Tag: David Kurten

Labour’s Janet Daby has won the Lewisham East byelection and immediately promised to oppose a hard Brexit, after the party’s margin of victory was cut by a resurgent Liberal Democrats in the heavily pro-remain seat. Daby took just over 50% of the vote in the south-east London constituency, ahead of the Lib Dems’ Lucy Salek, who won 25% of the vote – a 20 percentage point rise in the party’s share of the vote – to leapfrog the Conservatives and take second place. The Conservative share fell by 8 percentage points after their candidate, Ross Archer, won less than 9% of the votes. Labour held Lewisham East with 50.2% of the vote – down 17.75 points since June 2017 Standfirst ... % 0% 10 20 30 40 50 Lab Janet Daby 50.2% (11,033 votes) Lib Dem Lucy Salek 24.59% (5,404) Con Ross Archer 14.38% (3,161) Green Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah 3.59% (788) Women’s Equality Mandu Reid 2.30% (506) Ukip David Kurten 1.73% (380) Guardian Graphic | Turnout 69.28% (47,201) Daby won a closely contested internal Labour battle to run for the safe seat vacated by Heidi Alexander, who quit parliament to work with the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. “I will oppose an extreme or a hard Brexit,” she said. “I will consider people’s jobs, the economy and people’s rights, and that will dictate to me the precedent in how I will conduct myself both within parliament and out of parliament.” The Labour share of the vote fell by almost 18 percentage points from the 2017 election, and, with a much-reduced turnout from last year, Daby secured a majority of 5,629, compared with the 21,213 seen by Alexander. A Lib Dem bounce in Lewisham cannot shift Labour’s Brexit stance | Owen Jones Read more The Lib Dems claimed the swing was the biggest against Labour in a seat since 2004, and the most significant since 1983 when Labour was in opposition. “This is the largest swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats in over a decade and the failure of Labour’s leadership to oppose the Conservatives’ hard Brexit cannot be hidden or forgotten.” Salek said the result showed the party was “the real opposition here. #LewishamEast June 15, 2018 Asked how much distance there was between her and Corbyn’s views on Brexit, Daby said: “In terms of the single market, our Labour view on this is that we would have a new single market where we have the same access that we presently do. “In terms of Jeremy Corbyn, I voted for Jeremy Corbyn twice in the leadership election and obviously within politics not everybody will agree on everything.” The Greens came fourth in the byelection, followed by the Women’s Equality Party.