Author Archives: Sam Phripp

The Independent has run an interview today with Jeremy Corbyn, outlining the Labour leader’s strategy moving forward – including his pledge that Labour MPs would back a dissolution of Parliament and an early General Election. I was previously a real supporter of an early General Election. Ultimately, I question Theresa May’s ability to hold her own party together through the Brexit negotiations, and I also think that it would provide an opportunity for the process to be amended or slowed by the more progressive forces within our country. This said – we need to be careful what we wish for.

My partner and I were having a conversation the other day, where I was ranting on about how it would all be wonderful – we Liberal Democrats would gain seats from the Conservatives in some of our former heartlands (it wouldn’t take a miracle for seats like Bath and Yeovil in the South West and seats like Twickenham to fall our way in London, for example) and we’d be able to pull the brakes on Brexit. But there’s another more worrying possibility that I’d like to let you into.

So, it’s Friday 3rd of March and we’re all still up, having sat there throughout the night as results have poured in. Things aren’t quite as we’d hoped, and we have that nagging feeling that we had in June, and that many of us had in November when Hillary Clinton was beaten by the blonde-haired Wotsit – the feeling of the ground slipping away from underneath you, and the feeling that you don’t really know your own neighbours any more. Yes, the Liberal Democrats have gained a lot of seats, maybe fifty or sixty, and that’s a good showing. But that isn’t the concern, because this is no victory for Liberalism. In former Labour heartland seats, where industry left thirty years ago to be replaced by absolutely nothing, an angry electorate, which flexed its muscles in the European referendum has elected a rash of UKIP MPs. There aren’t hundreds, but there might be fifty or more. The seeds of their victories have been sewn over generations – not because Labour isn’t tough enough on immigration, but because Labour said that it stood for the working man but now they’re seen to stand for nobody. When voters have looked to the Parliamentary Labour Party for cues that they can be trusted, that they have even basic competence when it comes to Government, they’ve seen Shadow Ministers resigning, pitiful performances at PMQs and Jeremy Corbyn pretending not to be able to find a seat on a train when plenty of seats were available, and then squirming for what felt like days when he got found out.