I’m normally an avid consumer of election night coverage. I was even still awake when Michael Portillo lost his seat in the 1997 General Election. However I gave a bit of a miss to last night’s results in the Euro Parliament elections as I thought that the bookies and pollsters could well be correct as to the result.
I also sat out most of the coverage, apart from a short section of Rebel Media’s coverage on Tommy Robinson’s campaign. This was because I found little to enthuse me about a Euro election contest that we should not have been having. We were only voting because of the Government’s inability to put into action the policy that that the people voted for, that of leaving the European Union. Although I voted in this contest, because I consider it a civic duty to do so, that sense of duty does not extend to watching people being elected to a parliament with no real parliamentary powers as many of those in parliamentary democracies would understand them.
As expected, the Brexit Party, set up by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to pressure the government to follow through with the people’s choice to leave the EU, did extremely well indeed. Both the bookies and the pollsters predicted that they would do well and they did. At the time of writing (10:15am) the Brexit Party has 28 MEPs which is thirteen more than the next best party, the Liberal Democrats, managed to get. This distribution of the top two parties does show that the Lib Dems have decided to be the party of choice for Remainers, although it does also indicate that pro-Leave sentiment is still leading by a considerable margin. This division, and the result itself was in my view influenced by the usual woeful success of the ‘Apathy Party’. Approximately 36% of eligible Britons bothered to vote, which is pretty shameful really. But, many may have taken the view that they would stay away from the polls in anger at the mess that Westminster has made of Brexit.
It was a justifiably bad night for both the Tories and Labour. Their perfidy, sleaziness and distrust of the people they purport to represent, really did for them. The Labour party lost eight seats and the Tories 15. It was also a bad night for some of the challenger parties and independents. The CUK party that had set itself up as a pro-EU voice, got zero MEPs and roughly 3.4% which shows that some Remainers decided that Chuka’s Cuckers were worth a punt with their vote. It was also a bad night for UKIP with the Kippers losing all their seats. It appears that the voters who would previously have chosen UKIP as their vehicle to express discontent at the actions of the Franco-German Empire seated in Brussels, have instead chosen the Brexit Party to do this. I’m not surprised at all about this, Nigel Farage has a strong track record of pushing the cause of British independence to the fore and that without a doubt the Farage Factor helped the Brexit Party. The diversity of political adherence among Brexit Party candidates also helped to publicise the party which has gathered up people from Left, Right and Centrist positions on social and political issues.
Sargon of Akkad aka Carl Benjamin was also beaten to the seats for the South West of England by the Brexit Party. Despite Sargon not getting a seat, his candidacy has done British politics a great service. His series of public debates with both supporters and opponents has been extremely popular online. Sargon’s use of the old fashioned ‘Soapbox’ technique of turning up somewhere and engaging in proper debate with the public was brilliant. Sargon’s campaigning tactic brought the concept of the free and open exchange of ideas up against sometimes violent opposition from Leftists who favour censorship and control over freedom. He gave his opponents sufficient rope with which to hang themselves and they did. Whilst those who were fans of Sargon or undecided about him debated with some skill and knowledge, those who were adamantly opposed to him from the Left often just screeched ‘snarl’ words and rote-learned slogans at him. If nothing else Sargon has shown the complete moral and political emptiness of just shouting ‘racist’ or ‘misogynist’ at someone you disagree with.
Tommy Robinson had a disappointing night and wasn’t elected but I believe that he may have got some of the best figures in these election types for an independent. This is a good base on which to build on. At least 30 odd thousand people chose to support him at the ballot box which although not enough to get the seats in the North West, which were dominated by the Brexit Party, still represents a significant minority of support. It was a hard Euro constituency to fight. The North West is an area where sadly people vote Labour for generation after generation even when Labour’s policies hurt them. I believe that it is this generational voting tendency that meant that despite the baleful presence of Corbyn as leader, Labour still managed to get two seats. The Brexit Party got three of the eight seats in the North West with the remainder going to parties like Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens.
