So, it’s all over bar the counting.
First of all, thanks to every single person who pounded the streets and melted phone lines today getting out the Remain vote. You are all legends. I want to say a particular thanks to the fantastic West Lothian Stronger In team.
If you are not going to a count, the best thing I can advise is having a nice mug of cocoa and going to bed. Seriously. Set your alarm for 4-ish. It’s likely that nothing is going to even start to become clear before then and, as Stephen Bush wrote in his guide in the New Statesman, it’s likely that Leave will be well ahead in the early part of the night and that’s just bad for the blood pressure.
This has been the most unpleasant few weeks in politics that I can remember. It was when someone told me in all seriousness outside Morrisons this afternoon that if we voted to stay in, 76 million Turkish people would be arriving here in September. It’s total nonsense and straight from a Leave campaign leaflet.
I asked them to think about how that would happen. When in history had an entire population of a country just upped and legged it to somewhere else? I asked them to think about the logistics of moving half way across a continent. How much would it cost? What arrangements would have to be made. I asked them to think about the number of flights that would entail. Would there be enough capacity for all those people? Of course not. I wish I’d brought to mind Meral Ece’s oft used stat that only 7000 Turkish people resident in Turkey actually have passports.
They got it in the end, but, sadly, because one side had been caught out in a lie, it didn’t make them trust the other lot. It made me more angry about Leave’s cynical manipulation, their barely disguised racism. I don’t actually think that any of Leave’s key figures are fit and proper people to hold office of any sort. I don’t think a Prime Minister should have them in his cabinet and he should be upfront about saying why.
It annoys me that people talk about the claims and hyperbole on both side as if there were some moral equivalence about them. Sure, I thought some of the stuff from Stronger In was a bit OTT. That staged “emergency budget” thing was all wrong because nobody was listening. The Remain camp’s failure was in building a compelling case that Britain’s economy would suffer if we left the EU. It would. Of that there is no doubt. There was just way too much egg put in the pudding so nobody believed it. This, however, was not the same as conducting a thoroughly deceitful campaign which lied to the British people on Turkey, on £350 million a week.
If Remain wins, Cameron should sack Gove, Priti Patel, Penny Mordaunt and all the other Conservative ministers from his Government and he should say quite explicitly that he won’t tolerate people who tell lies and appeal to people’s basest instincts and build, then play on, fear of the other. I’m not going to hold my breath for any of this to happen, but it should. Someone needs to lay down a marker that this sort of politics will not be tolerated. Ever again.
Tomorrow, we can think about what happens next, but in the meantime, discuss the results in the comments. I will be at the count, but the rest of the team will be updating this post with any stories of particular interest to Liberal Democrats.
It’s going to be a scary few hours.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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40 Comments
I suspect remain might win. Remain is the establishment. I still lean towards leave and voted that way.
I started off slightly in favour of remain but the leave campaign convinced me. They convinced me mainly because the remainers refused to acknowledge how immigration had hurt the working class and just seemed to brand those concerns as the rambling of racists.
As a Brexiter I would say that if remain win, even if they win by a tiny margin, then the result has to be respected and we cannot have another referendum for at least a generation. I hope the otherside feel the same?
This question has been going on to long and the only way to answer it was with a referendum.
Can any lib dems tell me, why this didn’t happen five years ago under the coalition? Why has it taken a majority Tory government for democracy to be allowed?
I’m not sure it would be wise for Cameron to sack anyone for a while yet. Whatever the result the UK is more deeply divided than I have ever known it. England and Wales appear to be split 50/50 on this issue and now has to be a time of forgive and forget – on both sides. Lets not make matters worse by going after the leaders of the leave campaign.
“Cameron should sack Gove, Priti Patel, Penny Mordaunt and all the other Conservative ministers from his Government and he should say quite explicitly that he won’t tolerate people who tell lies”
But the trouble is Cameron also told lies, including on the Turkey issue where he has been trying to fast-track their membership despite it being ridiculous. This started badly with the claim of having won major concessions from other members that frankly amounted to near nothing we didn’t already have. He would need to sack himself. I’m afraid the Remain leadership led a very poor campaign and assuming Remain win it will be because of all that grass roots legwork despite not because of Cameron. It was the Scottish women, Sturgeon and Davidson who impressed most, and I hope it will be enough.
