You wanted a People’s Vote? Well, here it is
Forgive me if I borrow from the great Frankie Valli, but, Oh, what a night! It was pure joy to watch the coverage of the European elections. For weeks, the BBC had been doing its best to avoid saying the dreaded name, but on Sunday they really didn’t have a lot of choice. Try as they might to make the results about the success of the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, one astounding fact strobed out in turquoise from the top of every count in England and Wales. The Brexit Party had wellied the lot of them.
How uplifting to see both main parties (and their dismal leaders) humbled. How unbelievably gratifying to see millions of decent Conservative and Labour voters – dismissed as “extremists” by the condescendi – exact their revenge. It wasn’t just a punishment beating, although there was a great big smack of satisfaction in knowing that not a single politician in England and Wales has a safe seat. Be afraid, Yvette Cooper, be very afraid!
This was an intoxicating display of democracy. A Remainer Parliament had colluded for almost three years to thwart the biggest vote in our history with insulting talk of a second referendum. OK, so you want a People’s Vote? Well, here’s the people voting – how do you like it now?
At dinner on Saturday night, I told Remainer friends I was confident that my native Wales would cast out its treacherous Labour overlords and overwhelmingly back Nigel Farage’s party, which had promised to carry out its wishes.
“Auntie Alli right again!,” came the text from the same friends late on Sunday as the Brexit Party scorched to 32.5 per cent in the Land of my Fathers,
miles ahead of its nearest rival, Plaid Cymru (19.6 per cent). No wonder Stephen Kinnock looked a seasick shade of green on the BBC. Wales had just converted the try, and dropkicked his Labour Party (15.3 per cent) back to its metropolitan madlands. Bloody brilliant, boys!
As well as historic tragedy for the Conservative and Labour parties there was lashings of high comedy. The losing parties started adding other people’s results to their own and claiming that they’d won after all. Who was doing the maths – Diane Abbott? Imagine telling Manchester City they didn’t win the Premier League because someone had just combined the totals of all the sides they’d defeated.
That cockatoo of conceit, Alastair Campbell, told Huw Edwards that the Brexit Party had actually lost in Wales because it got below 50 per cent. La Dementa herself, Anna Soubry, explained to BBC News that, contrary to any sane interpretation, the elections had been a huge success for Change UK, gaining 600,000 votes for her new party Another new party, with far less favourable coverage somehow managed to get a slightly more impressive 5.25million votes).
Emily Thornberry, that barrage balloon of self-regard, took one look at the results and changed party policy live on TV. She concluded that Labour must be much, much clearer about betraying its 2017 manifesto promise to honour the referendum result. It could only have been a failure to be perfectly straight with those thick Brexit morons, and oiks in white vans who make Emily’s bulldog nostrils twitch fastidiously, which led to them giving their vote to Nigel Farage.
Farage is not everyone’s cup of tea, but at least he’s not Emily Thornberry. In another blissful irony, The Brexit Party, accused of being far Right and racist by Lady Nugee and the metropolitan elite, will pretty much double the ethnic diversity of the all-white, predominantly male European Parliament when its 29 MEPS take their seats next week. Black, brown, Jewish and Ann Widdecombe will make a noisy, impassioned case for the UK to be allowed to get the hell out of there.
Make no mistake, the European parliamentary elections were a huge victory for ordinary Britons and, boy, did we enjoy it. Millions of us, perhaps for the first time, set aside traditional loyalties and voted for the Brexit Party because we would not – could not – stand by as parliamentarians put their own prejudices above the preferences of the people. How dare they dice with democracy like that!
You can draw a line from the toe of Cornwall to the tip of Northumberland and you won’t ever enter Remain territory. Outside London, a vast majority of constituencies in England and Wales, both Labour and Conservative, are Leave, while the majority of their MPS are Remain.
Well, not for much longer. On Sunday, the map of our country turned turquoise overnight. Farage played a blinder. Only a fool would think it will go back to red and blue if the referendum result isn’t delivered.
As for the BBC, I reckon it had better get used to saying that dreaded name. Another major victory, in the Peterborough by-election, is hurtling down the track. The Brexit Party will be making headlines for as long as politicians continue to dishonour the people.