I think the polls have narrowed in the last week. Reform support has wavered with all the blatant racism.
I’m guessing:
Labour 419
Conservative 149
Lib Dem 41
SNP 16
Reform 2
Green 3
Plaid 4
Your Prediction Of The Election Outcome?
by 354 Comments
Labour win, though majority not as big as some pundits are suggesting. Highlight will be a return to Scotland voting for them again and the collapse of the currently blue ‘red wall’ seats. Tories to have a very, very bad evening all round. Gains for LibDems in rural areas. Reform to do depressingly well in terms of national vote share and, more depressingly, Farage will win in Clacton.
Yes. 🔼
Count Binface to win Richmond and Northallerton.
Unfortunately Count (I nearly missed out the ‘o’) Binface standing will probably mean Sunak holidng onto his seat. Whether he will really want it is another matter altogether.
The Count got 69 votes when he stood against Boris Johnson in 2019. I'm hoping for at least 70 this time. I like that the UK has Count Binface and the Monster Raving Loony Party. It's a very English thing. Eccentric and irreverent.
He’s in my area of Richmondshire and l’ve just been out to out for Labour. However I’m pretty sure Sunak will still get in. Plenty of people l met at the weekend who should be voting to oust him either not bothering to vote (they’re all the same) or voting for Reform. Depressing. No wonder l drink.
I’m keeping to my prediction of 120 seats for the Tories keeping them as the Opposition. I really hope they get zero but England is Conservative by default and a significant number cannot and do not vote any other way.
If the disaffected co-ordinated their tactical voting, the Tories could end up with lower end double figures!
Really don’t know – I think Reform may do better in number of votes than the polls suggest, and with Greens and Lib Demes also picking up votes but not having seats in any way proportionate, it really is going to put our voting system in the spotlight. Labour could win a landslide but with fewer votes than Corbyn got, and Labour and Conservative together coudl only be 50-60% of the electorate. Voting reform could be a big issue which brings together an unholy alliance of Farage, the hard left, the Greens and the Lib Dems.
Yes, it seems incredible that, in the 1951 General election, the Tories and Labour combined accounted for 97% of the popular vote. There could never be such an outcome again.
I predict that whichever party wins will become the government and that
within a surprisingly short period of time its MPs and ministers will be unpopular
with large swathes of the electorate.
In the case of SKS, I hope that unpopularity is due to taking sensible steps rather
than selfish half-measures
And therein lies the problem. Labour have a honeymoon opportunity to be ‘a force for good’ as Starmer puts it, but once the country’s disaffection kicks in, as it inevitably will when they are faced with the realities of government, the only viable alternative will sit with the far right. Thankfully Britain has a history of little patience with political extremism of any hue, but next time round I wouldn’t be so sure. Disenchantment with mainstream politics breeds extremism, as France can attest.
On the assumption that this election is largely a forgone conclusion, I’m finding the “what comes next” question really troubling – I agree with your forecast.
The single best thing that could happen tomorrow night would be Farage being kept out of parliament, but that’s not currently appearing likely.
I never thought I’d say this, but I hope the Conservative Party can find a way to renew themselves once this is all over. Intolerable as the Tories currently are, we may eventually find we need them, either as a properly functioning opposition or as a bulwark. I’m sure they’ll swing right in the immediate aftermath, but I hope it doesn’t take too long for (and this is, of course, a relative term) saner voices to prevail.
I thought this article in the The Guardian was interesting. The journalist put the three main parties’ manifestos in a computer game called Democracy 4 and it predicted the result of each being in Government for the next five years. Obviously the results of a video game prediction should be taken with a pinch of salt, but interesting nonetheless. Some of the comments are interesting too. One particular favourite:
“I simulated Reform’s first five years in a computer game and in year 4 a Godzilla type monster destroyed an entire city.”
https://www.theguardian.com/games/article/2024/jul/02/i-simulated-each-uk-partys-first-years-in-government-in-a-video-game-and-the-results-were-awful
…in year five, Reform’s election manifesto includes a pledge to deport illegal immigrant sea monsters, coming over here, treading on cars and refusing to integrate with our way of life, the green scaly bastards.
