Post European Parliament elections

In what might, in these chaotic fast moving days no one can be sure of anything  anymore be last political post for a bit we have seen the Prime Minister submit her resignation on Friday sooner than expected here but expected nontheless and the internal process of eleven so far Conservative Members of Parliament putting themselves forward to be party leader.
This is usually fought over in stages until one emerges but the feuds have already started and a "Stop Boris" (Johnson) campaign has started .
Meanwhile after the last voting on Sunday elsewhere in Europe was concluded, vote counting started in Great Britain with Northern Ireland which used a different voting system to us plus the Western Isles of Scotland starting Monday.
Scottish politics has been different since devolution and while the actual seats allocated care of the D'Honda kinda proportional but not quite  system won't be know for sure by Monday the strongly pro EU Scottish Nationalists look likely to take all but one seat and the other going to The Brexit Party as Scottish Labour and the Conservatives hemorrhaged votes badly.
Meanwhile in England and Wales the ruling Conservatives achieved the lowest proportion of the popular vote since 1832 and Labour lost a good deal of support in pro leave areas and not help by having a confused message for those who did wish to remain.

 In this region, the West Midlands the single largest party was The Brexit Party who got 37.5% of the popular vote, with similar results in our near neighbours in the East Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber.
Stop anyone on on the streets of Stoke, Aldridge, Wolverhampton, Cannock, Wednesbury, Stourbridge, Birmingham, Rugby and Telford and they'd tell you they voted to leave and even those who didn't have little time for those responsible for us not leaving so people voted Brexit Party to make it plain what they want - to leave - and to which we were promised would be respected and acted upon.
We don't have time for people fighting to deny what people voted for here regardless of our own views and that attempt to do so is something that has left people quite angry.

(photo credits:BBC)
It was no surprise to me Rupert Lowe, Martin Daubney and Andrew Kerr of the Brexit party won seen here at Birmingham's ICC celebrating where our count was held were declared representatives.
Labour got no one elected and there was one each for the Green Party, thePro EU Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.
The only major exception was London where four Liberal Democrats were elected but as the only area where there was a big majority to remain in the 2016 Referendum, that would not surprise me give it was their party's clear message.
In Wales where at one time thanks in part to devolution and Welsh Language culture the Plaid Cymru ("The party of Wales") lost out to the pan British Brexit Party as did labour and the Conservatives.
It would appear the British public used the election in effect as a referendum on leaving or remaining in the European Union and voted the Brexit Party in indicating clearly when they said they wanted to leave in 2016, they meant it.
It also shows however there are a significant minority who are adamant it will not be allowed to happen.
It illustrates the need whoever becomes the next Prime Minister before any General Election happens the need to make a clear choice to leave or remain as it simply cannot be fudged and in the words of many of us in this region, darn well get on with it and be straight with people.
Another issue is because this transcends party politics,  some people voted for parties that normally they would not this includes a good number of Labour people and because Alastair  Campbell former Prime Minister's Tony Blair's PR person did vote for the Liberal Democrats and said before the count he was, he's been expelled from the party that people who have been Anti-Semitic have at best been merely suspended for a brief point.
For me the Labour Party's deputy leader Tom Watson got it right in saying the action was 'spiteful' and former Labour MP and speaker Betty Boothroyd said as much too.
Given this was an issue that divides the party and his reason was because he felt their policy was not clear, to me it would of been enough to had said "and don't do it again".

EU too

Yesterday, we voted in that election we were not supposed to had been taking parting in for 73 seats in the European Parliament because we were supposed to had left it in March and it has cost us something like £156 million and cost the parties some can ill afford too with few prepared to make contributions to pay for offices, staff, election expenses and so on.
Given the unfolding events in Westminster it may be literally be the last days of Theresa May as Prime Minister as the calls for resignation reach fever pitch and the kind of ruling but lacking a majority Conservatives will no doubt go through a process of choosing its leader that for now at least will become Prime Minister. That's how the constitutional set up works because we don't vote for them thank goodness.
This said it may be the case some might be tempted to push for a early General Election with that new leader just about in place, facing the same beeping conundrum of delivering brexit in a  hopelessly split party that reflects the sharp polarization in the country.
There is no middle ground.
Results from that European Parliament Election won't come in until late Sunday and possibly Monday because being a pan-European election others are holding theirs on different days but as this is typed (phrase of the year for this blog) it looks like the Brexit party will get about 38% of the popular vote and something like 36 of the 73 seats accuring to OPINIUM poll tracker (Brexit Party 38%, Lib Dem 15%, Lab 17%, Green 7%, Con 7%, Change UK 3%, UKIP 3%) based on a sample of 2,004 adults).
Most pollsters show a clear lead for Brexit party with most of the pro Leave voters behind it.
One thing anyone seriously contemplating a third set of elections this year - a General Election UK wide - should consider is the parties may not have the money to fully field and run one with candidates for every seat because the donors aren't donating and in the instance of the Conservatives ones are severely hacked off because of way Brexit has been handled.
We'll see how it turns out next week but don't say you haven't been warned...