I am not sure Carons advice is right; if the rumours are true the result may become clear quite early. We could get some cheering in & still go to bed at a reasonable hour.
Caron
I know it’s been a busy time for you, but I think you mean 7 million not 7 thousand Turks resident in Turkey hold passports.
On moral equivalence: what I don’t like is the outrage from many remainers when people say they don’t want Turkey to be part of the EU even if they meet the EU criteria. Why is protecting culture outrageous?
There’s many feminists who are concerned about culture too, which is how France banned the niqab with cross-party support. Other negative things come from other cultures too, as well as positive things.
I support religious freedom, but not feeling able to discuss these things is partly why many voted leave.
Eddie
The constitution of Turkey is based on three principles-
1.”secularism, social equality, equality before law”
2.”the Republican form of government”
3.”the indivisibility of the Republic and of the Turkish Nation”.
These cannot be changed.
Whatever the result, we are going to end with a country split more or less down the middle. Not sure how that really helps anyone very much.
The results in newcastle suggest Brexit is leading. I’m not sure it is though. I think remain are still favorates and that the country might actually be more divided across regions than people thought. Apparently there are reports of around 70% remain in London councils according to the lady on the bbc.
If remain win the political establishment owe it to look honestly at how people in certain areas have been hurt by the EU. And the Brexit voters owe it to the country to respect the result.
The EU just isn’t that popular. Oddly it looks like a high turn out is actually benefiting leave.
Anyone who lives in the north of England knew these results were coming. I just hope London is as pro-european as people say, otherwise it’s goodbye to the EU and most likely hello Prime Minister Boris!
Let’s see what London brings – but there seems to be a clear trend emerging: small town, rural and suburban England voting leave on very high turn outs, Scotland voting remain on lower turnouts and Norn Iron being well Norn Iron. It’s a damming (but not unexpected) indictment of the rotten remain campaign that it failed to enthuse its own base.
I’ve got to admit that even though I voted leave, I was not in favour of holding a referendum and feel that it is very much The Conservative Party’s folly. It could have been avoided by pointing out that voting tory in 2015 was far more destabilising and dangerous to the economy than voting Labour. I think even I may even have said it once or twice on LDV at the time.
This is a plebiscite and plebiscites can be very chaotic because the people never really care that much for their rulers.
@Allan Brame “Whatever the result, we are going to end with a country split more or less down the middle. Not sure how that really helps anyone very much.”
In many ways I hope that a very close result, in either direction, could be a good thing.
If we exit, it creates a strong argument for membership of the EEA with the EU-lite consequences of that. If we remain, the threat of Referendum 2 might strengthen our leaders’ negotiations within the EU. And in either case, it looks like the political classes – including Lib Dems – will have to address the sincere non-racist non-xenophobic concerns that many have about the consequences of immigration.
Glenn “This is a plebiscite and plebiscites can be very chaotic because the people never really care that much for their rulers.”
… and the rulers never seem to care much for their people 🙁
Its hard to see how a result either way can settle this now. Another Referendum after a year of reflection might do it; or we could split Britain in two.
I’m beginning to get the impression that if Brexit wins, the narrative will be that it’s all Jeremy Corbyn’s fault. Poor guy!
And the result here in Glasgow shoots remain back into the lead!
Brexit has won, now – there aren’t enough remain-positive areas left to cancel out the leave lead, and the signs coming in from some of them aren’t positive in any case. Time to concede (even though the BBC either hasn’t worked it out yet, or is just prolonging the suspense to make a good programme).
a campaign lost on social media – I certainly didn’t have anywhere to go to counter huge lists of dubious, negative anti-EU claims. The Remain campaign needed to be more positive, and instead it became the immigration referendum.
