British election live

Live commentary on counting for the British general election.

10:05am Wednesday December 18: A post-election YouGov poll of over 40,000 respondents has the startling finding that low-income people voted Tory by greater margins than high-income people.  The Tories won the middle class (ABC1) by 43-33 and the working class (C2DE) by 48-33 (44-40 and 44-42 respectively in 2017).  The Tories won those with the lowest educational attainment by 58-25 (55-33 in 2017).  Labour won those with the highest educational attainment 43-29 (49-32 in 2017).

3:25pm Saturday: Conversation article up.  I believe a major cause for the bad Labour loss was its Brexit policy, but another important difference from 2017 was real wage growth: -0.5% before the 2017 election vs +1.7% in the latest available data.  People are only willing to vote for left-wing policies if they are not doing well financially.  There’s also US politics stuff in that article.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is an honorary associate at The University of Melbourne. His work on electoral matters for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

7:50am Saturday: The Conservatives HELD St Ives overnight with an increased majority over the Lib Dems.  Final seat numbers are 365 Tories (up 47), 203 Labour (down 59), 48 SNP (up 13) and 11 Lib Dems (down one).  I will have a write-up for The Conversation later today.

7:10pm Most polls had the Tory lead over Labour at nine to 12 points; the final result will be 11.5 points, so most polls were about right.  Survation, Ipsos, Opinium and Kantar had the Tory lead at either 11 or 12 points, and are the best pollsters.  The worst were ComRes (just a five point lead) and ICM (six points).

7:03pm How the Britain Elects Poll Tracker compares to the actual results excluding Northern Ireland.  William Bowe has said the two majors were too high in the polls, but most UK polls exclude Northern Ireland.

6:13pm: In Northern Ireland, the DUP won eight of the 18 seats (down two), Sinn Fein seven (no change), the Social Democratic Labour Party two and the Alliance Party one.  Vote shares were 30.6% DUP, 22.8% Sinn Fein, 16.8% Alliance and 14.9% SDLP.  So the Alliance got only one seat on 17% vote.

5:57pm: Final Scotland results: SNP 48 of 59 seats (up 13), Tories six (down seven), Lib Dems four (no change), Labour one (down six).  Vote shares: SNP 45.0% (up 8.1%), Tories 25.1% (down 3.5%), Labour 18.6% (down 8.5%) and Lib Dems 9.5% (up 2.8%).

4:52pm: With 13 seats to go, the Tories have 355 seats, Labour 202, the SNP 48 and the Lib Dems ten.

4:33pm: Another ex-Tory gets pummelled

4:24pm Labour has got to 200 seats with 37 left for the whole UK.

4:20pm: With all 40 Welsh seats declared, Labour won 22 (down six), the Tories 14 (up six) and Plaid Cymru four (no change).  Vote shares were 40.9% Labour (down 8.0%) and 36.9% Tories (up 2.5%).

4:16pm: With 41 seats still to be declared, the Tories have passed the majority mark (326 seats), and are now up to 335 seats.

4:11pm: Another not-great tactical voting, with the Tories HOLDING Finchley with 44%, the Lib Dems second with 32% and Labour 3rd with 24%.

3:36pm Tories GAIN Kensington from Labour by just 0.3% because the Lib Dems took 21%.  Additional note: Some polls in this seat put the Lib Dems ahead of Labour, so tactical voting plans were confused.

3:22pm: Ex-Tory Dominic Grieve LOSES his seat to the Tories.

3:12pm: In Leave seats, Labour lost votes directly to the Tories and Brexit party.  In Remain seats, the Lib Dems often split part of the vote, and anyway there aren’t enough Remain seats in the UK.

3:09pm With 424 of 650 seats declared, the Tories have 220 (up 32), Labour 146 (down 44), the SNP 35 (up 12) and the Lib Dems seven (no change).  The Tories have a 42.6% to 33.5% lead over Labour with 10.7% for the Lib Dems.  On a matched seat basis, Labour is down 8.3%.

2:54pm: Lib Dems miss out in Wimbledon; Labour had too many votes.

2:52pm Socialist Laura Pidcock LOSES her seat

2:50pm: Jo Swinson LOSES her seat to the SNP

2:47pm: Boris Johnson easily HOLDS his seat.

2:46pm: Really UGLY result for Labour in Bassetlaw

2:41pm: Labour loses Tony Blair’s old seat of Sedgefield.

