Well, fabulous day for democracy, no? Not the outcome exactly – the Tories lost, but Labour didn’t win – so much as the sense that for once, every vote matters. Or, in the case of North East Fife, every two votes. In Richmond Park, Zac Goldsmith has won by 45 votes – more or less the size of his extended family.
And Kensington – Kensington! – seems have gone Labour, with fewer than 35 votes in the outcome and another recount to come at 6pm. I still can’t get my head round it. (It would, come to think of it, be a handy seat, if available, for former cabinet ministers living and working in the constituency, and seeking re-election.)
What’s the real reason Labour is reluctant to hold a grooming gangs inquiry?
The other evening, I took part in a pre-election discussion at Farm Street Church in central London where I commiserated with a lady from that constituency: obviously, I said, given the scale of the Tory majority, she may as well stay at home if she wanted to vote for anyone but Victoria Borwick.
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Perhaps it’s tasteless to make the point that maybe nobody will be happier to see Jean-Marie Le Pen buried than his daughter Marine. The founder of the National Front died this morning at the age of 96, discredited, ignored, mentally incapacitated and largely irrelevant, except as a spectre. Today the terms ‘hard right’, ‘extreme right’
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