Peterborough By-Election: There Should Be a People’s Vote

Labour are celebrating victory in the Peterborough By-Election, seeing off the Brexit Party by 683 votes. There should be a second by-election, obviously.

Using the calls from large part of the Labour Party who are publicly demanding a second referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, surely they should back a re-run of this by-election since it was pretty close?

Newly elected Labour MP, Lisa Forbes said; “Despite the differing opinions across our city, the fact that the Brexit Party have been rejected here in Peterborough shows that the politics of division will not win.”

What Forbes has neglected is that the percentage difference between her and the Brexit party is tighter than that of the 2016 EU Referendum.

With that in mind, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn made a statement hailing a “great win” for his party. That’s not quite the term I’d use to describe it Jeremy.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage made the point that the party is only a few months old, and won the European Elections only weeks ago. “We have come from nowhere, produced a massive result – we haven’t quite got over the line, but we are pretty buoyed by this,” he added.

So, to answer my own question, no. You will continue to hear calls from Labour flanks calling for a second referendum on the EU. It is pretty clear that Labour will happily pick up the ball and go home if they win first time round, but will become the overtly jealous kid when they don’t.

Hypocritical? Absolutely.

The Brexit Party can also hold this Peterborough By-Election thought as a comfort. Using the “remainer” mathematics from the EU Elections, by totting up the UKIP, SDP and English Democrats votes together, and putting them in the Brexit column, The Brexit Party would have won the seat.