2:35pm: Corbyn easily holds Islington N, but has announced he will resign as Labour leader.

2:32pm: Lib Dems GAIN a seat from SNP in Scotland

2:29pm: Overall, with 281 of 650 seats declared, the Tories have 140 seats (up 25), Labour 104 (down 31), the SNP 20 (up seven) and the Lib Dems five (down one).  Labour’s vote is down 8.1%, with the Tory vote up 1.8%.

2:20pm: In Wales, Labour has lost five seats to the Tories after 27 of 40 declared.  Labour’s vote is down 9.6% with the Tories up 3.6% and Brexit taking 6.6%.

2:16pm Scottish results so far are SNP all 17 seats declared, with the Tories and Labour losing three seats each.

2:06pm: Here’s one that could have gone to a non-Tory with preferential voting.

1:59pm: With 175 of 650 seats in, Labour has lost a net 19 seats, the Tories are up 15 and the SNP up four.

1:45pm: Labour HOLD Hartlepool after Tories and Brexit party split the Leave vote.  I think Labour is doing better than they would under preferential voting.

1:41pm: A narrow Lib Dem HOLD vs the Tories

1:36pm: Labour HOLDS Canterbury, the seat where the original Lib Dem withdrew, only to be replaced by another Lib Dem.

1:29pm: After 96 of 650 seats, the BBC has Labour down 8.8% in the same seats from 2017, but only 1.6% has gone to the Conservatives.  Labour has lost eight net seats, with the Conservatives up six.

12:55pm: An against the run of play result: Labour GAIN Putney from Conservative; that’s a London seat.

12:51pm Labour suffers the humiliation of losing its deposit in Bracknell.

12:46pm Gateshead illustrates how bad it would be for Labour if not for the Brexit party standing in most seats it currently holds.

12:43pm: On the BBC’s results page, Labour’s vote is down 11.4% after 20 of 650 seats.  The only good news for Labour is that only 2.7% of that drop has gone to the Conservatives, with 5.5% going to the Brexit party.

12:33pm: Conservatives GAIN Darlington and Workington from Labour.

12:26pm Labour’s big problem with the Leave vote: although Leave only won the Brexit referendum by 52-48, it carried 64% of seats in Great Britain (ie excluding Northern Ireland).  The Leave vote was far more efficiently distributed than the Remain vote, which clustered in the big cities.

This implies that an explicitly pro-Remain Labour leader would not have performed any better than Corbyn.  This election is the realignment around Leave/Remain that was expected in 2017, but which Corbyn thwarted with his pro-Brexit positioning.

12:12pm: Almost a 10% swing from Labour to Con in Nuneaton gives Con a far bigger majority.

12:08pm Tory vote down 6% in S Shields, with Labour down 16%, thanks to an independent and Brexit party candidate.

12:01pm

11:27am: Direct swing of 5% from Labour to Con gives Con a much bigger majority in N Swindon.

11:16am: Sedgefield was Tony Blair’s old seat, so would be a huge triumph for the Conservatives.

10:36am: Conservatives GAIN Blyth Valley from Labour after 15% crash in Labour’s vote.  Additional note: And preferential voting wouldn’t have helped Labour given 8% for the Brexit party.

10:30am First result in, Labour HOLD, but with a 7% swing against.

10:21am: Normally we’d have some results by now, but close contests in former Labour strongholds have slowed down the count in those seats.

10:08am: Vote shares according to The Exit Poll

9:39am: Nate Silver

9:30am: Antony Green

9:03am: The Exit Poll has a big win for the Conservatives

7:55am: As well as the UK, there is an electoral development in Israel.  A new election has been called for March 2, 2020, after no government could be formed after the September election.  It will be the third Israeli election within a year.  Early polling suggests the left-leaning Blue & White is ahead of the right-wing Likud, but do not have enough allies to form a government.

4am (AEDT). Adrian Beaumont will be taking care of business on the live commentary front, but this here is your editor reporting in the small hours to kick off proceedings. If you’re a Crikey subscriber, you can you enjoy my election eve account of the campaign horse race here. Here is one last update of my poll tracker, which tells the same story as before: the Conservatives had already devoured the Brexit Party before the campaign began, while Labour’s cannibalising of the Liberal Democrats has been a slower process that has persisted through to the end of the campaign. With the addition of seven last polls, the final scores are Conservative 42.9% (+0.2% compared with the last run, +0.5% on the 2017 result), Labour 33.7% (steady and -6.3%) and Liberal Democrats 11.9% (-0.4% and +4.5%).

