Brexit Party blows a hole in Brexit

Nigel Farage made himself scarce after the election for a new Peterborough MP. The election was won by the Labour Party candidate and further clarified the real battle in Britain (7 June). Farage (along with the 'bookies' and their betting odds; virtually all of the mainstream media; the campaign to target Labour as anti-Semitic; the Tory Party and the biggest part of Labour's MPs in Parliament) believed that the new 'Brexit Party' would run away with a victory in Peterborough. It would win Farage's inaugural MP. (The first example of a rat jumping onto a sinking ship!)

Now that Mike Greene, ex local Tory, and Farage's last totem, becomes part of the dust of History, the real implications of a typically low local vote (less than 50%) in a marginal 'seat', that has swung between Labour and the Tory Party for the best part of a century, becomes clearer.

At around 2 am Boris Johnson (the most favoured candidate for Teresa May's ex position) tweeted '... Conservatives must deliver Brexit by 31st October or we risk Brexit Party votes delivering Corbyn to No10.' What was Boris looking at? Not at the low turn out among the Peterborough voters. (Normally that would jump up in Labour's favour in a General Election.) And not at Farage's latest kite that did not fly? No. He was scared that the Liberals and the Greens (12% and 3% respectively) did not take the 'return to the EU at all costs' votes from Labour, an assumption that has been readily promoted following the the recent EU elections. But Farage's vote, (29%), definitely cut into - indeed, cut the head off - official Tory candidate Paul Bristow's 21% of the vote. 

The Labour vote in Peterborough (note the referendum vote; to leave 61%; to remain in the EU 39%) has not blocked a Labour victory when its official positions on Brexit have been criticised - including among its MPs - as much as the Tories. But Labour is known as having a program that reaches beyond Brexit. The Tories are still digging their Brexit hole. 

Frankly Boris could not care less about Brexit. He cares about being Prime minister. His Brexit campaign started with two articles, but only one for publication, that argued in opposite directions. He had a hard 48 hours deliberation about Brexit, not because of his scruples, but working out which damn door that would best open for Boris. He has two policies, Boris for PM and a Trump scale tax cut for the rich. And now he is cornered.  The disaster for Boris is not only do the Tories now have to swallow 'no deal' - to squeeze out Farage, but also they have to face the new reality that voters are beginning to look beyond Brexit. Boris's intention was to find something from the EU, anything, that he could get by with. Instead it will be the Tory Party 'no deal' catastrophe in jobs, standards of living and in declining health systems, plus a recalcitrant decrepit Parliament whose only aim is to prevent its own removal, plus a declining minority of Tory and ex-Tory banks of brexit-at-all-costs around the UK that Boris needs in what will finally become that next General Election. This is not where Boris would have wished to be. 

Boris has only one act of leadership he can take. The attack on Corbyn and his program, sadly, only now, is really about to begin. 

Soon; Labour, Brexit, the Union and the Greens.