Our Election Results

May

4

5 comments

Despite managing to hold 1 seat in Downhall & Rawreth (well done Chris Stanley), is this really where it went wrong for our other candidates in a ‘leave’ area?

Dr Mark Pack writes about his view here

.How local an issue is Brexit?

How big an issue should and will Brexit be in these local elections? Procedural puritans in all parties and none are often keen to say that council elections are about councils and shouldn’t be about national issues. Happy though I often am to don the procedural puritan’s garb, this is one case I pass up on it.

Partly that’s because fundamentally in a democracy voters get to choose. Parties and candidates may very well want to persuade them to choose a particular option. They can – and should – point out the importance of what councils and directly-elected Mayors do. But it’s the right of voters to choose the criteria they will use for casting their vote. That power of choice should be respected.

Especially as the other reason I pass is that local elections are something that national parties, national leaders and the national media all draw national lessons from. Whether it is changes of policy, leadership or strategy, local elections can and do change national politics. So it’s hardly unreasonable for a voter deliberately to make use of that opportunity. All the more so for European Union citizens who didn’t get to vote in the European referendum or the general election but can use these elections to express a view on Brexit. Saying to an EU citizen, “No, don’t make your vote about your ability to continue living here” would be just a mite harsh.

Will voters, therefore, make Brexit a big part of their decision-making? Polling so far (albeit only from London) suggests they will. An affirmative answer is also what a large chunk of the Liberal Democrat campaign for the May elections depends on and is trying to secure, including the party launching a huge digital advertising campaign aimed at EU citizens and using 21 different languages.

This push for their vote, helped by the public support from figures such as Gina Miller for anti-Brexiters to vote Lib Dem, depends on people knowing what the Lib Dem position on Brexit actually is. That, so far, is not really the case as the evidence shows the public remains unclear where any of the parties sit on the issue. A reminder as ever that when a political activist says, “My party talks far too much about our policy X” that should almost always be followed by the refrain, “But the public have barely noticed we talk about it at all”.

That said, a promising trend is the slow but steady movement towards opposing Brexit in various forms: people thinking the referendum result was the wrong outcome and that there should be a referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal. Findings are sensitive not only to fluctuations but also to the exact question wordings different pollsters use, which is why the trends are the thing to keep an eye on. And the trends are heading in the right direction.

Perhaps most importantly, more people now think that Brexit will be bad for the NHS than think it will be good for it (31% – 25%). If that sort of lead increases, then the NHS will be a powerful way of reaching some of those who voted Leave and persuading them to change their minds, not on the basis of abstract arguments over Europe or projections about macroeconomic statistics in the future. But on the basis of the immediate health service they know, use and cherish.

About the author, Editor

  • Brexit had nothing to do with it, you “went wrong” because you decided to change from Lib Dem’s to some sort of rag bag coalition group if you, and they, were successful. The electorate saw through this and voted accordingly.

    • That’s YOUR opinion – you decided not to read the article above written by the very knowledgeable Dr Mark Pack? Or simply choose to ignore it so you could still criticise our decision?

  • Here’s a straight question to the editor of this site, are you deciding which comments appear on this site regardless of if they meet the guidelines ?

    • As far as we aware all comments have been published. You may have noticed that we have moved to a new comments system due to the old not being supported anymore and as such a security risk. If there is something younsfe specifically referring to please let us know.

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