All The Lonely People. Why Did People Vote Brexit?

There are various theories to explain why some groups and regions voted heavily Brexit and others didn't.  The most annoying one, and the one most at variance with what I actually saw is that of Daniel Hannan.  In his view Brexit was a triumph of the smirking classes over the working classes.   None of the white working classes that I know, with one exception, voted Brexit.  And he changed his mind soon afterwards.  In fact all the vocal Brexiters I know are quite the opposite - middle class and very much not manual labourers.

Individual Associate EU Membership Reveals Brexit As Pointless

When the idea of individual UK citizens being allowed dual citizenship of the EU came out, I thought it was basically a political stunt.  I rather agreed with the motivation behind it and thought it was rather a neat stunt.  It was a fairly benign stunt as well since it was one that nobody could lose from.  The furious reaction from leavers was both amusing and also sort of the point.  They were probably already imagining how embarrassing having perhaps a million British people volunteering for EU citizenship would look for their case.

Leavers and Remainers Debate What To Do Next

I've seen the above popping up in a couple of places on Twitter and Facebook.  There is a similar one which is written to make the remainer look truculent and petulant.  I don't know which one came first but this one seems to have been spread around more so I am guessing it is the first one.

In fact if my experience is anything to go by this would be rather more polite than the average discussion that is going on.  I haven't seen much in the way of people coming together to constructively debate the best way forward.  It seems that leavers still want to leave and remainers still want to remain.  Both sides want to blame the other.

What I have noticed though is that people haven't really thought through their tactics very clearly yet.  Remainers haven't yet realised that the best way to get back in, and possibly to wreck the whole project and to end up actually staying is to push for the hardest fastest Brexit possible.  It is going to be much harder to argue to stop the whole thing if the negotiations stretch over years and years and end up with workable compromises.  By the time that lot has finished it will be the news story nobody is interested in and it will be very difficult to get any enthusiasm for starting a new set to get us back in again.

I Want To Remain But I Hope The Government Wins The Supreme Court Case

The court case is going into Bleak House mode at the moment, but pondering the constitution is an interesting diversion from worrying about the serious stuff coming up next year.  The really important Brexit matters are trade and business and when those talks get going we will really discover just how good or bad an idea it was.  But as nothing to do with the actual situation is going on lets spend some time on what leaving the EU actually means.

Sleaford - good news for Brexit so bad news for the country

It's bad luck for anyone casting a vote in a byelection at the moment if they don't want to send a message about Brexit.  It's the only message anyone is interested in.  So what does the one in Sleaford tell us?  I think that combined with Richmond it tells us quite a lot.  And I find what it tells us pretty depressing.  Lets look at what the result means for the parties.

The Last Thing We Need Right Now Is A Court Case

There's a lot of talk about the court case that is on at the moment.  I was a bit surprised to discover that the government doesn't appear to have the power to take us out of the EU without an act of parliament.  I'd have thought it fell under foreign policy.  But the noises coming out of the court sound like that isn't going to be what the Supreme Court will find.  So that's an educational experience.  It just goes to show that not everything is as it at first appears.  So for example when I see a person or a newspaper attacking the independence of the courts, my first thought is that they are a fascist.  But perhaps they are just not very good at knowing where their own best interests lie.

Brexit Violence? Some Worrying Thoughts

I am troubled by something written on Political Betting Forum by a guy called Pagan.  He made a very good point, though he didn't make it tremendously well.  He pointed out that if people who want change can't get it by the ballot box then they will feel justified in turning to violence to get it.  He managed to make it sound like a threat, though I don't think that was what he actually intended.

Will Sleaford Cancel Out Richmond?

Typical Lincolnshire Church

I spent this Sunday morning reading the coverage of the Richmond by election in the papers and following some discussions of it in a few forums.  Although absolutely nobody foresaw the result, this doesn't seem to stop there being some pretty firm conclusions about what it all means.  There's a line of argument from some Brexit enthusiasts that because the Lib Dems scored fewer than the nominal number of remain voters for the constituency that it represented a swing away from support for EU membership.  I admire their creativity but the overall feeling was that whatever the details that this result was bad for Brexit and good for either staying in or at least pushing towards the least extreme version of leaving.