On nothing other than gut instinct I say a handsome majority, let’s say between 100 and 120 seats, for Labour. Traditional Tories seem disaffected and will either sit on their hands or vote Reform, and quite rightly. Even people who have always voted Conservative might get an inkling that the current shower require nothing less than utter extirpation and rebuilding on some basic principles of decency and service.
I’m in Chelmsford, a seat which, with various boundary changes, has had a blue rosette nailed to it for nearly 80 years. I have seen precisely 1 Vote Conservative poster. When the incumbent canvassed me at my door, she turned to the wall and rested her head against it, which suggested she hadn’t been getting much positive feedback (I promise you I was civil). Incidentally, the local Reform candidate is trending on Twitter for calling people with ADD ‘vegetables’ among other such pleasantries. The only Reform poster I’ve seen is a few houses away, at the man’s whom I once heard tell his neighbour that his solution to small boats was ‘send the Navy out and just sink the fucking lot of them’.
Lib Dem seem to be in with a very solid chance here, and I’ll be voting tactical Lib Dem, as my most powerful anti-Tory choice, while hoping for a Labour government. I can see that happening in multiple seats.
You’ve saved me the bother of writing, other than my local MP hasn’t bothered to turn up either because he thinks he’s in a safe seat, or because (he was parachuted in by BoJo) and expects to lose to tactical LD vote.
For the first time in my life, my tactical vote might actually back a winner.
The Lab candidate lives 70 miles away, I don’t know why they bothered.
“I am fortunate enough to have been married to my Childhood sweatheart and best friend for 27 years”.
Your illiterate Reform candidate, Gatz – though I read he was talking about people with autism, not ADD – not that that improves anything.
My sitting (Tory) MP boasted about the “hopsitals” he’d built on his leaflet. He kept quiet about the ones which closed and/or are full of RAAC.
When I was canvassed I asked mine about an area of public infrastructure related to my work, and listened patiently as she took personal credit for my team’s work. As you can imagine, when I WhatsApped the team they were fascinated to learn that some of their principle achievements were actually due to Vicky Ford MP.
I’m not going to differ from the forecasts. I don’t see a viable alternative to the Labour Party. It is difficult to predict the impact of tactical voting though. I have a choice to make as to whether to vote LibDem as they are much more likely to beat the local Tory candidate than Labour. Our candidate is somewhat typical of the current breed – the son of immigrants but happy to energetically support the hard line the current government has. He has also failed to do any canvassing in the area beyond one leaflet. If it were on effort alone, the LibDem candidate would storm it. I’ll probably vote for her as I expect she will do a better job for the constituency than a career Tory MP.
I do see a generous majority for Labour, the Tory vote being torn away by all sides and there probably being a storng argument for proportionate repretensation after the election (that will be ignored).
I do fear Farage will get in as well as Lee Andersen. That alone would make me hope for a degree of reinvention from the Tories. I suspect the more extreme right will feel more attractive to them though and they may stuggle to bring back the centre right.
If you want to know the best bet for ousting a Tory, here is a website where you simply type in your postcode:
https://stopthetories.vote/
I cautiously advance that Labour will win, but not be as wonderful as is hoped. The Tories will lose substantially, and a lot of exhibitionist twerps will be off / back to The City and their lucrative consultancies. Reform will enable two fingers (geddit?) to give their pub-bore rants in Parliament until people lose interests, as did UKIP before. That includes Nige. and the, astonishing, even more awful Lee Anderson. The Tories can decide to appropriate the Reform style if they want, but given the way the Tories have been, they currently seem so desperate, I don’t think anyone will believe their latest tough-minded incarnation. The Dim Lebs will have a reasonable night, though I’m not sure if they will get enough seats to become the official opposition. Compo will not get his seat back in Islington, and will retreat to plotting the next revolution from his courgette patch. In Scotland, Labour will get the protest vote against the SNP. I will sit up till about 4am to enjoy the drama, unless it can be declared before. I would like to see JRM out on his arse.
