The analysts are saying that if voting patterns from Thurs are repeated at the next GE, we’re in for a hung parliament with either Labour or the Tories ending up as the biggest party with approx 280 seats.
While Labour are obviously in with the best shot at building a workable majority, the Lib Dems will obviously want a big price for entering into such a pact. All of which means Starmer may have to go cap (and offers of independence referendums) in hand to Scotland, Wales and NI.
Cue pre-election screams of “a vote for Labour is a vote for a coalition of chaos and the end of the Union” from Boris’ army of Bufton Tuftons in the Shires.
With the Tories rather disingenuously saying they expected to lose up to 800 seats, they’re spinning the 400-or so they actually did wave goodbye to on Thurs as something of a triumph.
Given that Labour do not seem to have made any strides forward outside London, it wasn’t that great a night for them either.
Making matters worse for them is the fact that, having spent the last three months reaming BoJo over Partygate, Starmer now has egg korma all over his face with the news that the Durham PoPo are investigating him.
One can only hope they use considerably more rigor than they did when looking into DC’s trip to Barnard Castle.
He’s in jail, leave him alone
Only a week and it seems he’s already in solitary
Well he was a singles player
It’ll be squash from now on.
It is rather a squash in a broom cupboard.
I wonder if he’s feeling the pressure of the mens semis today
There’ll be a change of ends after 90 seconds.
I’m sure he’ll pull through.
I heard he’s gone down the rankings. I think that’s what I heard.
Regarding Labour, I suspect there was a lot of ABC (anyone but Conservative) voting, which is fine by me but may not be defected in a national poll. Northern Ireland is looking … interesting.
In all honesty, Labour have not done well enough in the Midlands and the North, the previous Labour strongholds. Still. The cost of living crisis has only just started and is going to get worse in those areas in particular. The red wall might reform in two years time but a lot of people are really missed off with their Labour councils.
The Hull result is really not a big deal – the Libs only had to take three seats. The city went yellow in Blair’s time and stayed that way for a decade, and though it went back to Labour in 2012 it’s been on a knife-edge ever since.
Turnout was abysmal as usual – 16-17% in some wards. Our ward ousted the last Tory councillor in the city, a bone-idle creep who should have been given his marching orders years ago. Remind you of anyone?
Delighted to say in little Hitchin we did really well, removed two more Tories, one in my own ward which has been Tory for ever. I did a lot of leaflets and canvassing so it was very satisfying. The LDs are in coalition with Labour which is generally working fine, but at parliamentary level we wouldn’t go into coalition with Labour or anyone else. Never again! There’s enough commonality for a decent confidence and supply arrangement though.
If KS has any sense he will do a deal with the LDs based on PR. Labour has absolutely no future as a party of government in a post-Scotland UK under FPTP.
Unfortunately it suits the SNP to have a Tory government in Westminster so there’ll be no deals there.
I suspect discussions are going that way. It should be in both manifestos, worded so that a subsequent referendum isn’t required. As PR is already used in the devolved admins and mayoral races we should just adopt one of those systems. The LD preference is Single Transferable Vote if you are wondering (doubtful I accept…)
Starmer’s fucked, isn’t he? I’m sure no one thought the dinner after work was a party, and the rules were different when the Downing St parties occurred, but he’s scuppered by having taken the high moral ground with Johnson. He’ll have to resign on principle. And if anyone expects Johnson to do the same…
He is if he is fined (although he did call on Johnson to resign because he crossed the threshold for investigation). If he isn’t fined, I think he’ll get away with it.
He could make Johnson’s resignation a condition of his own.
Good luck with that
He can’t resign. There’s a war on.
Chamberlain did.
Apart from resigning and undemining Moose’s argument, what did Chamberlain ever do for us?
Inspire the invention of the famous keyboard instrument, as used by DB in the late 1970s?
A friend of mine was closely involved and is certain the rules at the time weren’t broken. It was a working dinner, which apparently was permitted at that point, and by the time the food was ordered, the hotel wasn’t serving. The quiz which Richard Holden (who on the same day had lunch with a troop of Gurkhas, by the way) is trying to say was in person definitely wasn’t: it happened over zoom. If the rules were broken it seems to be a lot more of a marginal case than the “let’s party and I’ll pay for the coke and strippers” routine enjoyed by the PM on 4,392 occasions.
So the facts seem to be just about on KS’s side, but that might matter less now that the Tories and the Mail have kicked up enough stink. It’s the old “flood the zone” tactic to make people think all politicians are the same, and distract the media from the results (which are worse even that what the Mail projected as meaning “disaster” for the Tories the day before polling day). Seems to work, but at what cost?
Thing is. If he goes, that will make Johnson look even more unprincipled. It might not be the worst move for Labour: KS has made steady progress, and done good work on detoxifying the party, but struggled with the hearts and minds, imagination, positive vision part, so maybe a new LOTO can capitalise on his groundwork. No way does the SCG have a hope of driving the party back to Magic Grandpasville, so it’s probably (hopefully) Wes Streeting up next, who’s better at this than Starmer. Keir gets to be Kinnock. I can think of worse outcomes.
