For Britain’s major political parties Thursday’s local elections proved that every silver lining has a cloud. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party did not have a good night yet it was the Conservatives who faced the darkest and stormiest skies. The Liberal Democrats did well by comparison with the truly dreadful results they posted in 2015. But the biggest winners were the nation’s smallest parties. Independent councillors flourished and the political stalemate in Westminster found expression in the rise of local authorities where no party had overall control. If any one of the mainstream parties could say they won on Thursday it was the Greens, buoyed by the government’s public acceptance that their arguments about an impending climate emergency had won the day. The political arm of the environmental movement had its best night for years.
Viewed through the most salient of national issues – Brexit – it would be easy to construct an analysis in which the voters had laid the blame at the feet of the two major Westminster parties either for failing to deliver on the results of referendum in 2016 or for failing to find a way to repudiate them. Both the Conservatives’ Theresa May and Labour’s Mr Corbyn recognised that this instant precis of events would be attractive and sought to defuse its allure by saying they will “sort out” Brexit. This is too roughly hewn an argument.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2ZTqlE7
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