I reckon the SNP is going to do better than predicted and have more MPs than Labour in Scotland but it will be close.
JRM, McVey & Hunt are the big moments for me. Liz Truss is a maybe. I have a sneaky feeling she is going to scrape in by her fingernails but I’d love to see her out.
Truss gives Johnson a run for his money as worst PM in modern history by a country mile. What more does she have to do to lose her seat?
@Boneshaker
The man whose lack of backbone brought us Brexit and so paved the way for May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak, Cameron is surely the worst PM since PMs began
Much as Brexit is as boneheaded an idea as could be done, Cameron’s mistake was underestimating the UK’s abilty for swallowing bullshit much more effectively than he imagined.
The inability to deliver the undeliverable isn’t really a reason for calling someone a bad PM either (and, with hindsight, May was a beacon of decency compared to the next 3 PMs).
Boris lied incessantly about Brexit (amongst many other things) and used it to get to PM. That’s pretty damning. He would have been top of this list had Truss not had a go on the pitch. Surely the Ali Dai of politics.
Sunak is just lacking in all departments. He might be good at maths and money making schemes but neither of these seem to be prerequisites for the job.
Cameron’s “mistake” resulted in more long-term damage to the UK’s economy and its citizens than anything the others did. So I agree with Jaygee, he deserves the title of “worst ever”.
Have we forgotten Thatcher?
@Leedsboy
Aside from his lack of cojones in not standing up to first Farage and later the EU during pre-referendum negotiations, C’s biggest failing was not insisting on the usual decisive majority – (66:33 iirc) needed to implement such far-reaching constitutional changes
And running away afterwards. Absolutely. But I still feel Boris is more culpable. And Truss even worse. It is a bit like judging the smelliest shit though. Fundamentally, they are all basically shit.
The way it looks to me, Cameron and May were willing to sacrifice the country for the good of their Party, Johnson was willing to sacrifice everything to promote himself, Truss was always only interested in which bully(ing ideology) she could suck up to to get and keep power, Sunak was only interested in ticking off another box on his list of achievements, no matter the consequence for anyone else.
Unlike the rest of them, I do think May had some sense of public duty and of wanting to do the right thing for the country. It’s just that her party was never going to allow that. She could have stood her ground and argued for a more sensible Brexit agreement, and made it a resignation issue. But that would just have meant we’d have got Johnson earlier
An alternative biggest failing from “Call Me Dave” – unwilling to go head to head with Johnson and Gove because he feared the blue on blue conflict would be too damaging in the long run, and he assumed he’d win. And that neither Gove or Johnson would choose Brexit.
As Ian Hislop noted, quite a long time ago, Rishi Sunak just doesn’t know how to do politics. He is clueless.
The way the Brexit referendum was conducted is the biggest black mark against Cameron. No real attempt was made to counter the spurious claims of the Brexiteers and there should have been a qualifying majority of 60% of votes cast as part of the result’s implementation.
Shall we just say that the last five PMs are the worst ever and leave it at that?
I’m frail I can’t allow that Mike. Even if we’re restricting it to my lifetime then Thatcher must be in there and a very strong contender for the top spot.
Trick to define worst by opinion. Ghastly harridan that she was, and the architect of vileness, many would still feel she was competent at the brief she and others expected. Bit like Churchill, who certainly also had a streak of badness right through him. These last 5 pms have all been incompetent. Thatcher and Churchill brutally efficient.
Seemingly brutally efficient. In reality not so much but perception is all.
Difference between being good at politics and being shit at it.
I find it incredible that the Tories’ latest campaigning wheeze, repeated ad nauseam in interviews today, is to argue that people should vote Conservative to ensure Labour don’t have too big a majority. Has one of the major parties ever before said at this stage – ‘we’know we are going to lose, but please don’t allow us to lose by too much’?
