We’re on the home straight now.
Our second most read post of this year was actually written in 2016, but presumably became important again during the General Election.
#2 How did our constituencies vote in the EU referendum?
Duncan Brack’s commentary on Chris Hanratty’s analysis of the vote in present and former Lib Dem seats challenged the party to come up with ways to appeal to Leave voters as much as to Remain voters.
Given that almost two-thirds of the seats in total (three-quarters in England and Wales) voted to leave, that’s quite a strong skew towards remain-voting areas – as we might expect – and it helps to identify some of the seats we might hope to win back at the next election on the back of pro-remain feeling.
But let’s not forget that we need to win seats in areas that voted leave too. I would expect that Liberal Democrat voters in those areas were predominantly remain, but by no means all of them were – and we also know that, overall, a third of Liberal Democrat voters voted leave.
So while I believe that Tim Farron’s declaration that Liberal Democrats see the UK’s future lying within the EU as absolutely right, we also need to respond to the concerns that drove people to vote leave – including economic and political inequality, powerlessness, the feeling that they’ve been ignored by the elites, and much more. Liberal Democrats and our predecessor parties have historically stood up for communities on the political and economic periphery of the country, and we need to keep on doing so.
You will have to wait until tomorrow for our most popular post to be revealed. Any guesses?
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4 Comments
C.F.P.
There is a lot of difference between seeking a vote on a broad platform of issues in which voters have to decide which of their concerns really matter – and an election called and debated largely on only one single issue held only one year after a referendum on that same issue. But first you have to possess and be good at selling that broad platform of issues and secondly you have to persuade voters of the need to look beyond the one big issue.
Intriguingly, this was also listed by LDV as number 2 in the LDV postings of 2016!
https://www.libdemvoice.org/ldvs-top-twelve-of-2016-2-how-did-our-constituencies-vote-in-the-eu-referendum-52831.html
I think come the next GE we will be discovering some perspective around Brexit. It is becoming more blurred as to what Brexit means. If we remain in the customs unions and single market, would that be acceptable? The time might come when if we showed some flexibility we might gain a substantial portion of that centre ground vote that is traditionally ours.