European Elections 2019: The Brexit Party storms to success and utterly dominates the election in the UK as Conservatives and Labour suffer badly, in Scotland; Scottish Labour has no MEPs and the Brexit Party wins a seat in a hard fought campaign marred by violence, threat and intimidation

Dear All

The results are in from the European Election 2019, the biggest winner was The Brexit Party who won 29 seats, the Lib Dems came second with 16, the Labour Party both sides of the border had a disastrous night winning only 10, the Greens gained seven, the Conservatives only four, the SNP three and Plaid Cymru one.

In Scotland, the SNP took 3 seats out of 6, but the real upset is that the Brexit Party in Scotland came second in the polls and won their first ever seat. No Scottish Labour MEP was returned which is a continuation of what I said that the Scottish Labour Party needs a new campaigning model. Scottish Labour also suffered from the national position of sitting on the fence, well, they sat and they got left on the fence. Scottish Labour has no MEP in Scotland which when you look at the fact that the Conservatives managed to return their lead candidate, makes their night even worse.

At the start of this election, I was a member of Pollok CLP, I didn’t campaign for the Labour Party, instead I was head hunted the Brexit Party to do their campaign. As some people know, I have a track record in campaigning in elections stretching into double digits, plus two referendums won under my belt. In this election, I was one of the lead campaigners in as well as travelling around the West and South of Scotland taking the Brexit message to the people. You might have picked up online that distain that others held the Brexit Party in, posting pictures of their stalls and saying no one was interested.

The Brexit Party came second in the European Election in Scotland.

As to the Glasgow Brexit Party vote, this was around 15,000; it could have been higher if the Glasgow Brexit Group had solely remained in Glasgow.  They were also tasked with travelling around to places such as Ayr, Largs, Paisley, Gretna and Dumfries to spread the message that they had a serious campaign running.

And it paid off!

The Brexit Party were hampered by the fact that they had no long campaign, little time, resources and people since effectively there is no party structure in Scotland at present. They could also have benefited from a more Scottish message and Scottish presentation but that is something which they will no doubt take into account as they move forward to other elections.

This campaign for me was a doddle, although I never expected to be thrust forward as a lead campaigner but you do what you have to do in order to get the job done. It is nice to be in a winning campaign but you can also learn a lot by losing because losing does focus the mind.

In the aftermath of defeat, it is only natural that some people express their anger, and it seems that some Scottish Labour MPs want to slam the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn saying party may ‘never recover’ from ‘worst ever’ result. The result for the Scottish Labour Party couldn’t have been worse that is true, and the tactics used were questionable.

When you try and appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one!

This is why the Scottish Labour Party crashed into fifth place in Scotland, despite attempting to gotv, ‘get out the vote’; their core vote didn’t respond in the numbers they hoped to even get one MEP. Ian Murray and Martin Whitfield said Scottish voters had “delivered an utterly damning verdict” on the party.

Quick question, would you bet on the Scottish Labour Party to be the next Government at Holyrood in the 2021 election?

David Martin had been the UK’s longest-serving MEP, having spent 35 years in Brussels, before being voted out of office. He rightly blames Labour’s failure to take a clear stand on the crucial issue of Brexit for the result.

Mr Martin tweeted:

“We lost not because of lack of effort but lack of clear message.”

I agree with him that there was a lack of a clear message but as to effort, there is a lack of members willing to be activists in the Scottish Labour Party, an issue that the people at HQ and at CLP level seem unable to turn around.

Activists win elections!

The two unhappy Labour MPs insisted:

“The blame for the worst result in Scottish Labour’s history lies squarely with our party’s leadership”.

That is a tad unkind as everything wasn’t rosy in the garden prior to this election, nor the 2017 or 2015 Westminster elections, in fact Scottish Labour hasn’t really addressed looming problems since circa 2006. The blame cannot all be laid at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn, but he has a share of it.

Do you remember me blogging that Jeremy Corbyn is better at domestic issues and not foreign issues?

George Laird right again.

Scottish Labour and the wider party should have taken a principled position to support the democratic result of the 2016 referendum. The party is wrongly moving towards a people’s vote which is a democratic sham in the hope of passing the buck, and that the people overturn the earlier result. Remember what happened in Ireland, the political class betrayed the people.

I don’t support the Labour position of a people’s vote, if they believe that ‘fixes’ their problem, they are kidding themselves on, is the logic that since they can’t win over everyone, they figure that it is better to have pro remain Labour voters? Do they then hope for a return to normal politics and everyone else just wanders back?

If that is their strategy someone should give them a wake up call.

Finally, the Brexit Party success coming second is rather good considering that they operated in a hostile environment during this election. The Labour ad calling for the stopping of the ‘far right’ was a stupid video to make and put out. The Brexit Party lead candidate in Scotland who won a seat is Louis Stedman-Bryce; he is a black lgbt man. This video was about pandering and scaremongering, nicely done in terms of video production values but the wrong message to send out.  Labour came sixth in the Edinburgh City Council area, which rather drives home a message for the party.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University