Yesterday’s by-election in the seat of Brecon and Radnorshire, was in my opinion another example of Theresa May’s poisonous legacy. A tired and badly led Conservative party virtually gave away this seat to the Liberal Democrats by putting up as a candidate a man who had previously been convicted of expenses fraud. The Tories candidate, the former MP Chris Davies had been forced into the election by a recall petition following his conviction. However rather than put up a clean hands candidate the Tories continued to support Mr Davies. Why they did this I do not know? Maybe the candidate was locally popular or the local party thought that the conviction was for a very minor offence or some similar reason? Whatever the reason for this decision by the Tories, the result is that the Liberal Democrats have taken the seat.
I expected this to happen. I expected it not just because of the Tory Party’s stupidity in selecting Mr Davies to fight the seat despite the taint against his name, but also because this is one of those seats that from at least 1974 has swung between the Tories and the Liberals/Lib Dems. Labour, as is usual for this seat, didn’t really get a look in and came fourth and nearly lost their deposit with 5.3% of the vote. The Brexit party got 10% and the Monster Raving Looney Party and UKIP trailed on 1% and 0.8% respectively.
Mr Davies was selected as Tory Party candidate during the reign of party leader Theresa May and putting him up as candidate was the action of a party that had already conceded this seat before the election had even been run. It may well have been the case that the conviction of Mr Davies may have been shaky in the eyes of the local party and he may have had support among party members, but to have him as a candidate virtually guaranteed a loss. The local party should have selected someone else to fight this seat no matter what their personal views of Mr Davies, his conviction or his conduct.
Unfortunately it’s not just the Tory party who are to blame for this defeat and the election of another odious pro-EU Lib Dem to the House of Commons. Blame should also be levelled at the Brexit Party who took ten percent of the votes and probably helped to deny the Tories the seat. Pro-independence protest votes went to the Brexit Party, which had zero chance of winning this seat, and not to the Tories. This is one of those seats where, for the greater political and national good, I believe that the Brexit Party should have stood down in order that their votes go to the Tories. It may have been better, at least on this occasion, for pro-Brexit voters to hold their noses and vote Tory, despite the concerns about their candidate.
Although the change of representation of this seat is, as I said earlier, normal for this particular seat, this result could not come at a worse time for those fighting for Britain’s independence from the European Union. It hurts Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Parliamentary majority at a time when EU exit legislation needs to be got through the House of Commons and when Mr Johnson needs to stand tall and strong before the bullies of Brussels.
As could be expected the mainstream media has abandoned all pretence of being impartial and is almost celebrating this win. Sky News for example is trumpeting about how Boris Johnson’s majority is decimated and reporting about how the new Lib Dem MP Jane Dodds has said that she will ‘seek out Boris at Parliament and demand that no deal is taken off the table’. The tone of this article was a tad too gleeful in my opinion about the matter of this Tory loss.
Without a doubt this result should worry Brexiteers. The election of a Brussels bum-licker like Jane Dodds is going to cause problems for Mr Johnson but hopefully, being the sharp political operator that he is, he has already factored in this almost inevitable loss of the Brecon and Radnorshire seat. This was after all a loss that could readily be seen coming. The legacy of Theresa May, the selection of an iffy candidate, the Brexit Party leeching away Tory votes and, from what my sources tell me, a massive influx of Lib Dem canvassers and party workers from places as far away as Herefordshire and Worcestershire, all contributed to this loss. Mr Johnson will now have to work harder than he should have done to get Brexit through and not have the public’s Referendum decision sabotaged by the increasingly illiberal and anti-democratic Liberal Democrat party.
Wrt the Brexit party allowing the Lib-Dems to win by standing—I’d say it was a useful ‘shot across the bows’, a warning to Boris that he must deliver Brexit, and a genuine Brexit, lest the Conservatives face an electoral bloodbath. The threat is not so much Farage’s Brexit Party sweeping to power (although as long as Brexit remains the big issue, they just might), more that they’ll syphon enough votes from the Conservatives to relegate them to second place in seat after seat. This was the UKIP factor costing the Conservatives seats that led to Cameron promising the EU referendum.
Should enough EU rebels prevent Boris from implementing Brexit to cause him to call an early GE to get numbers up, he’ll have to have an electoral pact with Farage to convince voters he’s serious(*) about Brexit. Otherwise a GE will be a bloodbath, likely ending the Conservative Party.
(* Like many, I doubt he’s serious about anything except himself (like most MPs)—but as long as he believes the path to being re-elected and cementing his place in history is to deliver Brexit, it matters not if he is more cynical than sincere.)
I agree although it is a troubling result for Mr Johnson, it does indeed show that the Brexit party has enough support to be a force that could be used to keep Mr Johnson honest as regards Brexit.