Labour triggered PM’s fall

At first glance the news from Newcastle, the first mainland council to declare Thursday’s result, was not too bad for Remain. It may have won only narrowly, by 51 per cent to 49, but it was a victory nonetheless. If that was the way the country as a whole had voted, then Remain would have prevailed, albeit narrowly.

Trouble is, Newcastle is not typical of Britain.

It has a relatively young population with more than its share of graduates. And before Thursday, all the polling evidence had indicated that young people and graduates were especially likely to vote Remain.

Rather than squeaking ahead, Remain should have won comfortably. Its failure to do so seemed ominous. And so it proved. Newcastle is a Labour city. The party won the three parliamentary constituencies quite comfortably last year.

Perhaps why Remain might be in trouble was that, lacking a clear sign from their party as to where it stood, many a Labour voter had stayed at home or even backed Leave.

Subsequent results did little to dispel that latter impression.

Remain did badly throughout much of the predominantly Labour-voting North East, winning just 42 per cent of the vote. The outcome in Yorkshire proved much the same. While the North West was not so bad, with a 46 per cent share, the West and East Midlands were even worse: there Remain secured just 41 per cent.

While Remain had lost in both the South East outside London (48 per cent) and in the supposedly Eurosceptic South West (47), its defeat in the Conservative heartland of England had not been not anything like so heavy.

There appeared to be ample evidence for a simple narrative: Remain lost because too few Labour