Recent opinion polls and local council elections results. A sign of things to come?

There was an interesting ComRes poll carried out between 15 and 17 March, the week before the Prime Minister made her latest trip to Europe to plead for more time to kick the Brexit can even farther down the road.  Its results showed that the Labour and Conservative parties were neck and neck, but could not manage 70 per cent between them!  TIG was on 7 per cent and UKIP on 6 per cent, the Liberal Democrats, longstanding opponents of Brexit, were in the doldrums on 8 per cent – presumably there was no prompt for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.   And, don’t forget, this poll was taken before Mrs May’s foray across the English Channel to delay Brexit.

Following the ComRes poll there were some real ones last Thursday when a cluster of council by elections took place. No earthshattering upsets, but a trio of results caught my eye. 

In two wards UKIP had candidates.  In Kensington and Chelsea’s Delgano ward UKIP had 5.7 per cent of the vote, not having stood a candidate last time, and in Newcastle-under-Lyme’s Holditch and Chesterton ward their candidate increased their vote by 2.6 per cent to 12.3 per cent.

Meanwhile in Essex, Anne Marie Waters’ fledgling For Britain Movement fielded a candidate in Southend’s Milton ward and polled a respectable 5.3 per cent.

None of the aforementioned candidates came anywhere near winning, but the percentages achieved can make all the difference to other parties’ candidates winning or losing.  You don’t need to win to have influence!

Remember, these opinion polls and real polls took place while the UK Government is still supposed to be delivering the 2016 Referendum result.  If MPs overturn that result they will prove that they only believe in democracy when it suits them to do so.  They will eventually have to face the consequences of such action at the ballot box.  

Should Brexit be revoked I suspect a goodly number of those 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU will be looking for somewhere, if they ever bother voting again, to put their X in protest.  Gerard Batten’s UKIP, Anne Marie Waters’ For Britain Movement and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party will be there to accommodate them.  If these insurgent parties prosper at the polling booths it will be thanks to the hypocritical manoeuvrings of the Conservatives, Labour, TIGs and Liberal Democrats.