The Brexit Chronicles

The Unexpected Death Of The Brexit Party.

Published on November the 14th, 2019. 16.30.

10.30. I hadn't planned to write any updates during the General Election campaign unless a major event happened. Well two have, and so here I am.

It seemed ironic that just as the hustings were beginning, the official People's Vote campaign tore itself apart over whether to to back Labour's untenable policy of renegotiating the already twice redrawn Withdrawal Agreement and then putting the result to another referendum with the choice of that 'deal' or remain, or to throw their support behind the open Article 50 revocation stance of the Lib-Dems. Instantly they rendered themselves an irrelevance, but little did I expect that soon after Nigel Farage would make a similar error with his Brexit Party, yet that is what has happened over these past 48 hours. By standing down the Brexit Party candidates in the 317 currently Conservative held seats, be the incumbent a Leaver or Remainer, he has made the party a laughing stock, and if the responses I've seen on social media are an accurate reflection of the public mood, alienated many potential voters in the constituencies they are still contesting.

How this will affect the overall electoral calculus remains to be seen, and gauging the outcome is impossible, but my gut feeling is that now the Brexit Party have given up any pretence of being a force to 'change politics for good' and instead declared themselves to be no more than a prop for the detested Tories, the people who would have voted for them will revert back to their traditional allegiances. In practice this will mean the disaffected Labour voters in their northern heartland are more likely to vote Lib-Dem, helping that party's candidates in marginal seats.

16.40. The nomination deadline has passed without there being any last-minute dirty deal done between the Brexit and Tory parties, and why should there have been as Nigel the 'master negotiator' or more likely his financier and puppeteer Richard Tice had already given everything away. "I made a massive concession, they gave me nothing in return" wailed Farage plaintively, the man who only a few months ago was knocking on the 10 Downing Street door, demanding of the departing Theresa May that he be appointed to the then WA renegotiation team... That pathetic bleat will be the epitaph of his political career. Well Nige, join the end of a very long queue of people the Tories have shat on!