@hedgepig
Good call on Wes Streeting, a very interesting character, though I’m not sure the rest of Engerland is ready for him.
I’m afraid Keir just hasn’t got ‘it’ whatever ‘it’ is. When he was trying to convince his faithful that Labour had really turned the corner with these local election results, he just sounded half hearted.
@hedgepig
Interesting how something a friend of yours apparently told you in para one has suddenly hardened into a fact in the first line of para two.
I don’t make a habit of assuming close friends with first hand knowledge are lying to me.
I don’t think he is. It doesn’t looks like he broke regulations, and the whole storm in a tea cup is the Mail defecting from the local election results. I don’t know who calculates these things, but pre-election it was said that a loss of 500 seats would be a Tory meltdown; with most results in they have lost 491 and suddenly Starmer is meant to be the one in trouble?
He made an enormous mistake going all-in on Partygate.
If anything is going to do for this government it’s the cost of living crisis. Starmer just needed to sit tight, dampen down as best he can the numerous loonies who still remain in his party and try to look like someone who might competently manage us out of a difficult economy.
I have no idea whether he actually broke The Rules or not (although my recollection of when this first appeared in the papers many months ago is that he probably had, and I didn’t much care either way), but he’s ensured with his own words that actual guilt isn’t the benchmark: being investigated is sufficient cause to resign. It was a self-evidently hysterical position when he adopted it, and now it’s come back to bite him.
I have no doubt that many of his accusers are guilty of similar rule breaches. I also suspect that anyone you find to replace him will probably have a lockdown era skeleton or two somewhere in their closet.
I know that there are a lot of people out there right now struggling to keep the lights on, and I’m not sure how much it benefits those folks to watch the two major political parties bicker over how much pizza constitutes a party, or whether it makes any difference that a curry was pre-booked.
The worrying thing for Labour is that, after making zero progress in the Midlands and the North in the face of the worst government in living memory, the party is starting to look truly fucked.
Having foolishly waved goodbye to what was left of an already a rapidly shrinking traditional voter base, the only way they look likely to get back into power now is as the main party in a coalition of some kind.
Like Johnson, Starmer is increasingly looking like a busted flush. And, like Johnson, it is hard to see who might – or at this point would even want to – take charge of running the (shit)show.
Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper are already on manoeuvres. There will more ready to stand, don’t you worry.
Personally, I’d prefer a non-London woman who is to the centre of the Labour Party.
Burnham’s the man. As it should have been in ’15.
Wes Streeting seems to be, “What do you want me to say? I’ll say that” – which would basically make him a Labour David Cameron. Still, Cameron won two elections so what do I know?
Burnham would be great but needs to be a MP.
I think the economy may well be the key issue in the next election. When is it not? Someone with a coherent plan and some fiscal nous is required. The Tories don’t seem to have anyone.
Expect Gove to emerge from under whatever rock he’s been hiding under for the last few months.
A clever man, who has all the electoral appeal of herpes.
But in fact, Labour has made reasonable progress in Scotland (yay!) the North and the Midlands. The relatively small number of council seats gained – though still quite reasonable IMO – is down to the fact that these seats were last contested in 2018, when Labour were doing fairly well. The vote represents a remarkable recovery from the Corbyn Catastrophe.
Because Boris Gotta Boris, we have not reached the bottom yet, and never will. There will be more to come, whatever happens. Rawnsley today, after a brief tour of the most recent bad news stories for the government:
If you missed those scandals, don’t worry. Another will be along in a minute. That is the one thing that can be guaranteed by a government led by Boris Johnson.
The point is, at what juncture does BJ’s behaviour, or that of his government, become so utterly repugnant that sufficient numbers of his MPs turn away in disgust – and that is even before we ask the same of the electorate.
Every day I hope that that 60s-dodging f***wit Johnson has died.
My wife tells me – “No, that’s wrong, I’d prefer to see him in jail.”
That makes no difference to me.
I genuinely wish him dead tomorrow… well, tonight if possible.
Who’d lose out?… apart from the tabloids and racists and homophobes and sexists and tabloids and tabloids?
His (many) children would lose a father. Your obsession with him is a little disturbing. Hope for a resignation or a Tory party ousting rather than his death
Out of interest does he see much of all his children?
Out of curiosity, who did you vote for in the last election?
Don’t like the man or his policies but wouldn’t wish for his death.
Given the monotonous regularity that you bang on about him, perhaps you’d like to tell us the reason(s) for the obsessive hatred on your part?
Oh god, don’t encourage him.
O do leave poor Deram out of it. He isn’t any more real than I am, a caricature, a sock puppet. You’ll notice that he only started posting when another favourite stopped……
Well I am real I think, maybe the rest of you aren’t. Maybe all of you exist in my imagination or all the other members here are actually parts played by one person with multiple logins? Maybe me too, do I exist?
@Dai
I’d try and answer you, D, but I’m incarcerated in this bloody stupid box
There are favourites?