Absolutely no consolation whatsoever but it is extraordinary in a safe seat Tory seat like this (East Hants) that the Tories had so few activists to muster on the ground.
Tunbridge Wells counting area
Remain 35676
Leave 29320
majority 6356
spoilt 43
Brexit have won. BBC have called it for Brexit by about 52-48 and many others called it earlier.
I feel sad, but the benefit is that it will send a message to politicos that they need to start listening to the public more.
We may have an election before the end of the year.
Remain take a grand slam of every area in Scotland. The mandate for Scots to retain their EU citizenship could not be clearer.
Now that the result is in and Leave has won the day, we must all accept that result and move on from blaming people for getting it wrong and voting the wrong way, or blaming the lies of the leave campaign. This has been the constant refrain on Lib-Dem voice.
Where do we go from here?
Here in Scotland, do we work towards an independent Scotland within Europe?
In England people did not want what the party offered by our party – why not? How do we in the party react to that and plan for the future and a new politics in the post EU era?
In Europe, has the ship of the EU now hit the iceberg and will other countries see the writing on the wall and head for the lifeboats?
Now that Cameron has announced he is to go – what next?
Interesting times indeed.
Should have read – What was offered by our party.
John Barrett
The people did not respond positively to the Lib Dems simply because the party has no credibility with the electorate. We were irrelevant to the debate. Lets pray that there is not an election in the autumn with Boris Johnson seeking support for his premiership. It would be a disaster from every angle. Maybe we should move to Scotland, encourage a second independence referendum and join the EU!
Let’s be honest – the Remain campaign (cross-party) was a shambles and all parties need to take a share of responsibility.
Cameron agreed to rules which prevented parties working together (admittedly this affected Leave too) and although he made some media appearances he did not take most of his own party with him, Corbyn was a joke and didnt take the vote seriously at all and Nick Clegg presided over a General Election campaign which was also a shambles which is the reason the referendum happened in the first place.
Yes, I have no choice but to accept the result (unless I emigrate which I am seriously considering) but if we and the other parties carry on campaigning like this, none of us will ever win an election again and there is a real risk that the English nationalist parties will triumph which is what really scares me.
If Remain wins, Cameron should sack Gove, Priti Patel, Penny Mordaunt and all the other Conservative ministers from his Government
Given the reaction of the markets this morning, ALL MP’s and elected officials who stood for Leave should be summarily dismissed for gross misconduct in public office; given all the warnings, it not as if anyone can say they didn’t know it would happen…
P.S. I think it must have varied from area to area as to how well voters responded to us – in Mole Valley the Lib Dems carried the whole campaign with hardly any help from anybody else but Remain still got 53%. I’m guessing this was also true in Kingston, Cambridge, South Lakeland etc?
I think we could actually do very well in an election now because many Conservatives voters who support Europe are unlikely to vote Conservative again.
In the sad hunt for positives, I’ll just point out that this has finally nailed the lie that you can’t get any major manifesto promises enacted without joining the government…
Watching the results come in last night, it became clear that we are a deeply divided nation. I had expected that Leave would do well in the North East because people there are still suffering from the loss of industry and from the latest recession but then results came in from other areas, the country towns, the seaside towns, parts of the North West where I now live and mostly the results told the same story. Leave were doing better than expected where they were winning and Remain doing worse than expected where they were winning. The cities became our hope and even they could not make the numbers stack up for Remain.
So, another thing became clear. People had re-enfranchised themselves to vote leave. There was a higher turnout than normal on council estates, the little guys were seizing their democratic opportunity to give the establishment, the experts, the intellectuals, the well established political parties the shock of their lifetimes. The alienated, the low wage earners had caused a democratic revolution to occur. Unfortunately it was not in our favour and I believe they had been misled by the Leave campaign to put all the blame for their woes onto the EU.