The contest in which Tommy Robinson stood was marred by violence, in one case Muslim violence aided and abetted by the Police, and allegations from Tommy’s camp that there had not been a level playing field to fight on. In a manner of speaking Tommy’s team are correct. The social media platforms have become the new ‘town square’ and to remove one of the candidates from this square whilst allowing others to put their case across does smack of an inbuilt bias that some candidates may face. Personally, although I’m very much in favour of property rights, there is a case for treating the big social media platforms as players in the electoral process and policing them accordingly. I’d like to see, if possible, an amendment to electoral law that compelled social media platforms to give access to any candidate that was registered to stand in a British election. Yes of course this would give a voice to some truly awful people from Stalinists and various flavours of Trot to those who believe that the Earth is flat or that Adolf was ‘a really nice bloke who didn’t drink and was kind to animals’. Having a few nutters on social media to be debated with and their ideas evaluated would make the electoral playing field more level.
To conclude: The big winners were the party that was predicted to win, which was the Brexit Party. They have got the seats in Strasbourg’s toy-town parliament which to my mind is less important than the fact that they have shown that there is a strong appetite still for a Brexit.
Time will tell whether the Brexit Party lives up to expectations and causes the government to govern looking over their shoulders at the threat which the Brexit Party could end up being to them. It will also be interesting to see if the Brexit Party can keep up the momentum and put in a good performance in the forthcoming Peterborough by-election. A high profile by election win for the Brexit Party giving them an MP at Westminster would also show that this party has got staying power. The results show that British politics is going to get quite interesting over the next couple of years or so. Also clear from the results is that Brexiteers need to look at a new enemy of Brexit. Previously the attacks have come on Brexiteers from either the far Left or the other Westminster Remain parties but in the future that challenges will be coming from the Lib Dems who are now the avowed party of Remain. The Lib Dems could be slippery and dangerous at low community politics level and they should be challenged at this level or they will do a lot of damage to the Brexit cause.
The run up to October 31st when we leave the EU will be frantic and manic politically. When this settles down it looks as if Britain may have a radically different type of national politics a politics where the previous ‘big beast’ parties are overshadowed by new insurgent political vehicles.
(Preface: I voted Brexit Party and encouraged others in my social circles to do the same.)
Why is it a ‘civic duty’ to perform an activity that was never asked for? Why is it ‘shameful’ to withhold electoral blessing to an office that was imposed?
Why should obsessing over politics be ‘the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending’ of human existence?
Not found stats on HMF participation in voting but in America, 64% of ‘Active Duty Military’ abstained in 2016; meanwhile, here is someone who did her ‘civic duty’ by voting (‘“Sequester” what? I dunno, I jus’ voted fo’ him cuz he black.’). Who is contributing more to Society? The 64% of US service personnel not voting or ‘Sequester what?’-woman?
And why do 64% not vote? Many reasons, undoubtedly—simply having lives and other priorities. But for some, once a vote has been so devalued that it doesn’t matter if a person puts on his country’s uniform or waves the flag of the enemy, calls his fellow countrymen in uniform ‘murderers’ and burns effigies of them, they might decide the entire political process is a farce and not worth participating in.
And when the only qualification for the franchise is breathing, and it matters not a jot whether someone served or refused, whether one is a citizen or not or law-abiding or lawbreaking, whether one is contributing to or leeching from the system, many will decide: ‘Sod this for a game of footie’.
A normal person wants to work, raise a family, have a laugh along the way, defend family and community when necessary but enjoy one’s dotage preferably. A normal person wants to be left alone. To quote the venerable Chesterton:
(‘A Nightmare of Nonsense’, The Illustrated London News, 25 Mar 1911)
Democracy (its modern incarnation at least) is a con—as much of a con as communism. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ says Communism, ‘We’re all about the workers,’ as Party apparatchiks grasp wealth and privilege for themselves. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ says Democracy, ‘You all get a say in government—you get a vote, you get a vote, everybody gets a vote!’—but vote the way we want, otherwise GTF.
It’s just another means for the untalented and corrupt to obtain unmerited political power and milk the system for their own benefit. The Political Class creates one taxpayer-funded sinecure after another—but ‘everything is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds’ because we can choose between different tax-sponging parasites; but we can’t ever vote to simply get rid of the tax-sponging parasites altogether by removing the unasked for office. People have written about the ‘ratchet effect’ of communism but what about the ‘ratchet-effect’ of government? Ever-expanding, never retreating.