Evidence

A day or two ago, I read a blog article on where UKIP’s vote comes from and who it threatens published on the LSE blog site by Evans & Mellon. They say, they,

… examine the voting history of UKIP supporters, finding that the party is attracting, primarily, disaffected former Labour voters from the Conservatives and elsewhere, and that the working class basis of UKIP has been markedly over-stated. On the whole, however, it is the Conservatives, not Labour, who have most to fear from UKIP.

This is an important piece of evidence of deep inconvenience to those arguing that we have to do more than listen to UKIPs voters, usually an excuse to explore the cess pitc corners of the immigration control policy cupboard.. I tweeted it as I thought it was interesting and one of the retweets, emphasised the factual nature of the paper.


https://twitter.com/DaveLevy/status/816327113515134976

Thanks for the retweet Red Labour, howver we need to remember that

“you can’t reason people out of positions that they didn’t reason themselves into”.

I made a storify to document my sources,

 …

London Labour in Europe

London Labour in Europe

I attended the lunchtime meeting hosted by three of London’s Labour MEPs. They started by saying thank you to the members at the meeting for the efforts made to secure London’s fantastic result in the Euro elections. The meeting was framed as “How to fight UKIP?” The old canard, started by Farage that London is inoculated from UKIP, because we’re young, liberal and cosmopolitan, the truth in my mind is that London’s multiculturalism is its UKIP anti-body. One of the attendees, spoke on dealing with UKIP, which I summarised in this tweet, …

Sort orders and Strasbourg

Sort orders and Strasbourg

I thought I’d share some more thoughts on the European Pariament Election results. The article looks at some sort order silliness on the London ballot paper and then looks at the success or otherwise of the European People’s Party and the gains and losses in the European Parliament by euro-party. In London, the Liberal Democrats came 5th, failing to win a seat, but next after them was a party called 4Freedoms. This was the first on the ballot paper. It was in fact the slate of the European People’s Party, a role once held by the Tories but Cameron had the Tories walk out of the EPP, thus denying them the opportunity to win votes in the UK and denying them another 20 seats on top of their No. 1 spot; they won 214 seats. This may become important as the European Parliament votes and elects its leadership. The reason for putting themselves on the ballot paper is twofold, one, some expatriate Europeans may prefer to vote for a Christian Democrat slate rather than the Tories and it gave their lead candidate, Jean Claude Juncker the opportunity to collect votes, if not seats. …