Ah the old super majority ploy, a majority is a majority no matter what.
A landslide by any other name would smell as sweet
I’d put the cover of the Lady Milia* on but I wouldn’t want to defile the Afterword but take a look.
* Anag.
I’m sure Labour will win though I have no great enthusiasm for it * – I hope it exceeds my low expectations. I do hope the Tories are below 100 – say 75. If the LDs are above 60 that’d be great. SNP say low 20s. Reform lose deposits. This might be over hopeful though.
* I haven’t forgotten PFI. This, from today’s Graun
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/02/labour-plans-britain-private-finance-blackrock?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
It’s interesting, looking what’s happened in France in the last few days, to find there are still people arguing that Labour should have gone to the left. They’ve been calling Starmer a liar for reneging on promises made back in the Corbyn era, but if they’re right and he is completely unprincipled, well, good. He can just switch back to those policies again once he’s got a majority.
Don’t think labour will hit 400 there’s still a bit of the kinnock whites of their eyes feeling but I can’t wait I love election night
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2024/05/britainpredicts
I look at this one for a different approach, also New Statesman endorsed.
Leave aside tomorrow’s thrashing. Despite the hopes, Sunak will be returned as MP for Richmond and Northallerton. Within a year, there will be a by-election, after he’s gone off to make oodles of dosh somewhere.
Question. Would Johnson stand so soon in a by-election? Lovely safe seat, after all.
My guess is not. The new leader of the party would already be settled, so no vacancy there. The Tory response to electoral drubbing will involve a lot of hard work, and hard work is not really Johnson’s thing, is it? He would never want to be associated with losing an election, so I think he’ll continue to watch from a distance for the time being.
Though sunackered has promised to stay on if he wins.
Rishi Sunak has committed to staying on as an MP for the full five-year term if the Conservative party loses the general election.
From the Guardian.
“Speaking to journalists in Puglia, Italy, where he is attending the G7 summit, the prime minister said he intended to serve a full parliamentary term regardless of the overall result on 4 July.
Asked whether he would stay in the Commons for the next five years as prime minister if the Tory party won, or as an opposition MP if it lost, Sunak said: “Yes and yes.””
I know it has been said that you could stand a sheep with a blue rosette in Richmond and it would win.
Will sunak stay true to his word?
Not if a better offer comes along, my inner cynic says.
Although actually, Sunak doesn’t strike me as being a personally greedy man. He is already stinking rich and entitled, and will no doubt want to continue to be so, but I don’t see him actively grubbing for money like so many of his party colleagues shamelessly would.
Let’s see.
I don’t see Sunak as anything other than a greedy man. What I’ve read about his profiting from the sale of ABN Amro that was far more responsible for kickstarting the global recession than anything the Labour government did suggests money is his only motive, money and power. Despite his (family) wealth, do you see him, post-election, doing anything of social or philanthropic value to make amends for the disruption to countless lives? Of course not, he is a vile, weak, sneering parasite.
Completely agree. I can’t stand him. He lies constantly, with that smirk on his face.
Although, he did give a rather gracious resignation speech, in sharp contrast to his three predecessors.
New beginnings, public have spoken, don’t want to distract from the new leadership, blah, blah, blah … and that’s why I’m giving this interview from the US.
He will definitely be approached for interviews and is unlikely to refuse. And some publisher or other will want a biography ghost-written. There may be backs that he’d like to bury hatchets in.
I don’t think Sunak will have much say in the matter. Braverman, Mordaunt, Badenoch and Cleverly are all getting set for the election contest that will follow the Tory defeat. If the size of loss is close to what the polls suggest, Sunak will be dumped within days – someone has to pay, and he’s been the fall guy since Truss has her moment.
The bloodletting will be fun to watch as the party lurches even further to the right, and if Reform attain more than 2 MPs there will be the additional dimension of those wanting to merge with the brown shirts and those still unwilling.
Cleverly has ruled himself out as his wife apparently has a serious long-term medical condition
The electorate will probably already have ruled out Mordaunt, which leaves us with Braverman and Badenich. Oh whoopee.
