Monday, February 18, 2019

Split Ends

Who would have imagined that the Conservative Party would be the last to split over Brexit?

In December, 8.5% of the Libdem parliamentary party resigned the party whip over the issue. Ok, that's only 1 person...

Just over a week ago Nigel Farage registered a new party, and claims that 100,000 people have 'signed up', though there's some debate over whether that means they're supporting it, or have just subscribed to the live feed for a bit of political entertainment. This follows the resignation of most frontline UKIP figures over the last year.

Today the 7 Labour MPs  - at only 3% a disappointingly small split compared to the Libdems - handed in their cards. It's hard to see where they'll end up without some real heavyweights in the ranks (Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn etc. - Burnhams Twitter feed has been strangely quiet today). But there are plenty of moderate Labour MPs facing deselection from their own constituencies due to Momentum infiltration. Like Russell Crowe's gladiators, they may decide they're better sticking together than being picked off one by one.

That leaves the Greens - who with only 1 MP can't really split - and the Conservatives as the only national UK parties still in one piece. For the PM it's a staggering achievement, in both senses of the word. I'm guessing that being in power is a key gravitational pull on some of Mrs Mays backbenchers, they all saw what happened to Douglas Carswell.

Update: ooops, spoke too soon. Still, they were last to split, even if only by 48 hours.

Update 2: no reference to the Conservative Party on Justine Greenings Twitter feed or homepage. It's quite an achievement to complete her whole biography with no mention of the Conservatives either.


No comments:

Post a Comment