Polls now open in the European election

Voting is now open in the elections no leaver wanted and IMHO a majority of those who voted Remain thought also should not have happened - to elect another cohort of British MEPs.

Unfortunately because of a failure of parliament and the EU to agree how Britain should leave we are still a member state of the EU at this time and therefore have a legal duty to hold these elections.

There will be many people who are inclined to stay at home in protest. I fully understand that.

However, there are some truly awful candidates standing in these elections. There are people putting up for election with convictions for mortgage fraud and assault (football hooliganism and political thuggery) people associated with expressions of support for IRA atrocities like the Warrington bomb and with genocide denial, candidates who think it is OK to joke about rape.

In that context, if you stay at home you cannot complain if candidates like that get elected.

I would urge all decent people who have not already voted by post (as I have) to get down to the polling station today before 10pm and vote for whichever slate of decent people is closest to your views.

Here in the North West I voted for the Conservative ticket headed by Sajjad Karim and my fellow Cumbrian resident Kevin Beaty both of whom I know to be decent people who would work hard for this region.

Other people standing in this region include Stephen Yaxley-Lennon who calls himself Tommy Robinson, and the first candidate on the Brexit party list is Claire Fox, formerly of the Revolutionary Communist party, which defended the IRA's Warrington bomb. 

Colin Parry OBE, father of one of the two little boys killed in that attack, has appealed to voters in the North West not to vote to make Claire Fox MEP for Warrington in view of her failure to clearly disassociate herself from past statements about the atrocity which claimed their lives.



If you don't vote, you lost your voice about who is elected to represent you.


Comments

Jim said…
If you don't vote, you lost your voice about who is elected to represent you.

are you kidding???

If politicians represented us, and how we voted, we would have left already without having to elect more of them.
7:58 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
I cannot pretend I don't understand that point of view, or that Jim is the only person who shares it.

I had a lot of people saying the same sort of thing very vehemently on the doorstep and I suspect that many of the people I called on who told me that did not want to vote and did not appear keen to discuss the matter would have said the same.

However, votes in the same ballot box can carry the same message even more powerfully and to more people than words on the doorstep or comments on a blog.

I'm about to go to the count.

If the ballot papers I saw at verification on Thursday night are representative of the rest, I suspect we are about to get a clear message on the subject.
4:48 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
And now you have your answer, Jim

Remain supporters in the media and parties like the Lib/Dems are adding up the votes for anti-Brexit parties, e.g. the Lib/Dems, Change UK, Plaid, and the SNP. getting a higher total than the combined vote of the Brexit party and UKIP and spinning the election as a Remain victory, claiming that this proves the election result is a mandate for Remain.

John Curtice called it a draw on a similar basis (he didn't think it was right to include the SNP.)

Some of the people doing this were perfectly happy to argue as if the much lower proportion of the electorate who did not vote in 2016 were on their side.

I think they are kidding themselves because I am convinced that millions of people stayed at home in protest about the fact we have not left the EU and I cannot see anyone staying at home for the opposite reason. Add in the non-voters who support Brexit and the non-voters who support Remain, and I suspect the pro-Brexit side would be in the majority.

The trouble is, we cannot actually do that calculation because we don't know how many people refused to vote in protest at the fact that we have not left the EU and how many didn't vote because they don't give a damn or for some other reason.
12:46 pm
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