I predict that come Friday morning, the Dirty Diger’s newly
Labour-cheerleading Currant Bun will be crowing
“IT WAS THE SUN WOT WON IT!”
Good reasons here not to vote Tory.
More headline predictions for tomorrow
SUNAK WITHOT TRACE
STARMERGEDDON
Please respect The Rules – no comment on the election today in case you influence voting.
“It was that guy on the Afterword what convinced me, if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have voted Reform. I think Nige is going to make a great PM”……..
In the predictive spirit of TIggerlion’s original post, I predict that your appeal
for reasoned comment is doomed to fall on deaf ears
,
Labour 600
Tories 2
Liberals 20
Fartage 4
Plaid 4
SNP 6
Green 1
Others 13
Optimist!
You think Plaid less than 4?
There are 18 seats in Northern Ireland. Labour will do well to win five of those…
Voted for my local LibDem incumbent, who took what was the safest of safe Tory seats in a by-election three years ago. She hasn’t been especially visible since, which I like to think is because serving her constituents is more important to her than posing for photo opportunities with them. She’s been a lot quieter than the Tory candidate in local Facebook groups but there have been loads of people complaining about the sheer volume of LibDem literature being stuffed through their door – and, people sharing a Times story about her expenses, which doesn’t look good.
I was amazed and delighted she got in last time. As an Anyone But Conservative voter living in a Tory heartland, it was the first time in my life I’d voted for the winning candidate in any election.
But, her victory felt like a protest vote against HS2. Despite the prevailing national mood, I’m worried the good folk of Chesham and Amersham are done with protesting now. Fingers crossed I’ve voted for the winning candidate for the second time in my life.
Lawbreaker! I have today read it is illegal to announce your vote ahead the closure of play. (But I won’t let on)
With all the farrago about the prospective momentous win, much as I would love to believe Labour won it, actually the truth is that the Tories utterly and irrevocably lost the election.
Even taking into account the phenomenally low bar of recent years, today’s Daily Mail front page is truly remarkable.
It’s like a Bingo Card for the Conservative Party in 2024… “Full House!”… they got ’em all in.
Ironically, it’s their undying devotion to Fat Boy J. that has led us to the Tories on the ropes. Told ya.
Didja? I don’t remember that.
Oh yeah.
A useful guide for UK insomniacs:
3:00am – Jenrick 3:30am – Keegan 3:30am – Hunt 3:30am – Shapps 3:30am – Coffey 3:30am – McVey 4:00am – Sunak 4:00am – Stride 4:00am – Cleverly 4:30am – Rees Mogg 5:00am – Gullis 5:15am – Mercer 5:30am – Truss 6:00am – Philp
Mordaunt must be a shoe-in for Strictly
While I’m a Celeb would want Bojo or Mogg, they’d never be able to afford them and will have to settle for McVey – if only because she’ll look better in a bikini under the jungle shower than Hunt or Shapps.
Labour to get 410
Tories to get 120
Lib Dems to get 40
Reform to get 4
The rest to get the rest
Hope you put a bet on, that is extremely accurate.
Sadly, not a betting man, MC.
Suppose I could always start monetizing my “gift” by offering AWers divinations…
I think I’ll set my alarm for Truss.
Labour majority of 80, which will be seen as an abject failure, despite being the same as Johnson’s glorious rout last time round.
And the fact, or so I have read, that a Labour majority of a single seat requires a bigger swing than Blair achieved in 1997. But, just. I get the feeling that the talk of Tory extirpation is being amplified to minimise the scale of a Labour majority which is just very large.
Exit poll says Labour majority of 170
If the exit poll is to be believed, the Lib Dems and Reform have both done very well…
If the exit poll is to be believed, the SNP have been decimated…
If exit poll to believed, @gary, Starmer will win a huge majority with less votes than Corbyn got last time round. Our voting system is truly fu**ed.
