In the news

yeah - that sounds like it was directed at you - it wasn't. just a vent.

BBC choosing not to connect the dots on why the vote is massively down for parties who are Pro-Brexit and massively up for those that aren't.

I don't think this is what's going on.

The Tories are being punished by both leavers and remainers because the one thing everyone can agree on is that their handling of Brexit has been shambolic.

Labour are being punished by remainers for being pro-Brexit, while also being punished by Brexit-voting former Labour supporters who don't believe the party will deliver Brexit (this is what Ruth Smeeth has said, so they've said it themselves).

BUT this is much worse for the Tories who've lost 16 councils so far, won two and lost 396 councillors. By comparison Labour have lost three and won one, losing a total of 81 councillors.

UKIP has also lost 54 councillors which is interesting...

This is all so far of course - I don't think even half of the results are in yet.

From Reuters:

“It just seems voters, period, saying: ‘A plague on both your houses’,” said John Curtice, Britain’s leading polling expert.

.

Deleted very quickly, presumably after being told there were no local elections in London.

Source: https://www.politwoops.co.uk/p/conservative/BorisJohnson

Their argument is that Huawei is unsafe, because of China, and I am not buying it due to what the USA is up to which seems to be scrutinized less by them.

Because the UK/USA are mates, but what does that mean for our safety as Cisco kit also has holes?

ukip has a record of losing Councillors at the next election,
presumably because 'Leave the EU' doesn't resonate with Council Officers attempting to maintain local services during funding reductions from Central Government. I also suspect that kippy councillors seldom obtain the Chair of important committees so are unable, should they even have any, to implement any kippy local policies.

Plausible but doesn’t explain why pro-eu parties are up and UKIP are down (although ‘other’ could be anything).

(although ‘other’ could be anything).

But like every vote for Labour in 2016 was a vote to leave it should just take somebody from the remain side to turn up on TV and claim 'other' as a vote for remain, it doesn't matter if its true or not in this day and age you just have to keep repeating it to make it so.

In (2) you disagree with (1), then in (3) you agree with (1).

This is confusing.

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The Tories are being punished by both leavers and remainers because the one thing everyone can agree on is that their handling of Brexit has been shambolic.

If the Tories were being punished for not having left yet, then the person that would be doing that punishing would be voting instead for a Brexit party. From what I can see, that's not been the case.

Surely (and I admit that better analysis than mine will be coming over the next few days) the only plausible reason for a large swing to a remain party in light of the election being a view on Brexit is that people would prefer to remain...

UKIP have gone particularly hard right since the last lot of elections and I hope this is something to do with them losing seats. IF I were a leaver (i'm certainly not)- who would I have voted for (if I thought voting on a national issue in local elections was a good idea)?

The lack of the farage party in the local elections has made the brexit vote hard to place. They should have just swallowed and voted tory, but maybe the masses haven't.

who would I have voted for (if I thought voting on a national issue in local elections was a good idea)?

Some local independent maybe? You certainly wouldn't have voted for the Lib Dems as a protest if you were a leaver that still wanted to go.

Snigger.

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Ha - and Rees-Mogg now has a lib dem councillor representing him :)

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/leading-tory-brexiteer-mp-jacob-14987124

This. Wait till the EU elections where there’s a party who leavers actively want to vote for before you start deciding the whole country suddenly wants to remain.

The MEP elections may indeed be interesting. UKCrap/BrexitParty are polling well atm. The elections where the unelected and undemocratic EU will get, er, elected MEPs. The "destroy from the inside" team may get quite a few.

Labour may again be punished with a swing to Green/Libdems for their complete fudge on a second vote on any deal

(which STILL has to be negotiated and so far nothing is going anywhere with no agreement in Westminster there is nothing to vote on...)

I think the key thing here is the breakdown of "other", that might be 100% pure no-deal lunatics.

I'm fairly sure that Moggs seat was Lib Dem until recently, a snap election and him losing to the Lib Dems would be brilliant.

That's some beautiful highlighting but you didn't put a square around the bit where I said the Tories are being punished by both sides, plus I did say Labour are being punished for being pro-Brexit (or not anti-Brexit enough) but I did also say I think they've been punished by Labour leavers.

In short I do agree partly with @greenbank but while I would love to believe that yesterday's election is a sign the electorate have changed their mind about Brexit I don't think they have.

Has anyone got any up-to-date polling on that?

Which party launched the referendum, is currently in power, and is leading the Brexit process?

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Who could it be?

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the Tories are being punished by both sides

If a leaver made a conscious decision not to vote Tory for leave-y type reasons, I'd suggest that you'd see an increase in votes for leaving parties. Sure Farage isn't here, but if you didn't want to vote UKIP I'd be willing to bet that every local election had a suitable independent standing under the party name 'Leave Means Leave' or 'Just Get Out' or something.

Simply not voting Tory as a punishment isn't enough as you don't pass an unambiguous-Brexit-punishment message.

Yet the only party to have increased their share significantly is a the lib dems, indicating (clearly, to me) that they're being punished by people who transfer their vote to a remain party.

But of course, this might be the problem:

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Aah - ok, they could be the local 'Leave Means Leave' party...

What’s the turnout like? Is it that leavers are disenchanted having not taken delivery of their gold shitting unicorn yet so are not turning out to vote and remainers are voting pro remain parties or independents. This would make it look like a switch to remain when it is just only one side voting in numbers.