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FEATURE PAGE 12
“Your campus, your voice”
SPA ‘Highly Commended’ Best Publication 2019
HOMLESSNESS DOWN AND OUT IN THE SOUTH EAST
Friday 24 January 2020 15.6
KENT TO HOLD HISTORIC NUS REFERENDUM NEXT MONTH PAGE 3
General Election of the decade
Our Newspaper Editor Bill Bowkett reveals the inside stories of the most important election in a generation in Kent (and the events that have followed)
I
t is difficult to put into words how the United Kingdom felt when that gawping exit poll dropped on the evening of Thursday, 12 December, the Conservatives fearing that Boris Johnson had blown his chance of preserving sovereignty, as polls showed Labour closing the gap. But the Prime Minister was met with the greatest forecast imaginable: a stonking landslide and Labour dismantling. The Canterbury campus, meanwhile, had a totally unique atmosphere. One student in attendance at Woody’s showcasing of results night told me of his experience. For the last few minutes, the Conservatives in attendance were in limbo, nerve wound tightly by word of a
hung parliament. On the other side of the room, Labour was more optimistic, ready, as the Labour society promoted on their event page, to “welcome in the next Labour government”. As polls closed, the feeling in the room “changed” as the exit poll projected a Tory landslide and a Labour discomfiture. “There was a moment of disbelief in the room. There was a stunned silence.” Everyone was looking at the numbers, trying to work out what it meant. “Then there was jubilation from the Tory side.” Back at the Downing Street helm – Johnson’s party gaining 47 seats from the 2017 result, with a comfortable 78seat majority in the House of Commons – the man who dreamt as a kid of becoming “world king” (as his sister Rachel attests) suddenly had an increased mandate to “get Brexit done” and deliver on his vision for Britain. This was revealed shortly after in last month’s Queen Speech. The party Boris leads has more MPs now than any of the other parties put together, the result marking the greatest Conservative landslide since 1987 under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Meanwhile, Labour lost 59 seats, down to 203, the worst result the party has had since 1935 under Clement
Attlee. Jeremy Corbyn has said that he will now be using this time as a period of reflection and that he will step down as Labour leader before the next election. The contest to pick the next leader of the opposition is already underway. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary and a University of Kent alumni, has thrown her name into the ring but failed to attain the 22 ballots needed from MPs and MEPs to proceed to the next round. As the sun rose over a blue victory, vexation among Labour’s ranks in the county was vividly underlined. Medway councillor Tris Osborne, a former election candidate, said the party needs a “more credible figure” than the Islington North MP. “Just putting a younger figure forward with the same agenda will not work. It is clear [that] the electorate wants something different and we are not there yet and have a long way to go.” Kent Labour Students president, Dimitri Andreou, tweeted: “Labour lost because of the hardcore remain faction and that is the complete truth…As much as I think we need to unite as a movement, I hope those who pushed us in a remain direction will really consider the consequences of their actions. We lost because we failed leavers.” Labour did have some consolation in
Kent, that being Rosie Duffield winning a second term as the Member of Parliament for Canterbury, Whitstable and surrounding villages. The Kent constituency was the second-most marginal seat in the Meridian region before the general election, under 2% with a majority of just 187. It looked all but set that the Conservatives were on course for a gain in the Garden of England – an Ipsos/MORI exit poll, in collaboration with BBC/ ITV/SKY, erroneously predicted that the Conservatives had an 88% chance of winning the seat it previously held since World War One. Anna Firth, the Tory candidate, told me in the early stages of the ballot count that it was “early days”. She was right. Rosie Duffield “bucked the national trend here once again” and was re-elected with 29,018 votes, increasing her majority to 1,836. After being declared the first MP overnight in the South East, Duffield rejoiced in delight saying she was “absolutely thrilled” and that she was excited “to keep the best job in the world.” She added: “Thank you very much to my team who have had a very difficult year and do an amazing job. Thank you very much for the other candidates who have all been really lovely and very polite. I’ve enjoyed all our debates. There’s
no way I can thank all those that have volunteered enough. Canterbury is the best place in the world.” Despite the success, Rosie was reflective of her party’s incapability to win over voters, especially those in the “red wall” in the North of England. “I’ve lost some good friends tonight, from Parliament. And that is devastating,” Duffield told KMTV. “Both of the leaders had really bad feedback, if I’m honest, on the doorsteps. It’s that, and there’s loads of other issues. But we definitely need to look again at what went wrong, and I can’t analyse that now, but we will be doing so in the next few days.” Continued on page 2...