Local election results: A landslide victory for clarity on Brexit

And you’ll perhaps have heard the political analyst Professor Sir John Curtice summing up on BBC radio yesterday: “In seats where the Liberal Democrats were second to the Conservatives, double-digit swings from the Tories to Lib Dems are commonplace.” And these voters were telling you they just wanted to get Brexit done? In Remain-voting Bath, where the Tories lost 24 council seats and the Lib Dems soared, were voters telling you they just wanted to get Brexit done? And in Barnsley (Leave-voting in 2016) where the Tory vote was down substantially, Labour down massively, and the Lib Dem vote up hugely, were voters trying to tell Labour and the Tories that they just wanted to get Brexit done? And when the Tory vote in Remain-inclined Winchester went down by 5 per cent, and the Lib Dem vote went up by 5 per cent, was it because the good folk there just wanted to get Brexit done? Almost the only conclusion to draw from these results is that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, have lost (a lot) to the Liberal Democrats and (a bit) to the Green Party in both formerly Leave-voting and formerly Remain-voting parts of the country. Bolsover, for God’s sake! Derby, Oldham, Sunderland, Chelmsford . . . all over Britain (whether they voted Leave or Remain in 2016) non-political people despair that neither the Tories nor Labour can secure a Brexit that benefits us.