Comment: How Remain-Backing Guildford Elected a Leave Tory, Part One

Published on: 16 Dec, 2019
Updated on: 17 Dec, 2019

The story of the Guildford election as a small part of a momentous national decision. In this first part, new divisions.

By Martin Giles

To win an election in the UK you don’t have to persuade most of the people, just enough of them. In Guildford and in the UK as a whole, nationally, around 45 per cent was more than enough.

But how did the Conservatives manage to persuade Remain-voting Guildford support their Leave candidate?

A year ago to the day, I interviewed Christian Holliday and David Pillinger, local campaign organisers for and against Brexit. I asked Christian, whose Conservative Party, along with others, was being riven by the Brexit issue, whether a major realignment of our political parties seemed unavoidable? He agreed it was.

Brexit interview Dec 16 2018 with Christian Holliday and David Pillinger.

In fact, it was already well under way. The “pro-hard” Brexit European Research Group’s attempt to dislodge Theresa May had failed days before but there were obvious signs that irreconcilable differences existed within the Conservative Party.

Life became more and more difficult for Tories who wanted a softer Brexit, or perhaps no Brexit at all. Some, including our own MP, Anne Milton, had concluded a second referendum was the only way to resolve the parliamentary log-jam.

And so the realignment continued among politicians and the voters. Both now split and many identified themselves as Remainers or Leavers more than Tory, Labour or Lib Dem. In March, the Guildford Conservative Association passed a motion supporting, if necessary, a no-deal Brexit, in spite of Ms Milton’s political position.

Those irreconcilable differences also existed within Labour. But their Remainers in the shadow cabinet held sway, almost certainly to the liking of their members here.

Labour tried to pretend it was not a Remain party but neutral. Sort of. That stance, as such, left it stranded in no-man’s-land, a few feet from the Remain trenches but under fire from both sides, abandoning their northern Leave comrades in a remote shell-hole, feeling they had been deserted.

The party’s proclaimed strategy of having Remainers negotiate another Leave deal then campaign against it was always more than unconvincing. It was risible. The party leadership’s refusal to recognise that only added to their lack of credibility.

At least the Lib Dem position was clear: they wanted to stop Brexit. They had been pretty direct. “Bollocks to Brexit!” was an official slogan.

For them, EU membership was almost a religion. And perhaps the fervour that belief engendered blinded them from seeing the self-harm they were inflicting with their decision to revoke Article 50 and ignore the 2016 referendum result.

Never have the walls of a political party’s bubble been so opaque, preventing those within from seeing what was blindingly obvious to everyone without. A party with “democrats” in its very name rejecting the result of the biggest democratic voting exercise Britain has ever held.

Jo Swinson’s initial claims to be a potential prime minister who would bring this about and then her: “Well, we don’t stand a chance of forming a majority government anyway, so don’t worry”, made what had been the country’s incredulous sniggering volume into a chorus of the Laughing Policeman.

But, quietly, something else was happening. The tribal loyalty of northern voters to the Labour party was disintegrating. Many, whose staunch, working-class forebears had voted loyally for the party for a century, had finally had enough. Along with other Leavers across the country, their patience with MPs doing everything they could to delay or prevent a damaging Brexit, as most MPs saw it, caused exasperation.

This change in Labour ranks was not apparent in the South East. Most Labour supporters here are on the liberal side of the party and could no longer be described as “working-class”, in the traditional sense. In Guildford, what has been considered to be the predominantly working-class ward of Westborough has not elected a Labour member to the borough council since the 1990s.

And the king of the political psephologists, Sir John Curtice, in a BBC article, General Election 2019: Do people still vote according to class? pointed out a remarkable fact: working-class voters were as likely to vote Conservative as Labour. Just think about that and what it means.

Tomorrow in part two Anne Milton and the calling of the general election.

Responses to Comment: How Remain-Backing Guildford Elected a Leave Tory, Part One

George Potter Reply

December 16, 2019 at 1:44 pm

I look forward to reading the rest of this analysis, but I fear it has already started spinning a narrative without a solid basis in fact.