Maybe Richmond By Election Is Important After All

Richmond might turn out to be more important than I thought

I wasn't particularly interested in the Richmond by-election when I went to bed last night.  Based on the last one, it was predictable that the Lib Dems would pull in a fair few votes.  But they didn't win the last one and the majority they were seeking to overturn was much bigger this time.  So it didn't look like anything much was going to happen.  But in politics winning is a big deal.  And those extra few thousand votes that put the Lib Dem in parliament might turn out to be very significant.

Having your cake and eating it

The real big news on Brexit at the moment is that Germany is blocking discussion of the status of EU citizens living in UK and soon to be former EU citizens living in the EU outside the UK. They are sticking to the line that nothing will be discussed until Article 50 is invoked and the leaving process starts officially. But although this iilustrates just how weak the UK's barganing position, this was something that was completely predictable.   More fun is the revelation of an official's notes from a secret UK government meeting about Brexit.

Paul Nuttall New Leader of UKIP

Paul Nuttall looks like a right wing reactionary, and may well be one

Another month, another UKIP leader.  We are all used to Nigel Farage resigning and coming back, so there is a sort of feeling that this isn't much of a story.  The BBC however are taking it very seriously giving it top of the bill on the news broadcast I am listening to.  The pitch he is taking is to take up the role of the patriotic working classes who have abandoned Labour and are now looking for a party that truly represents their views.

Five Tangible Benefits of the EU

Rhetorical tricks don't always work the way you want them to.  Early on in the referendum campaign, before I had started thinking about it much, Nigel Farage was on the television. At this point I still found him refreshingly different from other politicians so I listened to what he was saying.  He said to imagine we were outside the EU.  Would we want to join?  It was a clever way of putting it because it implied that we obviously wouldn't.  It was very effective because it meant you had to either accept his  assertion or come up with a positive reason to join the EU.  So it was harder work to disagree with him than to accept his premise.

What if we Brexit and nobody turns up?

Pro-Brexit Campaigners Failed to Fill Parliament Square

As I write there may still be some pro-Brexit supporters in London but it is already clear that a protest that I have seen promoted on leaver blogs and groups online for several weeks now has been a complete flop.  The Sun and the Express are talking it up but the more reliable media are suggesting that attendees only just got into three figures.  This is pretty pathetic.  I have always felt that the whole anti-EU thing was pretty shallow and was only kept going by increasing hysterical coverage in the media.  But even I thought they could muster more than a church hall's worth of activists.

The True Farage Revealed - A Quisling.

Quisling collaborating with Nazis

I suppose if you aren't very old and don't read WW2 history books you might not have come across the term quisling.  It comes from the major who fronted the puppet government of Norway during the German occupation.  His name for some reason became the generic term for anyone who collaborates with the enemy in this way, with the extra implication that the motivation is to exert some power over their fellow countrymen on the back of occupying forces.

Labour's 170 Questions

The Labour Party has quite enough problems of its own without Brexit to add to them.  But as it happens Brexit is a major challenge to the party.  Although it is exaggerated, there is no doubt that a lot of the working class people who Labour is supposed to represent voted for Brexit.  But the majority of Labour voters, and a large majority of Labour members voted against it.  It is a tricky situation.  Even though the popularity of Brexit is beginning to decline, it might still be an issue that could alienate people that Labour needs.  But it isn't going to be easy to come up with a message that might be acceptable to this group of people without offending the many people who are very strong supporters of continued membership.

Fatties Voted Brexit

Is Voting Brexit Like Eating Cake?

I have wondered from time to time what it is that makes some people left wing and some right wing.  I have a pretty well developed radar and can usually guess someone I met's politics before the subject comes up.  But I have taken a long time to put my finger on what it is that gives the game away.  I have never thought of being pro or anti the EU as being something that was particularly left wing or right wing, and there are plenty of very left wing leavers and and very right wing remainers.  But nonetheless there does seem to be some kind of affinity between leavers and a particular kind of conservatism.  And I think that Brexiters in general have the same general qualities that a lot of right wingers have.

Never Mind Leaked Memos - Keep An Eye On The Job Adverts

Leaked memo reveals the bleedin' obvious

Today's Brexit story is that a leaked document reveals that there is as yet no coherent plan for Brexit.  This is not too much of a revelation.  This far in, had a plan been in operation it would be obvious.  Even it were to be kept secret or partially secret it would be possible to get some idea of what was going on from what the government were actually doing.  As it is, it is clear from their actions that there is as yet no plan and no strategy.

Could Blair Block Brexit?