And let’s be clear – I’m disappointed Labour’s landslide isn’t an avalanche
The EP doesn’t predict voter turnout, just seats
The two party dominance is starting to crack. Our voting system is not fucked.
Approx 36% of the vote gives Labour a landslide – the very definition of fucked
Fewer seats for the the two main parties than ever before
Although yeah Lib Dems getting 71 seats on 12% and Reform getting four on 14% is… no well actually let’s not look too closely at that one
Could there possibly be any truth in dear old Hugh Grant’s affirmation that it’s the newspaper barons who choose Britain’s Prime Minister?
Not a bad prediction by @tiggerlion at the top of the thread according to the exit poll but unfortunately it looks as if you may have underestimated how many people seem to think it’s a good idea to vote for Farage and his cronies.
13 seats? I hope not.
Just 4, but still 4 too many.
And a late declaration puts them on 5 MPs.
Yes. Looks as though I misjudged Farage’s ability to hoodwink people into believing b*ll*cks. 😒
On the plus side, and significant showing for Reform could rip the Conservatives to shreds for the next several years as they decide whether to move closer to or further from them.
Reform doing extremely well in the first two results. They may get even more than 13 seats at this rate.
Let’s just think of Fat Boy J.
Not his looks, his clothes, or his record collection (how f****** shite would that be) obvs!
The last time I checked it out, my last say at the ballot box – two ‘leaders’ later – was in 2019, so this is on HIS watch. What a f****** loser.
As for Retard… they will go the same way in 2029 as the Tory intake from 2019 have gone… who were, of course, voted for by exactly the same people. “Doctor, a brain cell!”
Where next? The Nazi Party? Enjoy your pint in Wetherspoons with one-of-the-people-Nigel, chaps… he really respects you. No, really. No, really. No, he does, really.
Boris Johnson’s favourite L.P. is Goats Head Soup.
Don’t dis The Goat.
Channel 4’s coverage is deliciously mad. Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell versus Kwarteng and Dorries reffed by Mattis and Guru-Murty in a bonkers children’s TV show. Just waiting for a Michael Heseltine puppet to appear from under the desk.
Don’t forget Ann Widdecombe, shaking her locks at the camera…
Rather that, than Laura Kuenssberg and Chris Mason on the Beeb.
Don’t forget Jeremy Vine. Is there anyone who doesn’t find Jeremy Vine utterly odious? Anyway, I’m watching recordings of Taskmaster until there is a steady stream of results and will hop between election channels then.
Ch4 in left ear, LBC in right, Guardian feed and social media in between.
(That way I can alternate when Widdecombe or the adverts come on).
If I were Mrs. Campbell or Mr. Dorries, I would be taking trains and boats and planes (thanks Burt) to the Channel Four studio pronto, because that distain has to go somewhere… if you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, HH’s distain towards MadNad is boring holes straight into the MadNad’s face.
The whole thing does have a 1970 ITV World Cup coverage about it. It’s great.
C4 show a clip of Farage whining about Reform being ignored on election night coverage, then cut amid laughter to Widdecome looking like she’s chewing a wasp.
Hoping they put Dorries on with Carol Vorderman.
Seat after seat are Labour gains thanks to Nige splitting the right-wing vote. Cheers Nige!
Surprised no one here has commented on Moggie’s ousting
Or indeed that of the crapalling George Galloway in Rochdale
I was asleep. It’s nearly Truss time!
Tory parliamentary party’s threshold for a vote of confidence is 15% of its MPs.
At the current showing, that means just 20 MPs would be enough for them to move to end Rishi’s leadership should he manage to hang
on to his seat.
Oh joy!!! Truss is out.
This will, no doubt , form the basis of her next million selling book, in which the nefarious forces of the deep state conspire against her personally to ensure she is forced out of Parliament altogether.
She must lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling and wondering if her conspiracy theories are all due to a conspiracy. Truly, she is mad as a box of frogs.
Her book sold a million??? Wow! Who bought it? Her family?
Boris’s kids?
