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THE MAJORITY THAT Boris Johnson’s government has in the House of Commons has been cut to just one MP, after the Conservative Party lost out in a Welsh by-election yesterday.
Previously a safe Tory seat, the Conservatives lost out to the pro-EU and pro-remain Liberal Democrats in the farming community of Brecon and Radnorshire.
Prime Minister Johnson dropped by the region on Tuesday to help out Chris Davies – a Conservative MP who was forced to step down after becoming embroiled in an expenses scandal.
Davies protested his innocence and contested the seat again but the Liberal Democrats’ Jane Dodds received 13,826 votes to Davies’ 12,401, after having two smaller pro-EU parties back her bid.
The vote continues the recent Lib Dem surge, after they polled well in the recent European elections. Nigel Farage’s Brexit party picked up 3,331 votes while Labour came a distant fourth with just 1,680.
“My very first act as MP when I arrive in Westminster will be to find Boris Johnson wherever he is hiding and tell him loud and clear – stop playing with the futures of our communities and rule out no-deal Brexit,” a visibly relieved Dodds said.
No ‘Boris bounce’
The election was viewed as a test of strength for the “Boris bounce” that has helped the Conservatives regain a slim lead in some national opinion polls.
Brecon and Radnorshire had voted 52-48 in favour of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum, mirroring the overall UK result.
However, the controversy surrounding the candidate and subsequent loss leaves Johnson in danger of being unable to control parliament in the crucial runup to Britain’s scheduled departure from the EU on 31 October.
Fears of a no-deal Brexit have already pushed the pound to its lowest levels since Britons first voted to leave in June 2016.
The Bank of England warned yesterday that a messy split would drop the pound even further and slow growth this year and next to 1.3% from around 1.5%.
Chancellor Sajid Javid announced on Wednesday an extra £2.1 billion (€2.3 billion) to prepare for leaving without an agreement.
Politico reported that part of the money would be spent on a Europe-wide media blitz that included adverts in major continental newspapers aimed at convincing EU governments about the strength of Britain’s no-deal resolve.
Some analysts questioned how much of the funding was new and whether it would actually be used in the 90 days remaining before Brexit.
“We have to be prepared because we will be leaving on 31 October,” Javid said yesterday.
The main opposition Labour Party’s finance spokesman John McDonnell branded the funding an “appalling waste of taxpayers’ cash”.
The Labour MP who heads parliament’s spending watchdog also pledged to investigate how the money was being spent.
With reporting from AFP
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Replace right wing with left wing and the headline sentence is exactly the same
@Johnny King:
Agreed.
Extremists, on either side, are not big into building consensus.
@Johnny King: until these terms stop making money for the media we will continue to hear about it.
There is no far right in Ireland. Just people with common sense. The brutal truth is those who disagree are part of the establishment!
@Irish Axe: Oh, there are far right here alright.
They burn down hotels and hostels.
And attack those they chose to dislike.
@Irish Axe: Yup, typically transparent attempt to convert various lawlessness and extreme anti-social behaviour into ‘common sense’. At least you didn’t fall back on ‘patriotism’.
@Irish Axe: Wrong. Dumb fks without a decent bone in their body.
@Irish Axe: #0.9%
@Irish Axe: you’re right as the far-right only got less than 1% of support. Common sense voted 52% for FFG so eat that!!!!!
@9QRixo8H: It’s so p@ťhetically funny seeing the usual sč̣obie brigade constantly harping on about the far right bogeymen, when in reality they refer to ordinary people that don’t want our country further destroyed by foreigners.
It’s a psychotic condition, often associated with taking hallucinogenic drugs, and is especially prevalent amongst a number of cohorts.
These include existing illegal immigrants, people working in the NGO illegal immigration industry as well as our own lifelong dole merchants who believe that there is a limitless amount of money and homes for a limitless stream of illegal immigrants.
@Thomas Sheridan: I think you hit nearly every dog-whistle point. Well done!
@Irish Axe: There is a right wing, they believe everything on social media and all sorts of weird and wonderful story’s.
A lot of it is completely off the wall.
One great lie that did the rounds was bus loads of immigrant’s been bused around to vote as instructed. Depending on where you are , it was the greens, FF, FG, SF and even a few independents were accused of it. Off the wall stuff!
