Gerry Dorrian

"Brexit and Democracy" started about five years ago when I was going over some general election statistics with a calculator - that's how sad I am! - and came upon a sizeable anomaly, in that in the 2005 election Labour's majority, in terms of raw votes, was one fifth the size of the postal vote. I then found out that the law had been changed in 2000 to allow postal voting by demand - but the 2001 vote didn't appear rigged. What difference was there between the 2001 election and the 2005 one? The only difference I could find is that by 2005 we had been taken into war in Iraq on some very dodgy legal advice, and were all looking eastwards come the election. My project developed into a survey of how the European Union came around, as we were signed to the Lisbon Treaty on the 2005 mandate.

I've had some experience of editing so, when the Prime Minister announced a snap general election, I realised I was facing a deadline no commercial company could meet!