On Thursday those of us with either long memories or respect for the history that created us and preserved hard won freedoms, will be remembering the D-Day landings that took place on June 6th 1944. D-Day marked the turning point in World War II when the scourge of Hitlerism started to be turned back in Western Europe. Those who paid the ultimate sacrifice during the landings and those who survived did so in order to put the boots of free men from free nations back onto the soil of continental Europe. It was one of those historical turning points that changed things and in Britain is put alongside other memorable abrupt changes such as the Norman Invasion and the moment when the axe fell on Charles I’s neck and we entered the period of the Interregnum.
Politics, especially British democratic politics, like war, also has its defining moments after which things changed significantly. The rise of the Labour Party following the growth of the Labour Movement and the extension of the voting franchise saw more working class representation in Parliament and the decline of the Liberal Party as a counterbalance to the Conservative Party. The elections of 1945, 1979 and most recently 1997, have all brought great changes and not all of them have been shown to be good or positive in the long term.
The 1945 Atlee government brought us probably the worst way to provide public healthcare, the NHS along with government involvement in the lives of the individual citizen that should only have been imposed during wartime. The Thatcher government of 1979 did both good things and bad things, yes this government freed up the economy so that we were no longer the ‘sick man of Europe’ as we were at times during the 1970’s, but at enormous social cost. The damage that the policies of the Thatcher government did to various working class communities was in my view compounded by not tackling properly areas such as education where none of her Education Secretaries dealt sufficiently harshly with Leftists embedded in the education system. This allowed doctrinaire leftists to rob generations of working class children of a vigorous and academically sound education system. As for the Blair/Brown government’s that lasted from 1997 to 2010, we can now see that they were groundbreaking governments but not in a good way. We are still living with and suffering from many of the problems that grew to fruition in that period. Problems such as Islamisation, excessive levels and inappropriate types of immigration, a breakdown in social cohesion and a debased criminal justice system that prosecutes people for making jokes.
On Thursday, as well as remembering those who bought us our freedoms and in particular my freedom to write this to you today, there will also be a new political party facing its own D-Day of sorts. The Brexit Party, which triumphed at the Euro elections we never should have had last month, is facing its proper Westminster electoral test.
The Brexit Party is fielding a candidate in the very high profile Peterborough by-election. This election is being called on the 6th June because the previous winner of the seat, Labour’s Fiona Onasanya, was convicted of a criminal offence and a recall petition in the constituency declared that a by-election should be held. Because it is a high profile contest, the slate of candidates for the various parties and causes is quite crowded. The seat is being fought by not just the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems and the Brexit Party, but also by a large undercard from the remains of the old Social Democratic Party, the English Democrats, UKIP, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, a bunch of pro-EU cheerleaders , a Christian party and a couple of self described ‘centrists’. Interestingly the Change UK Party or as they are also known ‘Chuka’s Cuckers’, does not appear to be on the list of candidates that I have seen.
The likelihood as I see it is that the ‘undercard’ parties the SDP, OMRLP, English Democrats may fall to the wayside electorally and votes wasted on these parties may not be any big issue unless the contest is as close as it was the last time that this seat was fought. If it is a close contest then those votes that were protest or comedy votes might have made a difference to the final result The criminal Onansanya won the seat but with only a 607 majority over the Conservatives and up until recently this seat was seen as a straight choice between Tories or Labour.
However, the creation of the Brexit Party and it’s success in the glorified opinion poll that is the Euro Parliament election, has disturbed the balance in the constituency a lot. It has made an already much publicised by-election a contest with much more riding on it for both the Brexit Party itself and for the shape of British politics in the years to come.
An election for a Westminster seat is, because of tribal voting and the First Past the Post voting system, a much more difficult thing to have success in than council seats or Euro Parliament seats. People vote different ways when it comes to who they want to represent them in the Commons than they do for Strasbourg of their local town hall. UKIP at their prime, although they did well in local and EU elections, didn’t crack Westminster to any appreciable extent. Out of all the challenger parties to the ‘Big Two’ it’s really only the 1980’s Social Democratic Party who managed to get their bums on the Green Benches at election time and succeed. Even then the SDP only lasted for a short while before merging with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats.
It remains to be seen whether the anniversary of the D-Day Landings is also a D-Day for British politics and introduce a credible challenger to the two main parties of Conservative and Labour? The various pollsters are predicting that the Brexit Party will do well at Peterborough but polling organisations have been wrong before. It could be that Labour mobilise the tribal and whipped mosque postal votes along with the naive student vote and keep the seat. The Tories could even retake the seat although the Tory brand has been significantly damaged by the Brexit debacle. The Tories could retake this seat if Tory voters take the view that it is more important to keep out a Labour Party socialist nutcase who supports Islamic and anti Israel causes, than to vote Brexit Party and send a message to Westminster.
June 6th might be the day that British politics changes and a win for the Brexit Party in Peterborough may be something for the party to build on. If there is a win for the Brexit Party then it could be the start of a massive shift in British politics although more solid evidence of that change will come if the Brexit Party can start to erode the majorities in the very many safe seats that
both Tories and Labour rely on at Westminster. It is one thing for a party to take a very marginal seat like Peterborough or as the SDP did in the 1980’s with Glasgow Hillhead, a somewhat marginal seat, but quite another to take a seat like Buckingham a solid Tory seat or Liverpool Riverside a solid Labour seat. This Peterborough by-election is the first real test of the Brexit Party’s support but the real ordeal by fire test for the party will be at a future General Election where it will be seen if this party has solid support or whether it’s supporters will melt back into one of the two main parties as UKIP’s supporters did with the Tories at the last General Election.
Are we facing a political D-Day that will be remembered by the historians, that is something that only the voters over the next few years can decide.