If you read their literature , they are far right and bigotry and discrimination are not common sense.
The problem is they moved the centre. Nothing wrong with being right wing in the traditional sense. It’s good for those of that persuasion to have suitable candidates. Because the main parties made a bollix of immigration policies, it opened the door for far right cabbages to make themselves known. The far right will simply drop off if we get immigration fixed, a big ask, admittedly. I don’t think expecting sensible border controls to be a right wing thing anyway. All parties should be in favour of that.
@ecrowley ecrowley: No, they didn’t move to the center.
(Economic) Right wing parties want open borders.
That gives employers a greater pool of people seeking employment, keeping wages lower than they would otherwise be.
That gives businesses larger markets for their goods and services, increasing profits.
That creates more demand for housing, benefiting landlords, developers, banks, estate and rental agents, solicitors…
It is harmful to people already here.
But we don’t count.
Had to stop reading such a pompous, cracked, old age mouth scutterer rambling. There’s alot wrong that’s gone on/is happening in the workings of this country, and no matter how you paint it, reality is sf/sd’s are up in councils seats while ffgrns are down over 100 between them. This will continue going into a general election with right sided parties (mainly independent Ireland) gaining ground slowly also.
@James Reardon: The government parties are down 67 between them. I think you’ll find that that isn’t ‘over 100′.
@Brendan O’Brien: oh well, still down a nice chunk. Good to see one of the journal comment dwellers on standby for correction. *thumbs up
Seems anything right-leaning is “far right” for this current Government that does literally everything against its own system.
Hypocritical click bait article.
Nope, our right-leaning govt have 52% of support, but your far-right has zero percent of support!!! And we will go more rightwing in bringing in more landlordism and vulture funds because that is what is needed and you far right don’t understand this
@9QRixo8H: “You you you”, don’t ever recall posting my political stance. Do you make it a habit projecting yourself onto others, putting words into peoples’ mouths? Sound like a clown doing that.
@Kieran Menon: Peadar constantly sounds like a clown, I wouldn’t place any stock the ramblings of such a cr3tin.
Left wing? Right wing? No difference, really. Both are ultimately equally illiberal and authoritarian in their outlook. Each knows what’s good for you because you don’t, and they believe society needs to be strictly managed in accordance with their narrow vision, and if you don’t get with their program, you will be disciplined. You may even need to be re-educated! Strangely and somewhat slyly, they never tell you all this before they get into power, though. The older I get, the more cynical I become…
Activist journalism. The heads on those
“journalists”. All nerdy nutjobs.
He’s going mad that his parties go 0.9%!!!!!! His twitter is FULL of extreme-right reposts but sure he’s not far right he’s normal would never support a holocaust or racial segregation, right? RIGHT?
So F ing sick of this ‘far right’ rhetoric. Most of my families’ husbands and wives are from outside of Ireland… guess what though?? They came here with a legal Visa. This current Government and their Civil Servants couldn’t appoint one person who could even organise a school register legitimately let alone the electoral register. I for one am done.
One of the commenters in another article was throwing around the term insanity when it is pointed out that the taxpayers are funding the modelling community to say the planet is burning up, boiling, and things like that. This three-ring circus of academics, politicians, and the electorate is a remarkable spectacle as an exercise in dysfunctional social engineering.
The trap is to believe in left and right politics when the dynamics are academic politics operating through a social-political conduit, and reactions to this are seen as right politics. Journalists like the idea of left/right politics, but it is a distraction from people who like to be fair rather than ideologues.
Look at how academia works and how nature is incidental.
Restricting female bodily aurltonomy is not far right, who celebrated the success of Franco against the democratically elected government of Spain, the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Ireland, seems that the Irish never knew that who led them were far right for many years.
Thoroughly enjoying the demise of SF
@John D Doe: The party that increased its representation at both local and EU level?
Burning down abandoned hotels is nothing compared to what SF were doing during their ‘Long War’ .
There are five councillors elected who are critical of immigration. That is five out of one thousand.
And the thing is they are right, we have not enforced our own laws on immigration.
Far right (and Far left) means concentration camps – think Hitler, Stalin & Co.
Anyone throwing that terminology around in this country should be locked up – just so they know what they are saying.
$tup!d is the new clever and if you disagree your $tup!d
have your say