Sunday 21 April 2019

A People's Vote, Indeed

Labour MPs will block any commitment to a second referendum, and in so doing they will be pushing at an open door to Jeremy Corbyn's office. 

But their motivation will not be fear of losing their seats. They run almost as little risk of that as their Conservative counterparts do. People will vote for the Brexit Party at the European Elections. But not at anything else.

Yes, the Conservative Party's only permanent principle is that the country ought to be run by the sons of certain families and by the products of certain public schools, especially Eton. Everyone has always understood that. 

And on that universal understanding, that party has come either first or second at every General Election that there has ever been. It has won most of them, and it has held some seats continuously since the first half of the nineteenth century. 

By contrast, principled right-wingery, most recently in the form of UKIP, has never got anywhere when it came to elections to the House of Commons. And it never will. The potential voters for it simply do not exist.

Yet the overall shape of the three polities of England and Wales, of Scotland, and of Northern Ireland, is now such that, regardless of who led any party, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. 

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

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