Love him or hate, nowadays you probably can't afford him

I don't think that Tony Blair has any plans to do anything remotely like this, but I did wonder if he might be able to use his rather unique position in British politics to do the apparently impossible and actually stop Brexit.  This is how I think it could be done.

I Hate The Americanisation Of Politics That UKIP Is Spearheading

American politics no doubt suits Americans but it is a pretty bad fit for the UK.  There are no end of things that simply can't be translated from one system to the other.  Take for example the way judges work.  In the UK the judges are independent.  There is a long history behind this, but the upshot is that the role of the courts is to interpret the will of parliament as expressed by votes and debates in the House of Commons.  Top judges are appointed by the government of the day but can't be influenced once they are appointed.  On the whole the system works well.

Price Rises On The Way - Surely This Will Affect Opinion?

I have included a link below to avoid to a price rise story, but it is my own prices that I am currently grappling with.  I have to quote for some business in a non-EU country and even though it is Sunday I need to get on with it.   Costing special jobs is always a problem but now I have to bear in mind that prices I have given for similar jobs in the past now look 15% or so cheaper to my customer than they did before the vote.  I also need to bear in mind that my direct costs will be going up, and that they profit I need to make on something I will probably not get paid for until 3 or 4 months now will need to be higher if I am to generate the cash I need to stay in business.

Some Details Of Brexit's Adverse Effect On Trade

Should you blog when you are angry?  There are lots of things you shouldn't do when you are angry.  Maybe blogging is one of them. Anyway I am angry.  I have just got paid.  That doesn't usually make me angry and I sent of my customary 'received with thanks' e-mail to confirm that the international bank transfer had gone through okay.   But I had priced the job in Australian dollars.  It had made sense to do do so at the time - this was all a long time before Brexit.   As a result now I am getting the money I have rather less than I was anticipating.  The fall in the value of the pound has given my customer a bonus and me a penalty.  I hope it makes him more likely to place business with me in the future, but who knows.

Remain Back In The Lead In The Polls

Not much of a story but as I am hoping this blog will be a record of the process, the first poll to show majority support for remaining in the EU popped up this morning.

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/tories-best-party-handle-brexit/

That has been the direction of travel since the referendum - in fact if my reading of the numbers is correct since about a week before the referendum - so not much of a shock.  The difference is still too small to undermine the democratic mandate of the actual referendum. But modest as this news is, it is more significant than the story generating the lurid headlines this morning.  The probability of Brexit simply fizzling out from lack of interest is still not great, but it is a possibility nonetheless.

Enemies of the People Are Becoming Rather Numerous

My opinion that yesterday's court judgement requiring the government to debate Brexit negotiations in parliament was a bit of a non-event wasn't shared by this morning's tabloids.  Both the Mail and the Express were completely over the top, with the Sun not far behind.  Out of touch judges now join the Mail's rather long list of undesirables along with migrants, Scotland, leave voters, metropolitan elites, the Labour Party and life saving vaccines.  The big surprise is the 'enemies of the people' phrase.  It sounds a bit like Mao's cultural revolution.  I'd always assumed that the Mail's totalitarian government of choice would be a fascist one rather than a communist one.  Well, whatever.

High Court Non Event

The news today is that the High Court has ruled that the legislation enabling Brexit needs to be passed by the House of Commons.  The pound has recovered on the news but it doesn't seem to me that anything has really changed here.  The Conservatives won an election on a manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on EU membership.  They cannot now choose to ignore the result of that referendum and they are obliged to support its conclusion.  The only way they can get out of this is to dissolve parliament and fight the election again on an anti-Brexit programme.  Unfortunately for the country they show no sign of doing this and so Brexit it must be.

Bad News Is Bad News For Remainers

Since the Brexit vote relatively little has happened economically.  The tills have continued ringing and people have continued to draw their incomes and pay their bills.  If anything, it has been a few months that have been pretty good for most people's personal prosperity and there haven't been too many obvious Brexit losers yet.  The pro-Brexit press, which is most of the press, haven't failed to point these things out and gleefully portray remainers as not only wrong in general but wrong in particular.

A Positive Case For Brexit

Here's a tip for Brexiters.  If you really want to annoy remainers, don't insult them.  All that does is confirm the idea that Brexit is simply a howl of rage against nothing in particular by people who just love complaining.  Negative arguments are powerful because they are emotional and full of energy and conviction.  When they are also strong arguments they are unbeatable.  But directed against people who don't buy the original premise, they just sound stupid and they make the person putting them forward appear unhinged.

