UK nationals, if you aren’t already, then please register to vote here – https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
EU nationals can vote for MEPs in the UK, so please, PLEASE exercise your democratic right! You’ll need to fill in a form at https://www.yourvotematters.co.uk/ by Tuesday 6th May.
There’s much information circulating on social media about the D’Hondt method and how best to minimise the number of seats for UKIP & The Brexit Party (BP), so I won’t go into that here, but my own view is that regardless of how many seats each party wins, the number of votes for pro-Remain parties will send a strong message to both the government and the ‘opposition’ (such as it is), as to the public’s current view of Brexit. I would like to have seen much greater collaboration between the remain parties, but it seems that’s not to be and it will at least be mitigated by the far right vote being split between UKIP/BP. Delighted that the Renew party have effectively been subsumed into CHUK to maximise the impact of their supporters’ votes.
I would point out that some of the Labour MEPs such as Seb Dance, have been among the most vocal and dynamic in opposing Brexit and campaigning for a People’s vote, so I wouldn’t blame anyone for voting for candidates like him. However, in the same way that in GE2017, a vote for Labour has been misinterpreted as a vote for a Labour ‘jobs first’ Brexit, so it can also be in this context, until the Labour leadership come out unequivocally in favour of a PV, so for that reason, I can’t bring myself to vote for any Labour candidate.
I find it very difficult to believe that anyone who voted leave in 2016 still thinks it’s a great idea, now that the law-breaking, lies and disinformation of the campaign have been thoroughly exposed, but if you do and you’re tempted to vote for either of the smaller pro-Brexit parties, then I would urge you very strongly to look carefully at the kind of candidates being fielded by the BP/UKIP and ask yourself if you really share their values.
The original leader of the BP, Catherine Blaiklock has posted some utterly disgusting Islamophobic comments on social media, some of which you can find at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... m-messages Carl Benjamin, the UKIP candidate for the south-west tweeted ‘I wouldn’t even rape you’ to MP Jess Phillips, something referred to as ‘satire’ by their leader Gerard Batten on the Marr show last weekend. And former Brexit Party treasurer Michael McGough was recently sacked after The Guardian unearthed anti-semitic, homophobic, Islamophobic and offensive racist remarks about people from “bingo bongo land” and people who had perished in the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Unbelievable. I really hope there aren’t too many people among us who can countenance abhorrent views like this and wish to be represented by these repellent individuals, and I’m sure that vast majority of NVNers find such remarks unconscionable, so please, let’s take a stand against this horrific far right bigotry. While I’m here, worth mentioning I have been doing some digging into Wandsworth Labour councillors’ views on Brexit. Now they would like you to think they are united in support of a Peoples Vote, because they see it as a future vote winner in our heavily remain supporting borough, but I’m afraid that simply isn’t true. There are a handful of councillors who are VERY actively campaigning for a PV (Thank you all) but sadly there are also quite a few who are either fans of Brexit (Lexit) or too in thrall to comrade Corbyn to move away from the leadership’s dishonest and ambiguous fence-straddling position. I think Wandsworth residents have every right to know which individuals are in which camps, so as soon as I have figured it out, I’ll be letting you all know in a future post. Keep fighting the good fight remainer folk, we are WINNING!
