Brecon and Radnor - It's the Somme not Waterloo

Brexit Is A Slog

So finally a by election fought along purely remain/leave lines.  Or at least that is the perception of outsiders like me.  No doubt the people of Brecon and Radnor have a different perspective on it.  But that's how the contest was billed.  Either the Lib Dems would sweep all before them showing that leave has lost not only the plot but its base too.   Or the newly Brexit-fundamentalist Tories would hold the seat showing that their vision was the one in tune with the voters.


So how did it turn out.   Well the Lib Dems won comfortably, but not triumphantly.   And they had to work for their success.  The Tories were not trounced, and if you add their vote to the Brexit Party's they were just ahead of the Lib Dems.   Of course not all Brexit Party supporters are Tories on holiday, so you can't say for sure the Tories would have won without them.  But it would have been a lot closer.

So we didn't get Waterloo, we got the Somme. Both leave and remain have considerable support and while remain is now consistently ahead in the opinion polls when it comes to actual voting things remain pretty evenly matched.   This is not going to be over by Christmas.  Neither side can win.  Neither side wants to surrender.  How the votes would go in a general election is anybody's guess.
But whatever the outcome the issue isn't going away.  Brexit has turned into a war of attrition.  There will ultimately be a winner but we might wait years or even decades for it to emerge.