Will The Brexit Ship Ever Leave The Port?

Will The Brexit Ship Ever Leave Port

There hasn't been much Brexit news or polling over the last couple of days and it remains something that nobody I meet in real life brings up as a subject of conversation.  But I think the obstacles in the way of a smooth transition out of the EU have risen somewhat.  The official process still hasn't started and isn't due to start for another 5 months.  We are in a sort of phoney war.  But the dispositions are being taken up, and the Nissan story is the most illuminating.

Brexit By Election? Hardly

Brexit was popular with the old, the uneducated and the unemployed.  It failed to appeal to the wealthy, the educated or people in full time employment.  Basically if you own stuff, know stuff or do stuff then Brexit is not for you.  This is a bit of a problem if you want to build a national consensus against Brexit.  The kind of arguments that make sense for one group aren't going to apply to another.  Job losses?  We don't have jobs.  Lower economic growth?  We are broke already.  Opportunities to work abroad?  We don't even fancy going on holiday abroad.

The Aussies Don't Want To Talk To The UK About Trade

Making decisions is tough, and even when you get them right it is easy to delude yourself about how clever you were.  I was pretty sure that leaving the EU was a bad idea when I voted to stay in three months ago.  Events since have confirmed it was the better of the two options.  But if I am honest I was much to blasé about it and hadn't fully considered all the possible downsides.

Language Matters

There was a widely reported story that the EU's Brexit negotiator was going to insist on carrying out the negotiations over the departure of the UK in French.  As with so much to do with the EU, this was made up in Fleet Street.  But the reason it was a big story is that language matters.  Bismarck, who knew a thing or two about power, once said that the most significant development in the nineteenth century was that English became the dominant language of the North American continent.  He may well have said it through gritted teeth.

Is The Brexit Project Failing?

I didn't start out as particularly pro-Europe.  I was 12 when we joined and it all seemed like a good idea at the time.  There was a debate about it but it never really got me very excited one way or the other.  By 1983 when Labour ran on a programme of leaving the EU it struck me not so much wrong as anachronistic.  I was not at all sure it was a good idea, but it didn't seem all that big a deal.  I certainly didn't think through the implications.  After that Labour came back round to being pro-Europe and I thought it was back off the table for good.  Even when UKIP became prominent it didn't seem to me that leaving the EU was actually conceivable.  Apart from their headline policy I quite liked UKIP at first.  I thought the consensus at Westminster could do with a bit of a shake up.

A Trade Deal With Canada On Day One Of Brexit

One of the many groundless accusations thrown at the EU during the referendum campaign was that the EU is undemocratic and unaccountable.  This always struck me as the feeblest of the arguments against.  The EU certainly is democratic enough when compared to other political systems around the world, but it bears up particularly well in comparison to the UK.  If you don't like the European Commission you should really hate the House of Lords.

Brexit Resurrects Industrial Strategy

One of the things that I am struck by in the months following Brexit is just how bad I am at predicting the consequences.  I am not very good at finding articles written by other people who are good at predicting the consequences either.  For now I am applying Occam's Razor and assuming that nobody is clever enough to guess what is going to happen next.   This was brought home this morning by picking up a report that Nissan are about to announce a big investment in their plant in Sunderland.  Losing this kind of investment has been a big worry to me, and others, since the vote.  So it is good news that it is going ahead.  I don't doubt that the pro-Brexit voices will soon be talking this up as an example of how the UK is going to do better outside the EU than it ever did inside.  They may well be right, but as always there is a bit more to the story.

Theresa May Keeping The Door Open

One of the things I started this blog for was to record what people were saying in real life about Brexit.  My observation is that unlike during the campaign, nobody is talking about it offline.  (People online are mainly talking to other people who agree with them, but that's another story.)  This is a little surprising given that it is in the news a lot and I can't be the only one for whom it is something that is going to have a direct effect on my life and business.

Never Mind Hard Brexit, Here Are Hard Numbers On Why People Voted Out

The University of Warwick has come up with the first detailed analysis of the reasons why people voted as they did in the EU referendum.  As such it is an important document in its own right since all future work will inevitably reference it - and either confirm or challenge its conclusions.  But for those of us who have been baffled by developments this year and are struggling to understand what has happened to our country it is a useful insight into what actually happened.