So, what do we as a party do now? I believe we must do what our political principles tell us to do. Respect democracy and fight for the little guy. It would be all too easy to say they are all idiots, the Leave campaign told lies and all the other things unhappy Remainers have been saying on Facebook. Instead I think we should be fighting for those people who have been so easily misled. They have not shared in the UK’s economic success as a member of the EU, they have been let down by experts who failed to predict the economic crash, they have been let down by all three main parties who have ignored their pain, they are frightened about having to live with too many people they don’t understand, who are alien to them and they thought they had nothing to lose if we left the EU.
We know they were wrong. Events will prove it and we must be ready to win them over to our cause when they realise that the charismatic leaders they have just put their trust in have also let them down. This is our opportunity, this is our duty, we must fight for the underprivileged and we must win.
I voted remain. There is one silver lining to Boris holding a general election to confirm his premiership. He might not have given notice to the EU under article 50 by then. He is sensibly dithering now.
On Thursday night the BBC results programme had a short interview with Paddy Ashdown. He asked John Curtis a question about postal votes but didn’t get a straight answer and the subject was dropped.
However postal votes were the key to Leaves success.In simple terms it is likely that Leave polled 2 million more votes than remain of the postal votes.On polling day itself it is likely that Remain won the day 51:49 but this narrow lead was insufficient to overcome Leaves 2 million majority from postal votes.
Below the detailed calculations I have made.
There were 46.5 million registered voters of which 27%, 12.6 million were postal.Postal turnout is higher than polling day turnout and was likely 80% which gives 10 million postal votes.
There are two reasons to suppose that the split between the favored Leave.First most postal voting took place in early to mid June when the Leave opinion poll majority was highest.Second postal votes are skewed towards older people and it this group who were most likely to vote out.A 60:40 split in favor of Leave is therefore likely,giving them a 2 million majority.
If the postal vote totals(6 million Leave,4 million Remain are subtracted from the overall
total referendum votes(17.4m Remain,16.1 million ) then we get a polling station vote of 11.4m (48.4%) Leave(48.4%)and 12.1m(51.6%) Remain a remain majority of 0.7 miilion but not enough to offset the 2million Leave majority from postal votes.
The resignation of the British Commissioner leaves a gap,
which Liberal Democrats should consider filling,
preferably without causing a bye-election,
(before the SNP do).
As we all know being in coalition may have been good for the country but not good for the party. One factor that dominated the campaigns was that we and to some extent the SNP and Welsh Nationalists had little or no coverage yet Farage was never off the TV, they have one MP and one MSP (may be more). Yet the media ignored much of the political spectrum. I believe Loughborough University came to the same opinion. As for the referendum I feel to make major constitutional changes a simply majority is not enough. Nationally I dont feel leave or remain won to Brexit or not 60 per cent minimum of the vote. That should have applied to the Scottish Referendum as well.
Richard Underhill 27th Jun ’16 – 1:14pm
The resignation of the British Commissioner leaves a gap, which Liberal Democrats should consider filling …
Nick Clegg would make an absolutely brilliant Commissioner and already has an in-depth knowledge of the workings of the EU and Commission.
Why the Lib-Dems Should Support a Re-Run of the Referendum.
1. The decision to leave the EU is far too important to be maintained by misguided notions of political correctness or fairness .
2. Nor should we talk about “The will of the people”. The people were misled.
3. It is the job of real leaders to tell their citizens when they have been stupid.
4. The “Brexit” vote was not a considered decision about the EU instead it was a protest vote because people do not like the state of our country and were misled into the belief that leaving the EU would make things better.
5. The “Brexit” campaign misled the citizens because it said two things:-
* That there would be negligible adverse consequences of leaving the EU
(which it labelled as “project fear”).
* That it would be easy to negotiate the kind of arrangements which would
be in the interests of the UK.
6. As can already be seen both these major planks of the “Brexit” campaign are drastically untrue. This means that the UK citizens were conned into supporting Brexit.
7. It would not be possible to reduce EU immigration for years while we negotiated our exit from the EU – and maybe not then since it might be a condition of our post EU negotiations.
8. As it becomes apparent that these things are the real facts of an exit from the EU lots of OUT people will realise that they have been mistaken and will want to change the decision.