For your convenience, here is a repeat of Adrian’s timeline of how things are likely to unfold, Australian time.

9am: Polls close and The Exit Poll is released (intentional capitalisation). In the last three elections, The Exit Poll has given seat results which greatly disagreed with pre-election polls and expectations. In all three cases, The Exit Poll was far closer to the mark than pre-election polls. Only seat counts are given, not vote shares.

11am: According to this article about the 2017 election, only three of 650 declarations are expected by this time.

1pm-3pm: These two hours should be the heaviest for declarations.  Initial results will be biased to Labour as the Conservative heartland regional seats take longer to gather their votes. The key is to watch the changes in vote share, and whether seats are being gained or lost.

6pm: Only a few seats will not be declared by this time. Very close seats can take longer to declare owing to recounts. If there’s snow on the roads, results will be delayed.

490 comments on “British election live”

Comments Page 3 of 10
1 2 3 4 10
  1. It was simply a matter of Leadership in both the Australian and UK elections.
    Both leaders were not popular and lots of people had doubts about them. And that made it easy to run against the person.
    Plus Corbyn went to the extent of going totally left wing and allowing the antisemitism issue to fester. that is why Labour got creamed in the UK.
    Here it was actually closer than is widely believed.

  2. From the guardian Blog:
    According to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, if Boris Johnson does win a majority as large as the exit poll predicts – and the Labour to Tory swing in the first seat to declare (see 11.33pm) suggests that he will – then he will fast-track the withdrawal agreement legislation through parliament, with MPs perhaps sitting on the Saturday before Christmas, and the House of Lords sitting between Christmas and New Year.

    Marr also says the Queen’s speech and the budget might come after Brexit happens on 31 January.

    Last month No 10 was saying the Queen’s speech would take place on Thursday 19 December.

  3. John Curtice issuing “health warning” about exit poll for Scotland as it’s based on only a few polling stations – it’s the part of the exit poll about which “frankly we are least confident”. SNP should make gains but he wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if its less than projected.

  4. The ABC’s chief elections analyst Antony Green has called the election for the Conservatives

    “I think you can call it now. These results match the exit poll. But in terms of seats it will be – there won’t be any more results. There will only be a small number of results in the first two to three hours.

    “The exit poll was clear, the first three results match the exit poll. You can just add a few more results in a while if they continue to match that trend then the Conservatives have won. There is absolutely nothing in the first results that does anything to throw doubts upon the exit poll.”

  5. Another scary thought: Most of the Tory moderates were dis-endorsed before this election, or chose to leave the party. This is going to be a very hard Tory government.

    Last winter (2018 / 2019) saw a sharp increase int he deaths of rough sleepers:
    Charities and MPs have said austerity and cuts to services are driving a worsening homelessness crisis, as figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that an estimated 726 homeless people died in England and Wales in 2018. This is a 22% rise from 2017 and the biggest increase since the data was first collected in 2013.
    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/01/homeless-deaths-in-2018-rise-at-highest-level-ons

  6. The G

    Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist who leads the team that produced the exit poll, told the BBC that the poll predicted that Blyth Valley would turn Conservative. He said:

    The exit poll forecast that the Conservatives would narrowly win Blyth Valley with a 15-point drop in the Labour vote, and we had a 15-point drop in the Labour vote and the Tories narrowly won Blyth Valley.

    He added that the 18-point drop for Labour in Sunderland South was “also anticipated”. He went on:

    Do not be surprised, particularly when we get further south and we get to much more pro-Remain constituencies that we do not see spectacular advances by the Conservatives.

    But in the north of England, in Leave areas, in working class seats, the Labour party does seem to be in serious trouble.

    Curtice said he thought the the broad picture provided by the exit poll “may be right”, but he said the figures for Scotland were “the bit about this poll about which we are, frankly, least confident” because there were few sampling points in Scotland.

  7. It was simply a matter of Leadership in both the Australian and UK elections.

    I chalk it up to weakness/fence-straddling in both instances. Shorten tried to straddle the fence on coal/climate, Corbyn tried to straddle the fence on Brexit. Neither was willing to pick a clear, coherent position and prosecute the argument for why their position is the right one. Faced with incompetent, dishonest, easily attackable opponents who offered up scandal after scandal, neither leader bothered bringing the fight. Instead they tried to run on tangential an irrelevant things.

