Reply To: More on Brexit
Alan mentioned somewhere (but I can’t find where) that the Extinction Rebellion people were standing candidates in the European Parliament elections. That explains why there are so many independent non-party candidates standing in London, 11 in fact. Nine of these are XR people.
Their being prepared to put their views to the test of public support is to be commended but what they are doing does not make sense. First, there is no way of telling which of the 11 independents are theirs. Second, they are not standing as a list (independents cannot), so you can’t validly vote for all of them, i.e. they are competing against each other. Third, each of the 9 has had to be pay a deposit of £5000, that’s a total of £45,000, which they won’t get back since none of them will get past the 2% bar for getting it back especially as they are competing against each other.
Presumably, it’s some short of publicity stunt, a rather expensive one I would have thought.
But it does mean that the number of vaguely radical groups standing anywhere is not made up just of the Animal Rights Party and the Women’s Equality Party. We are the only list that others would qualify as “left of Labour”, i.e. none of the other parties claiming to be socialist are standing.
It looks then as if these elections will be a proxy referendum. The Daily Express is claiming that over 90% of electors say they will vote. I’ll believe that when I see it, not that anything published in that rag is to be taken seriously. Even so, the turn-out could be the highest ever in elections to the European Parliament. It could even break through the 505 barrier for the first time ever. If they take place, that is.