Is Opinion Beginning To Shift Against Brexit?

The day after the Brexit vote there were several news articles on the television coverage of people who regretted voting to leave the EU.  It was balanced by other articles interviewing pleased leavers, but it was enough to make me wonder if the whole thing was going to descend into a farce.  It fitted in with the obvious shock on the part of the leave leaders, particularly Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who looked anything but delighted by the outcome.

How Will Britain Get Back In the EU?

I am sure that the UK will be back in the EU at some point in the future. It simply defies logic that a country so integral to European history should be outside of it.  Whether this will come about because the whole Brexit project simply falls apart, or if we have a government elected on a promise of a return or if some unexpected event like a war against Russia simply makes it unavoidable is hard to say.  But there is one intriguing possibility that was opened up by a proposal that has just come out.

Marmite Means Marmite

The Order Order blog is great fun if, like me, you enjoy scurrilous gossip.  It is well written and very well informed about the shenanigans behind British politics.  It is run by a guy called Paul Staines under the name Guido Fawkes.  It is quite a suitable name.  The original Guido was a violent counter revolutionary devoted to overthrowing the Reformation backing English parliament.  The Order Order blog has a rather similar political line basically being anti nearly everything.  It's a good line to take for a satyrical take on things because finding fault and exposing folly is sight more entertaining than proposing solutions and praising virtue.

Racism And Brexit - Why Racists Should Oppose Brexit

I follow a number of pro-Brexit forums.  It is always interesting to read a range of opinions especially those you aren't in sympathy with.  And who knows, there might be some killer reason for supporting Brexit that I haven't thought of.

As with all things that are open to anyone to contribute to, you never know what will pop up.  For example someone this morning simply posted a declaration that they were racist.  They didn't say anything offensive, they just stated it in plain language.  Accusing other people of racism is controversial, but it is important not to let people sneak racism into public dialogue in disguise. On the other hand, if someone wants to claim to be one I can't see why they should be silenced.

Nonetheless the moderators quickly removed it.  This could have been justified on the basis that it was off topic.  But I imagine that quite apart from that they didn't really want anyone mixing up racism and leaving the EU.  Leavers in general, and UKIP in particular, have been bedevilled by accusations of racism.  This is something they have always denied whenever they got a chance.  I don't think it is true, but accusations have a habit of sticking no matter how unjustified.  You can see why they reached for the delete button.

Falling Pound - The Grind Begins

It's not something that everybody notices every day, but it is something that has a big impact nonetheless.  I am already noticing the prices are moving up for some of the things I buy from abroad.  But I have feeling I am really going to feel it when I next travel abroad.  But the indirect effects are the big ones.  We are now considerably poorer than we used to be as a nation.  On paper we are already behind France and not much ahead of California.  This is all very real.  

Majority In Work Voted Remain. Working Classes Versus Smirking Classes?

"A majority of those working full-time or part-time voted to remain in the EU; most of those not working voted to leave. More than half of those retired on a private pension voted to leave, as did two thirds of those retired on a state pension."

Will Brexit Affect The Pound In Your Pocket?

In 1967 Harold Wilson devalued the pound by 14%.  This was a big shock to the system, and he felt obliged to make a special television appearance to explain what was happening. He tried to minimise the  importance of the event by explaining that this didn't affect the pound in your pocket. The phrase was a memorable one and would haunt him for the rest of his career.  The plain fact was that it did indeed affect the pound in your pocket. It was now worth 14% less.



Economics is not an exact science.  It isn't really a science at all.  Just what happens when a currency falls in value isn't easy to predict. Very roughly it is a bit like a sale in a shop.  You knock down your prices which attracts some previously reluctant customers.  But you also cut your margins to all your customers - so you become less profitable.  Whether the extra custom is worth the reduced value of the sales you make is hard to tell.  Retailers who try to discount their way out of a tricky situation may or may not succeed.  It might be part of a long term strategy of course.  This might do better but even here there are no guarantees.

Creative Solutions To Brexit Problems

I don't think that Brexit is fundamentally about economics, but that doesn't mean it won't throw up economic problems that will need solutions.  For example there is the Nissan car plant in Brexit voting Sunderland.  85% of its output goes to the rest of the EU.  Now that we are leaving the EU there is a possibility that those exports will soon be subject to a tariff - which obviously very directly affects Nissan's margins.  What to do?

