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A certain amount of tactical voting went on at the European elections, and it delivered 23 MEPs between the LibDems, Greens and Change UK. (Brexit Party 29, Tories 4, Labour 10, SNP 3, PC 1)
But what would have happened if the tactics had been much more extreme?
But what would have happened if the tactics had been much more extreme?
If we take the scenario that LibDems, Greens and Change UK ran as a single "Remain Alliance" (and generously assume voters would have come out in the same numbers as for its components) that would have netted them an extra 7 MEPs and cost the BP 2, Tories 2 and Labour 3 MEPs.
But two can play at that game. What happens if the hard Brexit parties (BP+UKIP) do exactly the same thing, and form a Hard Brexit Alliance to pit against the Remain Alliance? That takes 2 MEPs off the RA, 1 off Labour and 1 off the Tories.
So as you can see, had the two alliances formed up and done battle, making the EE even more explicitly an analogue for Referendum 2.0, then the Tories and Labour would have been essentially irrelevant, and it would have been as near as anything a tie between Remain/Brexit sides.
In other words, the numbers of MEPs would have varied a bit, but overall the UK (minus NI - which is hard to model strategically because of STV, sorry) would have been almost exactly as divided as the real EE results painted it to be.
So is there more clarity to be found in the total vote counts themselves? Not really...
Hard Brexit Alliance: 5,797,881 (49.4%)
Remain Alliance: 5,950,039 (50.6%)
Hard Brexit Alliance: 5,797,881 (49.4%)
Remain Alliance: 5,950,039 (50.6%)
However you interpret the European elections and no matter what what-if scenarios you run, the conclusion seems to be the same every time: we are a completely, utterly, devastatingly divided country. There is no strong mandate for *anything*. Brexit broke Britain. Thanks, Brexit.
