Had Labour’s high command set out to lose an election, they could not have gone about it in a more convincing way: the searing words of John Howarth, the Labour MEP, before he narrowly won the tenth and last seat to become Labour’s sole MEP in the southeast of England. While these were disastrous results for the Tories, they were dreadful for Labour, losing half our MEPs, being wiped out in Scotland, the east and South West of England and polling just 14 per cent of the vote. Mr Howarth was expressing the frustration felt by any Labour member who had campaigned in these EU elections. Many of us had been warning for weeks that Labour was haemorrhaging votes to parties that unequivocally back a…

Source: The Times May 27, 2019 04:43 UTC