And now the thing we weren't supposed to be in

In little over a week in Britain we go to the polls in an election few wanted nor expected to take place at all since the referendum to leave in 2016 and had the timetable to leave been kept to simply would never had happened.
But it certain doesn't feel like an election is taking place with posters, meetings featuring local party leaders with candidates and leaflets of any sort coming through the door to the point only on Monday May 13 did we have the first Party Political Broadcast for it shown on public tv.
The two main parties were trounced soundly in the English local government elections with the ruling Conservatives losing over 1,300 seats more than they had in a quarter century and the opposition Labour party failing to capitalize on the sheer chaos over Brexit to the point they too lost seats.
In my region three council areas are in No Overall Control, two more than last time that cover the North Staffordshire Region ditto much of the Cheshire area.
Part of the reason why things nationally as the way they is the European Union doesn't divide the parties themselves into different groups it divides each individual party more so with such a sharply polarized take that even last minute attempts between senior Labour and Conservatives to find a withdraw look likely to fail because each parties regular Mp's and members are hostile to it and each other.
This would explain the so low key you wouldn't know it was happening lack of campaigning by both parties they don't have their heart in something each party is hopelessly split over to the point labour were even struggling to cobble together a manifesto that wasn't being condemned by its own members.
To me there is strange thing haunting the political scene and it appears to be the effective demise as single coherent parties of Labour and the Conservatives who cannot 'fudge' this issue of our time and the emergence of newer groupings with clear cut positions such as The Change UK party  (The Independant Group) who are pro-remaining in the EU and the Brexit Party who are for leaving as the majority of people voted for with no special relationship or agreement with the EU.
As it is independent opinion polls suggest the Brexit party would gain a lot of votes which with the proportional representation system would produce a lot of European Members of Parliament who would be very embarrassing for the current government and add fuel for changing the way the EU works as not everyone on Continental Europe agrees with it even if they don't wish to leave unlike us.

Copying edition

Apart from more rumblings from the elections which I might write something about  next week as the other elections are on the week has seen me work on a couple of things such as making some minidiscs from my lp collection.

This UK edition of the 1966 It Ain't Me Babe  album of 1964/5 pop hits by the Surfaris, a California  surf garage group is pretty rare and I had this in my early teens which even then was a bit the worse for wear, probably being played at teen parties.
Produced by Gary Usher who worked with the Beach Boys and the Byrds, it - and it was a revelation to me to discover this actually taken from the US album stampers done for US Decca, it's a fantastically produced album that cuts through much of the use my copy had received before I had it.
Thus I decided to copy this to MiniDisc having changed the cartridge to one that works better with vintage mono pressings and ensure the output was in pure mono to the recorder so any pops remained central.

I also did Hollies' Greatest, the first UK Greatest Hits album by the Hollies that as my copy is a 1968 mono original is the only place some of the original mono mixes on the 45's can be found and as there was space for  it on the MiniDisc, I added the US only Beat Group lp of 1966 which I have the Sundazed mono re-issue lp of a few years back that used british mono master recordings of as that title has never been issued on cd.
It contains my theme tune, I'll Take What I Want!

 This album Snakes and Arrows by Canadian heavy rockers Rush is hard  to find in its limited US only 2007 double lp release - I had to find a seller in the States who was prepared to ship it to me as it was virtually unobtainable over here
When I originally copied this that year I has having hum problems with my turntable which if you read this blog you'll know was changed in 2016 in part for those reasons so I re did that one.
It's a album that runs for just over 61 minutes so each side is about 15 minutes long, too long to do properly on a single lp and the reason I bought it was the cd version suffered from having the difference between the loudest and softest sounds squashed, a trend that began in earnest in 1993/4 and sadly very common place but the record escaped it.
Putting it on MiniDisc make sense as it's convenient and portable too.

Results time

As this will be published the results of the local government elections held yesterday will be counted and analyzed both in the areas directly effected, for us the Greater Stoke on Trent region centred around North Staffordshire, across the West Midlands region generally and of course Nationally in the popular press, radio and television such as the BBC, ITN and Sky News.
A few things to bear in mind is the services that take the largest proportion of local authority spending Education and Youth and Adult Social Services have faced large scale reductions since Twenty-ten in the monies made available through money given via grants from national government at a time of greater numbers in education and also needing  support either at home in specialized centres.
Also there has been a clear switch to locally raised funds rather than block grant payments from central government for national duties administered locally by such authorities.
There is a high level of dissatisfaction with the public over this - education to eighteen for instance is notionally 'free' but increasingly schools have been charging for course requirements - and so it remains to be seen if the public associate it with central government which has been Conservative led since Twenty-ten or with alleged waste by the actual authorities and how that plays out at the polls.
So far it looks like the smaller parties and groupings are winning out over the main socialist Labour and right of centre Conservatives.
The contentious issue of Europe and Brexit will show up on May 23rd IF we don't avoid having to hold elections to the European Parliament as that is a requirement under European Union law.