*UNDER CONSTRUCTION* Signal-boosting #ToryBritain truths to the nation. Helping YOU be part of the fightback.
From The Independent: Expenses cheat MP Chris Davies has been stripped of his seat, plunging the next Conservative leader into a perilous by-election. A recall petition easily cleared the 10 per cent threshold for triggering a by-election, with 19 per cent of local voters – a total of 10,005 people – demanding Mr Davies be removed.
From the Daily Mirror: This was the election Theresa May thought she’d stroll. The Prime Minister went to the country with a 20-point lead in the polls and facing a divided opposition led by a discredited leader. Seven weeks later it was Jeremy Corbyn being hailed for his election coup and Theresa May the beleaguered leader of a divided party.
Here are 10 reasons for the result that changed British politics…
From The Independent: Jeremy Corbyn has increased Labour’s share of the vote by more than any other of the party’s election leaders since 1945.
From Daily Telegraph: Labour staged a major upset to take the London seat of Kensington by a hair’s breadth to end the 2017 General Election almost 24 hours after the polls closed.
From The Guardian: Jeremy Corbyn has once again defied the expectations of opponents and pollsters with a Labour result that may not necessarily put him in Downing Street, but has delivered a hung parliament rather than the anticipated cull of his MPs.
The man who began his campaign to be Labour leader as a 100-1 outsider, and was routinely derided as unelectable, ended up increasing the number of Labour seats, a prospect seen by many as unthinkable when the election was called on 18 April.
As a series of Conservative target seats stayed resolutely in Labour hands, followed by a string of gains for his party, pre-election speculation about what scale of losses would necessitate a Corbyn exit was replaced by exultant talk of a new style of politics.
From the moment the exit poll arrived at 10pm on Thursday, indicating that Labour would increase its number of seats by 34, with a net loss of 17 for the Conservatives, the former was ebullient, with a spokesman saying this would be “an extraordinary result”.
“There’s never been such a turnaround in a course of a campaign,” he said. “It looks like the Tories have been punished for taking the British people for granted.”
Speaking after he held his Islington North seat with an overwhelming majority, Corbyn said he was “very proud of the results that are coming in all over the country tonight. You know what? Politics has changed. Politics isn’t going back into the box where it was before. What’s happened is, people have said they’ve had quite enough of austerity politics, they’ve had quite enough of cuts in public expenditure, under-funding our health service, under-funding our schools, our education service, and not giving our young people the chance they deserve in our society.”
From the Daily Telegraph: The Labour Party in Wales is celebrating after a “fantastic” night saw them take three Welsh seats from the Conservatives as Theresa May’s party failed to achieve its hoped for breakthrough.