NOW GIVE US A REAL BREXIT!
Leave voters come out in force for Mrs May and deliver an emphatic message...
BREXIT voters rallied behind Theresa May to crush Labour’s hopes of an election breakthrough yesterday.
A Conservative surge in Leave-backing areas raised fresh questions about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and his failure to deal with antiSemitism. As Ukip’s vote collapsed, the Tories picked up support across the Midlands.
Boris Johnson said the local election results showed the need to deliver a clean break from Brussels and avoid compromise over the customs union. ‘Jeremy Corbyn has been abandoned in many Leave areas,’ said the Foreign Secretary. ‘His pledge to stay in the customs union means he is not trusted to deliver Brexit.
‘The Prime Minister’s clear Mansion House vision for leaving the single market and customs union was a key part of Tory success.’
Delivering on Brexit was critical
THE Tories made a string of breakthroughs in the Midlands yesterday as they confounded predictions of a meltdown in the local elections.
On a better than expected night for the party, it seized control of councils in Redditch and Peterborough and helped rob Labour of its majorities in Derby and Nuneaton and Bedworth.
The Conservatives also made gains in Walsall and Dudley, where local Conservatives had feared a complete wipeout at the start of this year.
On a campaign stop in Dudley yesterday, Theresa May said the success was down to the party’s reputation for competence and low council taxes.
‘What we have seen is people recognising that Conservative councils deliver good local services, but also keep council taxes low,’ the Prime Minister said.
In Swindon, which had been a top Labour target, the Conservatives held on – leading Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson to suggest the party should abandon hopes of winning in the fast-growing town, which has long been seen as a swing seat.
The Tories were also helped by the collapse of the Ukip vote and continuing support for Brexit. Many of the areas where the Conservatives polled strongly had also backed leave in the referendum.
In Dudley, the Tories gained six of Ukip’s seven seats, leaving control of the council tied with Labour.
In Newcastle-under-Lyme, the Tories picked up all three of Ukip’s seats, again leaving the council in no overall control. In Derby, the Tories took three seats directly from Labour, ending its majority.
Toby Perkins, Labour MP for Chesterfield, warned that his party’s leadership appeared to be struggling to win back traditional voters in provincial areas.
He said: ‘There were fewer elections in areas we need to improve – small town, white working- class England – but not nearly enough improvement. In some cases it got worse there – that’s the real worry.’
Overall, the Tories looked on course to lose a net total of fewer than 30 seats across the country – far below the estimates of 200-300 predicted in the run-up to Thursday’s vote. The results defied expectations for a government that has been rocked by rows over Brexit and the Windrush generation.
Earlier this year ministers had feared they would be so grim they would spark a challenge to Mrs May’s leadership. The Tories’ better-than- expected performance extended to the capital, where Labour had boasted it would ‘paint London red’.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: ‘This is one of the times when you would expect the governing party to take a bit of a hammering, but actually when you look at what’s happened we have done well in Peterborough, we have done well in Dudley – all sorts of places where we are doing very well. London, my own borough here in Hillingdon, we gained, which I don’t think anybody was expecting, and held on to Wandsworth, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea.
‘It certainly wasn’t the result Labour were boasting they were going to get and I think that is because Conservatives do deliver better services for lower taxes.’
In Barnet, which ministers had privately written off, the Tories even gained control as voters in the area, which has a large Jewish population, turned away from Labour.
But there was controversy in Pendle, Lancashire, where the Conservatives reinstated a councillor suspended over allegations of racism in order to gain control.
Former mayor Rosemary Carroll was suspended last June over an offensive Facebook ‘joke’ in which she compared an Asian with a dog.
She was readmitted to the party yesterday while the votes were being counted, giving the Tories a one-seat majority on the council for the first time since 1979.
Tory group leader Paul White said she had completed ‘additional diversity training’ before being readmitted. But Labour group leader Mohammed Iqbal said it was an ‘appalling state of affairs’.
‘We have done well in all sorts of places’