The Brexit Party's and Change UK's lead candidates in the South West are Ann Widdecombe and Rachel Johnson, who appeared together on Big Brother. What a time to be alive.
For all the merits either of Miss Widdecombe or of Claire Fox, who as the Brexit Party's lead candidate in the North West is also guaranteed election, no long-term political party contesting elections to the House of Commons is ever going to include both of them, just as it is never going to include both Nigel Farage and the markedly more conservative George Galloway, either. That might not matter in the long run, though.
I remain sceptical, so to speak, having been hearing about impending realignments for as long as I can remember. But if the EU referendum really has opened up some kind of fissure, then it is just possible, if wildly unlikely, that we might eventually see the emergence of two catch-all parties with their roots in the Remain and Leave campaigns, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, a party of the res publica and a party of the demos.
If so, then the slowly emerging Democratic Party is already having its limits usefully defined for it, with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and the rump of UKIP beyond its right flank, and with those who are advocating a boycott of the European Elections beyond its left flank. Both of those were already peripheral, anyway. But the slowly emerging Republican Party is in rather more trouble.
You see, the long-established Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists, a third of which latter's voters in any case voted Leave, are in no mood to yield to the Gavin Esler class of self-appointed guardians of an economic and social liberalism that used of soft power where possible but hard power where necessary both at home and abroad to spread itself across the whole wide earth by means of an unquestionable alliance between the European Union and the United States, an alliance with Britain at both its cultural and its military heart, indeed with Esler's version of London as its global cultural capital.
And both the Lib Dems and the SNP are going to do a lot better at the European Elections than Change UK is. Like UKIP and Yaxley-Lennon, it is more likely than not to end up with no seats at all. Raising an important question. If there were not in fact an authoritarian liberal res publica at all, then where would be the need for the demos to rise up against it?
Nevertheless, and as these Elections are going to demonstrate, 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.
If so, then the slowly emerging Democratic Party is already having its limits usefully defined for it, with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and the rump of UKIP beyond its right flank, and with those who are advocating a boycott of the European Elections beyond its left flank. Both of those were already peripheral, anyway. But the slowly emerging Republican Party is in rather more trouble.
You see, the long-established Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists, a third of which latter's voters in any case voted Leave, are in no mood to yield to the Gavin Esler class of self-appointed guardians of an economic and social liberalism that used of soft power where possible but hard power where necessary both at home and abroad to spread itself across the whole wide earth by means of an unquestionable alliance between the European Union and the United States, an alliance with Britain at both its cultural and its military heart, indeed with Esler's version of London as its global cultural capital.
And both the Lib Dems and the SNP are going to do a lot better at the European Elections than Change UK is. Like UKIP and Yaxley-Lennon, it is more likely than not to end up with no seats at all. Raising an important question. If there were not in fact an authoritarian liberal res publica at all, then where would be the need for the demos to rise up against it?
Nevertheless, and as these Elections are going to demonstrate, 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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