When Theresa May called a General Election for June 8th she was confident that she would win a massive majority. So confident that she simply took the people for granted; the ‘friendly media’ would ‘take care of Corbyn’ and the Tories would be heading back to the ‘good old days’ of Maggie Thatcher, Grammar schools, Foxhunting, a broken and divided working class, while the victorious PM would be free to wander hand in hand with dangerous right wing world leaders like Donald Trump.
Today the Tories have admitted that Corbyn could actually win. Not only are opinion polls showing a massive rise in support for Labour, their newly produced ‘socialist’ manifesto is proving popular and young people in particular are rushing out to register to vote.
Leader of Labour controlled Bridgwater Town Council, Brian Smedley, says “When you look at the statistics here in Bridgwater and West Somerset it’s clear that the way to beat the Tories is to energize new voters. People who have never before believed even in turning out to vote – ‘they’re all the same’ , ‘they say one thing and do another’. Now that’s clearly not the case. Jeremy Corbyn is an honest,decent and principled man who will deliver what he promises and the things in the Labour manifesto are what the people have been calling for but parties have been too timid to deliver. Now it’s finally on the table. People need to get out to vote for it. However, I recall the days of the Poll Tax. Thatcher’s Tory flagship policy was decimating communities everywhere and our leaders said ‘get out there and vote her away;-the trouble was that when 1,000s of people turned up at the polling stations they found they weren’t even registered. We can’t make that mistake again. People need to make sure they have a vote, and that means registering. The deadline for that is May 22nd.”
More than a million applications to register to vote have been made since Theresa May called the General Election.
A total of 1,038,877 applications have been submitted since April 18, almost a third of them from people aged under 25.
Applications from those aged 25 to 34 make up another third.
By contrast, just 1% have come from people aged over 75.
How to register to vote:
You must be registered to vote in the General Election by May 22.
You can register to vote here if you live in Great Britain.
If you are not sure if you are registered to vote then you will need to contact your local authority who will be able to tell you. Find their contact details here.