Post by James G on May 10, 2021 18:37:42 GMT
On November 11th 2019, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage announced that his new movement wouldn't contest any of the 317 seats won by the Conservatives in the last general election. Moreover, another twenty-four Labour and Lib-Dem held ones would also not be fought by Brexit Party candidates. Those were ones which Farage said were most exposed to a Conservative victory to take them away from Remainers.
Labour, the Lib Dems and much of the media were in uproar afterwards. A stitch-up they called it, a Johnson-Farage pact. Both the Conservatives and the Brexit Party denied a deal had been struck in the face of no one believing that.
A month later, the general election was held. The Brexit Party won no seats nationwide. The Conservatives won 382: seventeen of those were seats held by Labour and Lib Dem MPs where the Brexit Party had stood aside. Labour's Red Wall in the North and Midlands crumbled under the double punch of Johnson and Farage. There were stunning upsets all over the place for Labour. Places which had never had a Conservative MP, where it had always seems impossible that that would happen, fell away from Labour's control. In so many of them the majorities won by the Conservatives were tiny. In Hull East it was only thirty-five votes: the Brexit Party had stood aside there.
Another Conservative victory gifted by Farage was Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford in West Yorkshire. It's defeated Labour MP - she lost by four hundred and eighty votes - was Yvette Cooper. A high-profile Remainer who had been at the forefront of anti-Brexit and People's Vote actions in Parliament, she was married to the former Labour MP and Cabinet member Ed Balls. He had lost his nearby seat in 2015 - Were You Up for Balls? - and she followed four years later in defeat too.
The declaration was made in the early hours of the morning after the election. Few people were still awake and watching coverage. Those who saw it remembered it: many more claimed they were still awake.
Yvette Cooper was left a former MP with the humiliation of losing her seat when all had seemed beforehand sure for a return.
Labour, the Lib Dems and much of the media were in uproar afterwards. A stitch-up they called it, a Johnson-Farage pact. Both the Conservatives and the Brexit Party denied a deal had been struck in the face of no one believing that.
A month later, the general election was held. The Brexit Party won no seats nationwide. The Conservatives won 382: seventeen of those were seats held by Labour and Lib Dem MPs where the Brexit Party had stood aside. Labour's Red Wall in the North and Midlands crumbled under the double punch of Johnson and Farage. There were stunning upsets all over the place for Labour. Places which had never had a Conservative MP, where it had always seems impossible that that would happen, fell away from Labour's control. In so many of them the majorities won by the Conservatives were tiny. In Hull East it was only thirty-five votes: the Brexit Party had stood aside there.
Another Conservative victory gifted by Farage was Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford in West Yorkshire. It's defeated Labour MP - she lost by four hundred and eighty votes - was Yvette Cooper. A high-profile Remainer who had been at the forefront of anti-Brexit and People's Vote actions in Parliament, she was married to the former Labour MP and Cabinet member Ed Balls. He had lost his nearby seat in 2015 - Were You Up for Balls? - and she followed four years later in defeat too.
The declaration was made in the early hours of the morning after the election. Few people were still awake and watching coverage. Those who saw it remembered it: many more claimed they were still awake.
Yvette Cooper was left a former MP with the humiliation of losing her seat when all had seemed beforehand sure for a return.
