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.


So although opinion is shifting it is going to take a while.  What is needed is events that jolt people out of their existing mindset.  One thing that might help would be a good by election result where somebody identified with the leave cause faces off against a remainer.   That would at least shift the debate in the right direction.  So when Zac Goldsmith - whose millionaire father was an early UKIP backer - resigned to fight a by election it looked at first like this could be the opportunity.

But sadly, it isn't really going to work.  Zac is anti-Brexit and the main challengers are the distinctly pro-EU Lib Dems.  It looked like the perfect duel.  But when you look at the constituency you discover that it had one of the strongest pro-EU votes in the country.  Winning over these people is not necessary, so it doesn't say anything.  Also the issue that is resigning on, Heathrow expansion, is a real and vitally important issue to the people who live there.  That is going to be what they are interested in.  So basically this is not going to be a poll that tells us anything about Brexit at all.

The interesting thing is the decision by the Conservatives not to stand a candidate.   This is a curious turn up for a governing party.  The explanation everyone is assuming is that they don't want to risk being seen to lose it combined with a cynical desire to undermine Zac's protest by denying him a government representative to protest again.  This all might well be true.  But I wonder if there is another reason.  I wonder if the local constituency party would have picked a pro-leave candidate if left to themselves?  If so, what effect would that have had on party unity?