A new poll showed support for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party had soared to a level higher than for the two main parties put together.
The Opinium survey for the Observer places the Brexit party on 34%, when people were asked how they intended to vote on 23 May, with Labour slipping to 21% and the Conservatives collapsing to just 11%. Ominously for Theresa May, support for the Tories at the European elections is now less than a third of that for Farage’s party, and below that for the Liberal Democrats, who are on 12%....The Opinium poll also makes grim reading for the Tories and Labour when voters were asked how they would vote at a general election. Labour is on 28%, while the Tories are on 22%, just one point ahead of the Brexit party on 21%....A ComRes poll for the Sunday Telegraph showed that if a Westminster general election were called, Labour would reap the largest share of the vote with 27%; the Brexit party would garner 20% ahead of the Conservatives on 19%. The Liberal Democrats would win 14%, followed by ChangeUK (7%) and the Greens (5%) with Ukip trailing on 2%.
It was not all that long ago that the PV campaign was urging people to vote in the European elections precisely as a kind of referendum -- they don't seem so keen now.
What clinching arguments would Remainers offer at this crucial moment?
both Tory and Labour MPs attempted belatedly to mount “stop Farage” operations....“Labour voters must turn out and vote to stop a far-right extremist claiming he represents Britain.”...Tony Blair says it is vital that Labour supporters go to the polls, even if they choose a party more clearly in favour of Remain than Labour....Blair says. “It is a vote for the Farage Brexit; or against it.”...A series of Conservative moderates demanded that the party take on Farage directly, rather than give him a free run in the campaign. The former education secretary Nicky Morgan said it was time to tackle the “politics of division” head on...Sam Gyimah, the former universities minister, said: “Harnessing grievance is Farage’s only card, but we know he’s never had a solid plan for our great country. We have vacated the pitch, and voters are flocking to him. Time to call him out.”...On Monday the acting leader of the pro-Remain party Change UK, Heidi Allen, will use a party political broadcast to challenge Farage to a television debate. Chuka Umunna, the former Labour MP who defected to the new party, said on Saturday night: “If you look beyond the razzmatazz, let’s not forget this is still the man responsible for whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment in this country with, for example, his Leave.EU ‘Breaking Point’ poster. But he is being given a free ride in these elections by a Brexit-supporting media. It’s about time this nasty, divisive politics was challenged, which is why we are calling for a leaders’ debate before polling day.”
And there might be just a hint of an internal Tory agenda too:
The former Conservative foreign minister Alistair Burt said: “...While we must address those voting Brexit, we should not be misled that only a hard-right agenda would do so, and reject leadership candidates if they pander to that...
So, business as usual, even now. Nothing positive to offer, only lots of negative distancing stuff about stopping Farage and his divisive views (apparently now shared, after all the hectoring, contempt and banging on and on by 34% of the electorate)..
The editorial does its best with the knocking copy:
On Europe, Farage has only ever stoked anti-EU sentiment without ever offering constructive fixes. He has consistently got away with telling untruths: that the EU is on the cusp of creating a pan-European army; that EU membership costs the UK £55m a day; that three-quarters of British law is made in Brussels. He has repeatedly praised Norway as a model for the UK’s relationship with the EU in the past, but last week denied it....Even worse is Farage’s recent history of deploying racist dogwhistles. During the 2014 European election campaign, he said he thought people had a “perfect right” to be concerned if Romanians moved in next door. He has said migrants with HIV/AIDS should be banned from entering the UK and has claimed 60% of people diagnosed with HIV every year were born abroad and that the NHS should be for “British people”. He also pledged in 2015 that Ukip would scrap much UK race discrimination law. During the referendum campaign, he unveiled the “Breaking Point” poster that depicted a queue of mostly non-white migrants, who actually turned out to be a group of refugees crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border. Last year, the Leave.EU campaign, co-founded by the Brexit party chairman, posted a tweet that featured an image of Sadiq Khan, inflated figures about the number of new mosques in London and dubbed the capital “Londonistan”.
Farage may now be trying to distance himself from all this. But it is part of the Brexit party’s identity...[and it is contagious] Mainstream politicians have cravenly chosen to dance to his tune, in doing so facilitating a culture in which politicians can mislead and lie without consequence [never had that before!] ... Conservative immigration policy has become steadily more extreme since 2010...The irony is May is an outrider: the public is far more pragmatic on immigration than the Conservative party; the proportion of the public whose hostility to immigration is driven by opposition to ethnicities and religions other than their own has fallen dramatically in the last few years.[ yet is still fuels support for Brexit?]
David Cameron only promised a referendum on a vague question that required no firm proposition, and thus no honesty, from those advocating for Leave in order to quell support for Ukip. [Poor misunderstood politician] During the referendum campaign, senior Conservatives such as Boris Johnson borrowed liberally from the Farage playbook, misleading the public about how much leaving the EU would free up for the NHS [the lie on the bus is still going] and that Turkey was on the cusp of joining the EU....Both May and Corbyn have embraced the deceit of the Leave campaign, misleading voters that there is somehow a Brexit that involves no difficult trade-offs, rather than levelling with them that if it goes ahead, there will be painful consequences.[We only had endless coverage of Project Fear to put the opposite view]
Farage,the fiendish manipulative Machiavellian figure (and simpleton at the same time) might have the last word:
both parties are on the brink of the ultimate capitulation: delivering Brexit, in the naive hope it will make the Farage threat go away. But he stands poised with a betrayal narrative regardless of what happens next: whether politicians hold a confirmatory referendum; whether we get a soft Brexit that leaves Britain a rule taker; or whether there is a hard Brexit that acutely widens regional inequalities. By swallowing the Farage message that Brexit can help fix Britain, Corbyn and May are as much agents of his success as the man himself.
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