anyone remember the last EU election sufficiently? Farage did get his UKIP vote out that time, but I for one, didn't take much notice - I was just disappointed to see the LibDems getting a pasting for being in the Coalition. Again this looks like something of a proxy vote to send messages to the main parties.

But if Farage/Brexit party do well, it will be spun as most people wanting to get on with Brexit. And even if they lose, it will be spun as most people wanting to get on with Brexit.