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Nigel Farage: You know the saying – everything before the ‘but’ is meaningless.
Nigel Farage has announced that the Brexit Party is allying itself with the Conservatives in a bid to ensure the Labour Party cannot form a government.
His party will not challenge the Conservatives in the 317 constituencies where the Tories won seats in the 2017 election.
Mr Farage said this was to prevent a second referendum taking place – signalling that he fears the British public has changed its collective mind and would vote to remain in the EU after all, given the chance.
This is obviously an attempt to attack democracy. Why should voters not have a chance to change their minds – or confirm the 2016 decision?
And many will suggest that this puts more pressure on Labour – but this is ridiculous.
Labour’s challenge remains the same – to persuade the public that its policies are better for the UK than those of the Conservatives.
And there can be no argument against this.
On Brexit alone, the Tories have had more than three and a half years to “get Brexit done”, as their slogan states – and they have completely messed it up.
Their leader, Boris Johnson, is implicated in a series of scandals – over racism, Russian interference in UK democracy, support for Jennifer Arcuri, and probably other things that This Writer can’t remember off the top of my head. He is a national embarrassment.
Their economic policies will plunge the UK back into economic crisis because they haven’t done their sums properly.
Their health policies have put huge amounts of care into the hands of private companies, meaning people have to pay for many treatments now – and their availability has become a postcode lottery. In the future, we can all look forward to the possibility of bankruptcy if we need serious procedures under the American-style system the Conservatives are trying to bring in by stealth.
And their benefit system has plunged millions into poverty and despair, with thousands upon thousands of deaths related to their cuts.
And the Brexit Party has indicated its support for these wreckers.
This is not a boost for the Conservatives. It is an argument to vote against them.
And it is a huge encouragement for people to vote Labour instead.
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What a pleasure to have something good to say about one of the by-election leaflets pouring through my letterbox!
It comes from Labour candidate Tom Davies; it’s down-to-Earth, makes no promises it can’t keep, and it addresses issues that are affecting us all – now.
He rejects ‘no deal’ Brexit and backs a final say referendum, in which he will be campaigning in support of remaining in the EU.
He supports Welsh Labour’s commitment to achieve a carbon-neutral public sector by 2030, and a shift away from fossil fuels across Wales – to combat the climate crisis.
He supports the Labour Assembly Government’s policies to provide 100,000 all-age apprenticeships, 20,000 more affordable homes and the best childcare for working parents in the whole of the UK.
And he says a Labour government in Westminster would end austerity, invest in public services, introduce a Real Living Wage (in other words it would be enough to ensure no working person would have to claim benefits), and a cap on energy prices. He doesn’t say he would bring this in immediately, because we don’t have a Labour government now – but adding him to Labour’s ranks would make it more likely in the future.
Compare this with the leaflet from UKIP’s Liz Phillips. If elected, she would be that party’s sole MP in Westminster, yet she claims she would:
End the TV licence
Control immigration
Make Brexit happen
Save the countryside and
Scrap the Welsh Assembly
That’s quite a tall order for 1/650th of the MPs in Parliament. How’s she going to get everyone else to go along with that wish-list?
Oh, and she’d oppose windfarms, too. Apparently she doesn’t feel quite as sure she’ll get support on that one.
Most risible of all is the letter from Nigel Farage of the Brexit Party.
If his candidate – Des Parkinson – is elected, he would be the Brexit Party’s sole MP in Westminster – so he’s in the same position as Ms Phillips.
The letter states that if elected, this solitary MP would “refuse to pay the £39 billion ransom” – Mr Farage’s word. My understanding is that this is money the UK committed to pay into the EU before the 2016 referendum – “… scrap the multi-billion pound HS2 vanity project. And… cut the bloated, wasteful Foreign Aid budget”. How, exactly, does he intend to get at least 326 other MPs on board for that? This letter doesn’t say.
“Then we’ll take £200 billion and invest it in transport and digital infrastructure projects around Britain… That’s more than twice as much as they spent rebuilding post-war Europe.” And once inflation is taken into account, how much is it then? And there’s still no information on how Mr Parkinson intends to sway all of Parliament to his massive Brexiteering will.