Do Trade Agreements Matter That Much Anyway?

I don't think ultimately that economics was really important to the Brexit debate.  That seems like a strange thing to say given that so much of the argument centred around how disastrous the effects of withdrawal would be from one side, and the huge benefits of getting out of the sinking European market and freely trading on the high seas.  But if it was just about economics we'd be leaving Europe and joining China.  If the European single market is worth being in then think how juicy the Chinese one is.  And now we have voted out nobody is asking if the EU might come up with a big enough lump sum to pay us to stay.  At the end of the day the real question is about the UK's place in the world.  If you don't want Europe to influence Britain and are correspondingly uninterested in having any influence in it then getting out makes sense regardless of the costs or the benefits.

So it was never really about the money.

Brexit May Be An Issue For Years To Come

Youngsters Love EU More Than Corbyn

I don't want to spend too much time on this blog on politics, or at least not party politics.  Brexit is bigger than that and I need to get keep my own partisan views at a distance for what I am trying to do. But it is the conference season so here's another set of political reflections.

Can UKIP Replace Labour?

I am writing this during the Labour Party conference, and there is not much specific Brexit news around so I am mulling over one possible unexpected side effect of the referendum result.  Could Labour be replaced as the primary opposition by UKIP?  It is something Nigel Farage has mused about.  It doesn't seem all that impossible at first sight.  About a third of Labour voters supported Brexit, and those third seem to be heavily represented in parts of the country like South Wales and Yorkshire which return a lot of Labour MPs.  So if UKIP could turn those leave voters into UKIP voters they could possibly start to build a base in parliament similar to that of the Labour Party.

Was Alfred the Great behind Brexit?

I have just read an article in the American journal the National Review by Rupert Darwell.  It is interesting to read a foreign take on your own country, and it is intriguing in particular when it is about your country's relationship with the rest of the world.  The thesis is that there is something unique about English history.  Americans often use England and Britain interchangeably. But this is not the case here.  The author is well aware of the difference.  His suggestion is that English history is distinctly different to that of the rest of Europe for reasons going back to the ninth century.

Personal Observations

Nothing much happening on the big political scene Brexit wise at the moment.  There are a lot of UK level politics going on so the issue isn't at the top of the agenda right now.  So I'll review how it is going on in my own little bubble.  The people I happen to interact with are no more representative than any other randomly selected group of people.  But I know them so I have a better idea of what they mean when they talk about a subject, so in some ways are more useful than a more scientific poll.

The Lib Dems and Brexit

The Lib Dem conference is getting very little coverage in the press, and what it is getting is pretty negative.  But everything is relative. Compared to being totally ignored as they have been most of the year this probably feels pretty good to the sandal wearers themselves.  They are the most fervent pro-European party in the mainstream and Tim Farron devoted a large chunk of his leader's speech to saying that Britain should be back in Europe.  He finished with -

just when liberals in other parties are desperate for a home where they can make a difference, the Liberal Democrats are back and we matter more than ever.
Keep Britain in Europe. Save Britain from the Tories. What an opportunity, what a mission.
We are ready.

Can We Go Global Now?

One of the good arguments that Nigel Farage used to put forward before the Brexit campaign was that by leaving the EU we could trade on the world stage unencumbered by the EU strait jacket.  It was a good line for him to take because it enabled him to portray himself as the outward looking internationalist fighting against parochial local interests.  I didn't hear it being deployed much during the campaign itself.  The Farage approach was to bring the debate onto immigration - which doesn't really mix well with enhancing internationalism.

Visegrad Group Reveals The Difficulties Of Brexit

A smallish Brexit news story briefly trended on Twitter last night and hasn't survived the Darwinian process of selection to make it into the mainstream news coverage.  The Visegrad Group of countries announced their intention to block any Brexit deal that didn't give their citizens the right to live and work in Britain.  

Diane James Takes Over UKIP - But What Will She Do With It?

The election of Diane James today was accompanied by a titbit of data.  She gained the support of 8,400 UKIP members.  The other candidates shared around 6,500 between them.  So the party that came third in the popular vote at the 2015 election has around 15,000 activists engaged enough to cast a vote in the leadership election.  Of those 15,000 many will play no role in politics apart from paying their subscription.  It's probably a generous estimation if we say that only half of those people will do very much at all.  That leaves about a dozen active members per constituency.