    Corbyn tried to turn the Brexit election into a “save the NHS” campaign, ffs! How about “save the country from Brexit”? Too late, now.

  8. B.S. Fairman @ #101 Friday, December 13th, 2019 – 10:55 am

    It was simply a matter of Leadership in both the Australian and UK elections.
    Both leaders were not popular and lots of people had doubts about them. And that made it easy to run against the person.
    Plus Corbyn went to the extent of going totally left wing and allowing the antisemitism issue to fester. that is why Labour got creamed in the UK.
    Here it was actually closer than is widely believed.

    But Labour under Corbyn /isn’t/ totally left wing! Look at their actual policies and you’ll see limited nationalisation, limited expansion of public spending (not even to the same extent that the French and German governments spend!), and a bunch of rebuilding public services that have been left to rot under austerity for the last ten years (and allowed to rot before then for other reasons, but not to the same extent). They didn’t even propose nationalising a single bank, for crying out loud – how “hard left” and “hardcore socialist” can they be?

    As for the antisemitism thing, everything I’ve been able to find making a rational case for Labour having an antisemitism problem conflates anti-zionism, or even just reserving the right to criticise the state of Israel, with antisemitism. That’s the /rational/ arguments – most of what I’ve seen is either flat out fear mongering based on misrepresentation of Corbyn’s history, or something so over-egged that it’s ridiculous. How can any rational Jewish leadership group claim that Corbyn and Labour represent the biggest threat to Jews in the UK when there are literal neo-nazis rallying behind people like Farage? All of whom have now gone over the vote for Johnson and his Tories, of course, because underneath the conservative’s giant brexit boner is a good solid slab of out and out racism and xenophobia. Maybe they’ll manage to keep that racism and xenophobia pointed solely at brown people, but who wants to take a bet on that?

    Honestly, this shit is even worse than what we’ve seen in Australia, and it’s beyond simply confusing – it’s really making me wonder what in the hell is wrong with humans in general.

  9. a r @ #107 Friday, December 13th, 2019 – 11:09 am

    It was simply a matter of Leadership in both the Australian and UK elections.

    I chalk it up to weakness/fence-straddling in both instances. Shorten tried to straddle the fence on coal/climate, Corbyn tried to straddle the fence on Brexit. Neither was willing to pick a clear, coherent position and prosecute the argument for why their position is the right one. Faced with incompetent, dishonest, easily attackable opponents who offered up scandal after scandal, neither leader bothered bringing the fight. Instead they tried to run on tangential an irrelevant things.

    Corbyn tried to turn the Brexit election into a “save the NHS” campaign, ffs! How about “save the country from Brexit”? Too late, now.

    A large part of the problem that Labour had in that respect is that much of their policy platform was impossible to implement while still part of the EU, at least without explicitly rejecting a bunch of the EU rules about governance. Maybe they could have simply told the EU where to get off and ignored these rules while still explicitly supporting the remain case, but that’s not an easy policy to push either. So Labour really didn’t have the option of being hard remain – without at least renegotiating their relationship with the EU they couldn’t implement their policy platform.

    Maybe they should have just lied through their teeth and pretended to be hard remainers while fully intending to ignore any bits of the EU that were inconvenient (which they probably would have gotten away with, to be honest, even with hard media scrutiny), but then they’d have lost all the leavers who might have voted for them . . .

    Labour was always between a rock and a hard place, and unfortunately it seems to have put them in a literal no-win position.

  10. “But Labour under Corbyn /isn’t/ totally left wing! ”

    No point comparing it to the EU – it was “left” for the anglo world.

    People don’t like change. The only way to sell it is that there’ll be no losers. Both the ALP and Labour went in with policies where there were going to be people who were going to be worse off. The reality is that in the English speaking world, you won’t win an election from opposition doing that.

    If you’re a party who has no intention of forming government, you can get away with it.

  11. Lefty e, You need the picture to appear somewhere on the web. Then right-click pic, select copy image address and paste it here, and it will usually work.

    If it doesn’t, adding “#image.jpg” or “#image.png” can make it work.

  12. Hola Bludgers

    Everything under control in the Auld Dart? I see that trashing the right and the sensible centre of the British Labor Party by the Left Extremists of the British Labor Party has worked a treat.

    For Boris.

  13. I’ll save my postmortem until the actual results are in.

    Giving the UK the benefit of the doubt for the next few hours. Not looking great though.