“It will be areas such as Wales that will reap the benefits.” This is the bribe. Mr Farage wants you to think his party would get money spent here – and directly after the election on Thursday. Impossible.
The rest of the letter is an attack – not on the so-called “bookies’ favourite”, Jane Dodds of the Liberal Democrats, or even on former incumbent Chris Davies of the Conservatives – but on the Labour Party which is currently considered to be behind in public opinion (despite the clear worthiness of Tom Davies’ position and policies).
How bizarre. Does Mr Farage think stealing Labour’s votes will leap-frog his candidate beyond Mr Davies or Ms Dodds?
Well… it’s possible, I suppose.
Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds has built her campaign on stealing votes from other parties. Her local policy platform is non-existent – she might as well have come out and said, “I won’t do a single damned thing for the people of Brecon and Radnorshire.” But she thinks she can win tactical votes from Labour supporters by claiming to be the only candidate who can beat Chris Davies, and from Remain supporters by claiming to represent the only party that supports staying in the European Union.
Mr Davies has been relatively quiet – unless his leafletters have simply been avoiding Vox Political Towers. His attitude is that he belongs to the party that is currently in government, so if you want Brexit, you should vote for him, despite the fact that he has been convicted of falsifying his Parliamentary expenses. He seems to be relying on the rump of 7,000+ voters who’ll put their tick in the Tory box, no matter what.
Mr Parkinson may take some of the right-wing vote from Mr Davies, and is certainly likely to take pro-Brexit voters away from the Tory. He may also take pro-Brexit voters away from Ms Dodds. But Ms Phillips is likely to do the same – and who knows what harm UKIP and the Brexit Party will do each other?
And then there’s Tom Davies. He has made it clear that he supports remaining in the EU, and is in a party that has far more chance of ensuring that happens – if another vote takes place – than the Liberal Democrats will ever have. A remain-supporting vote for Jane Dodds is a useless protest, nothing more. But will his offer lure Remain supporters away from her? Or has she fooled too many Labour supporters into wasting their vote on her? Remember: her canvassers have been telling voters that Labour doesn’t even have a candidate in this by-election – a flat-out lie.
So these are the choices for voters in Brecon and Radnorshire on Thursday (August 1):
Two candidates who’ll be able to do nothing if elected; a convict; a liar; and Labour.
I’ll be voting Labour – because democracy is about choosing the right representative, not about trying to work out who’s most likely to beat whoever you think is the bad guy.
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“Cheers ears, Brexiteers”: Labour’s Lisa Forbes gives her winning speech after the Peterborough by-election, having won a greater majority than former MP Fiona Onasanya.
How nice of the Brexit Party to give Labour’s Lisa Forbes a leg-up into the Parliamentary seat for Peterborough, after yesterday’s by-election.
The constituency is a marginal. Labour’s Fiona Onasanya took it from the Conservative Stewart Jackson with a majority of just 607 in 2017. The incumbent had consistently taken more than 40 per cent of the vote since he was first elected in 2005 but the election that Theresa May called out of vanity produced extraordinary numbers for both her party and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, and this was one of the surprises of the night.
Such a small majority on a 67.5 per cent turnout should give Labour cause to fear the Tories taking back the seat in a by-election in which turnouts are lower.
But there was a fly in the Tory ointment – the Brexit Party.
Nigel Farage’s organisation took 29 seats in the European Parliament election last month, creating a huge stir in the right-wing media (including the BBC) that this was a major new force in politics.
Polls suggested that the populist, single-issue (has it published its EU election manifesto yet?) party would gain its first MP in Peterborough.
That hasn’t happened but the 28.9 per cent of yesterday’s vote that it took hammered the Conservatives down to just 21.4 per cent.
That’s on a reduced turnout of 48.3 per cent.
Labour’s vote was hit too – Ms Forbes’s 31 per cent of the vote is a drop of 17 per cent on the 2017 election. But her majority is 683 – more than Ms Onasanya’s.
It seems clear that the Brexit Party undermined the Tory vote and let Labour win. Thanks, Brexiteers!