I must object to the remarkable level of bias being shown by The Dragon in this piece. Mr Giles’ pro-Leave sympathies have long been obvious but it really is ridiculous to see claims that the Lib Dems were “rejecting” a democratic exercise.

For one thing, polls consistently show that there is a Remain majority in the country and these millions of voters deserve to have their views represented in parliament. For another thing, it is profoundly democratic for a party to put itself forward in an election offering a particular policy and to ask for a mandate from the electorate for it.

However, that The Dragon has such a limited understanding of democracy really isn’t surprising given its regular determination to a) ignore the fact that Guildford is a Remain constituency and to b) regularly give a platform to Christian Holliday whose commitment to democracy is so threadbare that he believes it should be made an act of treason to support EU membership.

Not that one would ever know the latter though given how regularly The Dragon chooses to conveniently neglect mentioning it.

George Potter is a Lib Dem borough councillor for Burpham
- John Perkins Reply
  
  December 17, 2019 at 10:23 am
  
  Christian Holliday made a silly joke and apologised for it. Despite that, some with no sense of humour think it should preclude him from expressing his views ever again.
  
  If there is a “Remain majority in the country”, how come they didn’t vote when they had the opportunity?
  
  Lib Dems asked for a mandate for their rejection of the referendum and the electorate responded, “B*****ks to that!”.
Dave Middleton Reply

December 16, 2019 at 5:14 pm

Mr Potter appears to have a short memory.

Whether one is pro- or anti-EU, it is a fact that, just three years ago, the electorate of the country, as a whole, had the opportunity to participate in the largest direct democracy action for over 40 years. The result was a clear (albeit not massive), majority by those who chose to exercise their right to vote, to leave the EU.

The Liberal Democrats chose to ignore that democratic vote and as a cornerstone of their election campaign, vowed to stop that vote being implemented.

Hardly democracy in action.
Valerie Thompson Reply

December 16, 2019 at 5:28 pm

Polls might show a “Remain” majority.

But that wasn’t the result of the vote in the referendum.
Julian Cranwell Reply

December 17, 2019 at 8:39 am

More of the same from Cllr George Potter. We had hoped that attacking the press would be a thing of the past at GBC, with the demise of the Tories.

I have been a contributor to The Dragon for many years, and have never seen any evidence of bias.

A biased service would hardly have posted his comment in the first place.
Sue Fox Reply

December 17, 2019 at 11:16 am

I have been a Liberal/Lib Dem since the 70s, when I actually worked on the Accession to the EEC. I have voted for the Lib Dems for decades with varying degrees of success, including for the election of a Lib Dem Guildford MP.

I was at the Assembly when we were told to go back to our constituency and “prepare for government”. I’ve held national and local positions including being a committee chair at GBC.

I am still proud to be a Remainer and soon to be a “Re-joiner”. If you believe in something but can see flaws you don’t give up at the first defeat, eventually we’ll see success.

I feel for those in the North who believed the lies. I feel for the loss of jobs, homes, schools, hospitals, talented staff and opportunities. Could that possibly be due to austerity and an incompetent opposition?

Incidentally, where we live people didn’t even get an election leaflet from the new incumbent.

PS. The Dragon has every right to voice its own opinions. Luckily we still have a free press.
Susan Hibbert Reply

December 17, 2019 at 6:33 pm

If you look at the local voting figures, you can see that a ‘Remain Alliance’ in the Guildford constituency would have returned a Lib Dem MP; if the Labour candidate and Anne Milton had stood down, then the LibDem candidate would have won here.
Andrew Tubb Reply

December 17, 2019 at 10:35 pm

The referendum was not the biggest democratic exercise we have had. More people voted in the 1992 election.
Source:
https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-referendum-not-largest-democratic-exercise/
- Dave Middleton Reply
  
  December 19, 2019 at 8:54 pm
  
  In my comment I stated “direct democracy action”, not the largest electoral turnout. Perhaps I should have said, “largest single issue democracy action”?