    As for the results so far, I note that the Brexit Party has already cost the Tories one seat (Sunderland Central) that they could have won off Labour. Big swing from Labour to Brexit there. Had it swung from Labour to the Tories instead then Labour would have lost it. The Brexit Party actually saved the Labour candidate. Lets hope that gets repeated a lot more…

  14. “Labour was always between a rock and a hard place, and unfortunately it seems to have put them in a literal no-win position”

    Going into an election with policies that aren’t popular [1] with the majority is always going to be a tough ask. Even if those policies are popular with the base.

    [1] policies can be “correct” without being popular

  15. Re Blobbit @11:24:

    “People don’t like change. The only way to sell it is that there’ll be no losers. Both the ALP and Labour went in with policies where there were going to be people who were going to be worse off. The reality is that in the English speaking world, you won’t win an election from opposition doing that.”

    An interesting insight..

  16. Those horrible Blairites…. That 1997 was the biggest non-Tory win since 1906…. Oh… but they didn’t do exactly what we wanted…. wah…. Things are so much better on the opposition benches whilst the toffs do as they like….. But… But…. Iraq……

    Admittedly the Iraq war ruin Blair’s legacy. It wasn’t like he was told it was going to end badly by millions of people in the streets. But other that major F up, the era should be seen as one of the golden periods of Labour rule in the UK.

  17. Most of the swing so far seems to be going from Labour to The Brexit Party. Based on the very small number of actual results so far, Labour is down -12%, but the Tories are only up 2%, while The Brexit Party is up 7%.

  18. “An interesting insight..”

    Not sure if you mean you disagree with me….

    Anyway, I remember that one of the criticisms of Hawke was that he was promising everything for everyone at the time.

  19. Boerwar @ #114 Friday, December 13th, 2019 – 11:40 am

    Hola Bludgers

    Everything under control in the Auld Dart? I see that trashing the right and the sensible centre of the British Labor Party by the Left Extremists of the British Labor Party has worked a treat.

    For Boris.

    You keep repeating that, but I don’t think you’re making a very strong case in support of your claim – sure, Labour moved a good way to the left under Corbyn, but “left extremist” is a much stronger claim than “further left than centre right”. Wouldn’t “left extremists” have been going on more about public ownership of the means of production and stuff like that? Labour was actually proposing having the public take back what are generally considered natural monopolies that shouldn’t have been privatised in the first place, and not even slightly more radical (but entirely sensible) options like having a publicly owned retail bank.

  20. People don’t like change. The only way to sell it is that there’ll be no losers. Both the ALP and Labour went in with policies where there were going to be people who were going to be worse off.

    Hold up a moment though.

    Isn’t the whole Brexit thing significant change with many losers likely?

  21. “Admittedly the Iraq war ruin Blair’s legacy. ”

    ***

    Being in large part responsible for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians will do that. Nothing excuses it. Blair is a mass murdering war criminal, just like Howard and Bush. They should all be in prison for the rest of their lives.

  22. “Hold up a moment though.

    Isn’t the whole Brexit thing significant change with many losers likely?”

    You’d think that, but most of the people voting for it don’t see it that way.

    It’s taken what – 30 years of propaganda to convince people of it as well. Those leavers genuinely believe they’ll be better off with it.

  23. Those horrible Blairites…. That 1997 was the biggest non-Tory win since 1906…. Oh… but they didn’t do exactly what we wanted…. wah…. Things are so much better on the opposition benches whilst the toffs do as they like….. But… But…. Iraq……

    ————
    What about the disastrous PFI (private finance initiatives) beloved of New Labour?

    Expensive, often poorly constructed, schools and hospitals undertaken by the Private Sector.

  24. The post by himi is a perfect rendition of why Labour lost – “we know better than you and if you don’t vote how we tel you then you are clearly stupid and media/Russians/low education etc etc etc).

    Keep it up – it’s working very well.

  25. There has been a bit of “the exit poll could be wrong” going on which implies things might not be as bad as seem. But it could be the exit polls are wrong in the other direction and Johnson will have 400 odd seats.

  26. From a blog:

    “ For the Yoons in here a double whammy tonight .
    I’m hearing that the DUP have lost Belfast North to Sinn Fein and Belfast East to the Alliance .
    The North of Ireland for first time will not elect a majority of Unionist MPs .”

  27. In the Brexit election, Corbyn ran without a Brexit policy. Smart move. Working people deserve much, much better than they were offered by Corbyn and his collaborators. Hopefully his resignation cannot be far off.