Note also that the Tories ended up in third place, after coming fifth in the EU elections. Let’s hope they stay there or lower – for the sake of the UK.
Labour is back on top. Thanks, Brexiteers!
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Take heart, Britain! All is not as bad as the European election results make it seem!
Yes, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party won 28 of the UK’s 73 seats, indicating an alarming shift to the political hard-right. But that doesn’t mean a hard-right election win. The Brexit Party didn’t even get a majority in the UK.
Also, the simple fact is that anti-EU parties led by Nigel Farage don’t actually do anything in the European Parliament, other than fart around making speeches that annoy the serious politicians. They certainly don’t take part in any democratic votes because it is a pillar of their beliefs that the EU cannot be a democratic organisation.
People who voted for the Brexit Party won’t make a difference in the EU because the Brexit Party won’t turn up.
In fact, the only reason the Brexit Party even campaigned was so Mr Farage could deliver an ultimatum on Brexit negotiations: He wants a place at the table so he can push for a “no deal” Brexit.
No deal means no NHS (he’d sell it to the Americans), no human or workers’ rights, chlorinated chicken for dinner and a massive increase in the cost of groceries and other goods. He would pauperise everybody who voted for him.
Best thing to do would be to give him the place he wants at the table – and then ignore him in the national interest.
Yes, the Liberal Democrats enjoyed a surge of support as UK citizens who want to remain in the European Union protest-voted for them.
How they expect to push their promise that a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for remaining in the EU, when the European Parliament won’t be voting on that subject, is a mystery.
But those votes won’t be wasted. They’ll be used to promote right-wing Liberal Democrat policies – the same kind of policies they supported when in Coalition with the Conservatives, here in the UK, between 2010 and 2015.
Socialist remainers who voted Liberal Democrat should monitor the result very carefully – and probably with dismay.
But there was also a surge of support – across the EU – for Green parties and policies that address the growing climate change and environmental crises caused by a human race whose policies have been controlled by people like the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats for far too long.
The UK’s Green Party now has seven MEPs – an increase of four – who will help boost the total number of Greens in the European Parliament to a projected 71. This could give the Greens the balance of power in the European Parliament.
Any parliamentary group that wanted Green support would have to deliver on three key principles: climate action, civil liberties and social justice.
The party will exert maximum pressure on climate policy, but will also push for more social justice when it comes to who winds up footing the bill for the green transition.
And Labour will learn the lesson of its losses. The party as a whole will continue to express dismay at the polarisation of politics around a Leave/Remain conflict but will say there is no political solution coming from Westminster or Brussels so the question must go back to the people – directly.
That means either a general election or another referendum – the “people’s vote” that so many MPs, of many parties, have been demanding.
Labour has always said it will abide by the results of plebiscites on our membership of the European Union, and while a “people’s vote” referendum has been framed as a way of establishing support for remaining in the Union, the European election result (although not representative of the entire electorate as only a little more than one-third of the UK electorate took part) suggests otherwise.
It would be a way of silencing this divisive debate, once and for all.
So in the end, Labour’s policy may prove to be the winner.
Wise words from Dennis Skinner in the image above.
A vote for the Brexit Party is a vote for the complete privatisation of the National Health Service. That’s what Nigel Farage wants – and it’s only one of the things on his list.
But you won’t see that list until after you’ve voted today (May 23) – because if you did, you wouldn’t even consider voting for the Brexit Party.
But don’t take my word for it. Pay attention to Mr Skinner – or to the luminaries quoted below.
Don't dick around tomorrow. Seriously. Fash are on the streets. Vote Labour.
RD Hale added – and this is very important, I think: “If we mess up now, we’ll have to look our kids in the eyes & explain the decimation of everything we hold dear is looming. What we faced under Thatcher will be nothing. It’s a Tory’s wet dream to sell our NHS to Trump & Farage could provide a path. Fascists can win elections.”
Don’t give Nigel Farage the satisfaction of topping the poll and purporting to speak for Britain tomorrow. The only way to do so is to #voteLabourhttps://t.co/Ed7GpaNOpO
What are you going to do? A good start would be to think very carefully before doing anything at all.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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