By the middle of 2019 in
the United Kingdom, Leavers and Remainers could be considered neck-and-neck. A significant
number of the elderly who had voted Leave had died since the 2016 Referendum;
new young voters, overwhelmingly Remainers, had joined the electorate.
Every poll showed that
Remainers were on average younger and better educated than the Leave voters and
by all normal standards that ought to have given the edge and allowed them to
outperform, to win and reverse the 2016 Referendum result. They didn’t. Why?
One very large part of the answer
lies in what is called the narcissism of
small differences. Nice educated Remainers could not bring themselves to
sink their differences in the face of an overwhelming threat to their way of
life. They went around saying Oh, I
couldn’t possibly vote for someone who is on record having said in 1973 that ….
or I draw the line at someone who
does not believe in the rights of penguins or In the past, they collaborated with the Tories. They did not look to the future,only to the past. In contrast,
Leavers focussed on the main issue of getting Brexit done, sunk their
differences (which were manifold), and turned out to vote for the only party
which clearly announced that it would get Brexit done - and indeed did, very
rapidly, on 31 January 2020. So old and uneducated they may have been, but Leave
voters understood how to think and act strategically. They got what they voted for.
Remain voters didn’t
because in places like the nice, middle-class university town of Lewes they went out and
voted Green and Labour thus ensuring the defeat of the Liberal Democrat, the blindingly obvious choice in Lewes to beat a very hard line Brexiteer Tory*. The margin of defeat was smaller than the combined Green and
Labour vote. But, honour satisfied, the Green and the Labour voters had not betrayed their Principles as they no doubt
made a point of reminding everyone at every opportunity. (* Added 15 May 2020:Maria Caulfield MP who has now got her name in the papers for re-Tweeting a doctored video clip of Keir Starmer culled from a far right/conspiracy theory account. Well done, Lewes!).
This local inability to
think strategically was reflected at national level, where the “strategists” of
the Labour and Liberal parties went out of their way to rub voters’ noses into
the fact of their differences, Liberal leader Jo Swinson leading the way
but Labour not far behind.
The Liberals are now
completely without any strategy. Yesterday I received an email from them
headlined
Whoever you are, the Liberal Democrats will stand up for you
It's called desperate marketing. And I hope it's untrue; there are people out there who I trust no political party will rush to stand up for.
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