  28. Blobbit – many Leave Voters recognise that their will be some adjustments with Brexit – but they see the overall net-benefit including non-monetary ones, such as not having freedom of movement forced upon them, as being worth it.

  29. B.S. Fairman says:
    Friday, December 13, 2019 at 12:25 pm

    There has been a bit of “the exit poll could be wrong” going on which implies things might not be as bad as seem. But it could be the exit polls are wrong in the other direction and Johnson will have 400 odd seats.

    400….Corbyn has out-performed, for the Tories.

  30. RI

    Corbyn had a Brexit Policy – renegotiate the deal with the EU then have another Referendum and Labour wasn’t going to campaign for Leave or Remain.

  31. Labour hangs on in Wansbeck, thanks to Brexit Party taking half of Labour’s drop. If you think the results so far are bad, imagine it without BRX.

  32. Bucephalus

    “ not having freedom of movement forced upon them, as being worth it.”
    —————
    You could equally say “losing the freedom to move throughout Europe, as being worth it.” Lol

  33. Not surprised by the result, watching the Common’s Brexit debate Corbyn came across as lazy and his policies show the left has a growing problem of being good at identifying problems but utterly useless at identifying solutions to actually help people.

  34. swamprat
    They voted to leave, it might be a stupid thing to support but clearly a large number of traditional Labour supporters were not happy with where the country is going and they see the EU has part of the problem.

  35. With 19 seats in, on a constituency-matched basis we’ve got CON +5.3%, LAB -7.6%, LD +3.0%. If that holds, the final result will be CON 47.7%, LAB 32.4%, LD 10.4%. Though no doubt the lack of any numbers from London or the south generally invalidates that.

  36. The first gain for SNP, Rutherglen and Hamilton West, with a 7 percent swing about half each from Labour and Conservative.

    Edit : That’s a gain from Labour.

  37. swamprat – that is a stupid thing to say because once inside the Schengen Area everyone has free movement throughout the Schengen Area.

  38. Bucephalus @ #129 Friday, December 13th, 2019 – 12:22 pm

    The post by himi is a perfect rendition of why Labour lost – “we know better than you and if you don’t vote how we tel you then you are clearly stupid and media/Russians/low education etc etc etc).

    Keep it up – it’s working very well.

    Huh?

    What exactly is the point of politics if not to argue for what you believe to be the best policies? Or are you suggesting that we should just give up on those policies because of an election result?

  39. “What exactly is the point of politics if not to argue for what you believe to be the best policies? Or are you suggesting that we should just give up on those policies because of an election result?”

    No, the point of politics is to improve people’s lot, by being in a position to implement policies.

    Sometimes that might mean you don’t get to do everything you might like. You might have to compromise.

  40. himi
    Political parties are answerable to the electorate so they need to take into account what the electorate wants, sticking to core values can be a good start but they are not substitute for actually listening to the electorate.

  41. Douglas – there is no need for a hard Ireland-UK Border even with a WTO exit. Humans can put people on the Moon and control AIDS – surely a solution for a soft border such as the ones between the Scandinavian countries is possible.

  42. So far it looks like being another lesson for Labo(u)rites about the perils of sitting on the fence on a critical issue such as Brexit. I said at the beginning of the campaign that Corbyn was all over Johnson in the first debate except for when it came to the critical issue of Brexit. Labour’s messaging on Brexit was all over the shop. It’s pretty clear that after all the stuffing around that people just want the Brexit issue to be resolved and to go away. The Tories had a simple message that everyone could comprehend.

    On top of that, Labour’s messaging in general obviously wasn’t helped by the constant attacks by the right-wing mainstream media and the misinformation campaigns waged by the far-right on social media.

    The result for the SNP (again, if it pans out) will probably be overshadowed today by the results in England but it’s yet another sign of how deeply divided the UK is. There’s also a huge divide between the youth and the elderly. The silver lining there is that the future looks bright, even if the present is grim.

    Labour has just taken a seat off the Tories (Wandsworth)! Not all doom and gloom…

  43. The UK is not a member of Schengen Area. They are a member of the Common Area with the Republic of Ireland. The Schengen Agreement is not a direct EU thing; so Norway and the Swiss have signed up to it without joining the EU.
    The right of abode and movement is one of the four freedoms of the EU. The EU is not going to give the UK the other three freedoms (goods, services, capital) without some give on UK behalf.

Comments Page 3 of 10
1 2 3 4 10

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *