After holding the North Shropshire seat, which adjoins my own constituency, for the last 200 years, Boris Johnson has managed to lose it to the Liberals. That comes after he also lost the Chesham and Amersham safe seat to the Liberals a while ago. To lose one might be considered unfortunate, to lose two downright careless! Boris is the Tories liability to deal with, though I doubt they are going to ditch him, but Starmer is our liability, and its up to Labour members to deal with him, whose Labour candidate had an equally disastrous result, if not worse, than the Tories.
In the last three General Elections, labour came second in the seat, behind the Tories. In 2019, when its claimed that labour did so disastrously under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour polled over 12,000 votes, or 22%. In 2017, under Corbyn's Leadership, labour scored even better, with just over 17,000 votes, or 31% of the vote. In both cases, the Liberals were left trailing in the dust, with just 5% in 2017, and 10% in 2019. Yet, now, under Starmer's leadership of the Labour Party, its vote collapsed to just 3,686, or just 9.7% of the poll. That is the reality of Starmer's leadership disaster. By contrast, the Liberals won the seat, having increased their vote to just under 18,000 or 47.2% of the poll, giving them a comfortable majority of 6,000 over the Tories.
If the Tories were going to lose this seat, given that labour came a clear second in the last three elections, then its obvious that it should have been Labour that won it, by hoovering up all of the opposition votes from the Liberals, Greens and so on, not to mention disaffected Tories. As it turns out, the size of the poll suggests that many disaffected Tories simply stayed at home, whilst thousands of equally disaffected Labour voters abandoned Starmer's reactionary Blue Labour, which is increasingly indistinguishable from Boris's Tories, and jumped aboard the Liberal bandwagon that, at least, superficially offers a more progressive alternative in relation to Brexit.
North Shropshire voted Leave in the EU referendum, but the fact that the anti-Brexit Liberals could win this seat, whilst the increasingly pro-Brexit, nationalistic, Blue Labour of Starmer got demolished, shows how wrong it is to simplistically believe that such seats can only be won by pandering to the reactionary nationalist sentiments of what, even here amounts to a minority. What's more, as the reality of Brexit becomes more apparent, it shows how stupid it is to base yourself on a flash poll that took place more than five years ago.
North Shropshire is a heavily rural constituency. But, the reality of Brexit is now coming home to those farmers who traditionally have voted Tory, and also supported Brexit. Like fishing communities across Britain, they are starting to see that Brexit was a delusion. British fishing communities have seen that Brexit has caused their costs to skyrocket, making them uncompetitive, and slashing any profits they might have hoped to make. The lack of access to EU markets that Brexit has caused, means that British fishing fleets cannot sell their product in their main markets in Europe, and they cannot find big enough markets in Britain to sell their fish at prices that would be profitable. Similarly, farmers, particularly sheep, pig and cattle farmers are finding similar problems, as they suffer from soaring costs, soaring even further as a result of the inflation caused by QE that is now feeding through into consumer prices, and production costs, as well as now facing being driven out of business by low cost imports from Australia as a result of the trade deal that the Tories have signed, a deal which is 90% in Australia's favour, and only 10% in Britain's favour. That is the reality of the weakened negotiating position that Britain is in as a result of Brexit.
So, its no wonder, that as the reality of Brexit come home, the farmers in North Shropshire had no reason to turn out enthusiastically for Boris's man. But, for the same reason they had no reason to turn out for Starmer's man either, given that Starmer's Blue Labour is now equally wedded to the same Brexit supporting, economic nationalism of Johnson and the Tories. And, of course, the labour members in North Shropshire, and the large majority of Labour voters in North Shropshire never supported Brexit to begin with. They have had to look on in horror as the supposedly anti-Brexit Starmer, showed his true blue colours, after Corbyn removed, as he has become a bigger Brexiter than Corbyn was ever seen to have been as Leader. At every step, Starmer has acted as Johnson's loyal lieutenant, as he has crashed further and further into the reactionary agenda of economic nationalism.
But, its not just in terms of economic nationalism, and jingoism that Starmer has collapsed into a reactionary agenda. Just this week, as Starmer had the opportunity of defeating the government in parliament over its proposals to further restrict individual liberty, under cover of Covid paranoia, Starmer failed. As 100 Tory MP's voted against Johnson, Starmer saved his bacon by trooping labour MP's into the lobbies as voting fodder for Johnson, like so many pigs to the slaughter pulled along by the ring in the nose of the lead pig himself.
The truth is, of course, that the Tories are unlikely to ditch Boris as a result of this result. had labour won it, that would be different. The Tories know that come a General Election, the threat to them comes not from the Liberals, but from Labour. Dramatic by-election wins are one thing, but winning a majority of seats nationally is another. Only Labour has a chance of doing that. But, after last night, and after Chesham and Amersham and elsewhere, the Tories must be extremely confident that labour under Starmer has no chance of doing that either. If labour can't pull the votes behind it in seats where its been in second place, it will have even less chance of doing so, where it was already third, or further down the poll.
So, the fact remains that, for the Tories, Boris, fronting up Brexit, even though he doesn't really believe in it, offers them the best hope of winning the next election, by consolidating the core Tory vote behind them, with Starmer's Blue Labour haplessly trying to curry favour from reactionary, nationalist voters, by sticking with its pro-Brexit stance that will drive even more of its own progressive core voters away from it, and into the hands of the Liberals and Greens. By splitting that anti-Tory vote, Starmer will ensure that the Tories win the next election, and so set himself up to provide them with parliamentary voting fodder once more, as he tries in vain to demonstrate his own patriotic virtues.
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