😁
I thought it sold about 150 copies
It was Boris’s kids then. Well, most of them.
How did this deeply odd individual ever become prime minister?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/06/she-wasnt-sure-how-to-get-off-the-stage-liz-trusss-ungracious-count-retreat-caps-political-humiliation
She was chosen by equally odd people.
Glad to see earlier that gobshite-Galloway got the heave-ho.
Pleased to hear that Rees-Mogg is out.
Due to my location here in sunny NZ I was able to watch the whole thing during the day on C4’s YouTube feed. I quite enjoyed it – quite a good team and Professor Hannah Fry doing the stats. No ads either, which was great. The only fly in the ointment was the occasional input from the Gogglebox people. I am sure they are much-loved national treasures in the UK, but this didn’t work so well in my view. It felt like we were being set up to laugh at the oiks.
Highlights were the exits of Schapps, Rees-Mogg and Truss. Also Carol Vorderman offering zero sympathy with savage and unforgiving eloquence. Nadine Dorries as a panellist was an error as she talked about her time in parliament as if she was an equal to Harriet Harman. Harman was scathing about the independent Labour candidate that split the Labour vote which allowed Ian Duncan Smith to keep his seat, the jammy bastid.
That said, we probably need as many “normal” Tories as possible to prevent the party sliding towards the siren song of Reform as they rebuild post election. No fan of IDS at all but as Tories go, he does seem more mainstream and considered than many of his colleagues.
I didn’t need C4.
I just followed @el hombre malo on Facebook
Funny old world…Jeremy Corbin and Dianne Abbott will be Father and Mother of the House. Corbyn will preside over the election of the next Speaker, apparently.
Wow. Didn’t realise that…
Turns out I was wrong. Sir Edward Leigh was ahead of him in the queue to be sworn in back in 1983, so that makes him the longest-serving MP. Abbott is still the Mother though.
He’s the guy who would like Tory and Reform to merge with Farage as leader.
Reform voters splitting the Cons vote in many constituencies. So the country has swung simultaneously to the left and the right.
England hasn’t really swung anywhere, at least not in favour of Labour. The swing to Labout was in Scotland, the swing in England was from Tory to Reform.
Somewhat ironic naming coincidences. When I was a student, the Tory Reform Group were the one nation Conservatives in the student union debates.
I think that’s an accurate assessment. Looking across all the constituency results in the UK, the pattern was Conservatives dropping by 26%, and the other three main opposition Parties raising at most by 6%. It’s like the Tories finally imploded, and their previous supporters mainly just stayed at home, leaving a rather serious gap of democratic legitimacy in UK politics.
It was absolutely unthinkable in the old days, that Tory supporters would not come out and vote.
Now they seem to be split three ways. The self-satisfied ones who will vote Conservative come what may, seeing voting as their duty to the party.
Then there are the headbanging working-class Tories, some of whom supporteded Labour when Labour and the unions were opposed to immigrants taking British jobs and queer-bashing and Paki-bashing were normal behaviour. Reform’s natural constituents.
Finally, there are the dismayed and disgusted Tories who see how their party has lurched to the right and been taken over by greedy incompetent ideologues and no longer feel able to support them. Some have defected to the Lib-Dems and even to Labour (the Starmer/Blair iteration). A lot of these will have stayed at home and not voted.
Just look at the Kent coast, all swung to Labour. Imagine how strong feelings about illegal immigration are, round there. Damning for the Tory campaign strategy.
And PS I’m dead proud of SoS voters. A red island in a blue Essex ocean
[Chelmsford shouts] Oi! We’re over here! Yes, here in the orange island literally surrounded by blue.
I saw that 👏
Both halves of Sarfend went Labour, possibly for the first time ever. Meanwhile, just over the border, the unspeakable Mark Francois slithered back in…
I hope the new government does well. All of us who live in the UK are to some extent dependent on its success. That said, I can’t say I am clear as to how it really plans to tackle the biggest challenges.
Firstly, it faces a hole in its finances, I.e. the money it needs to raise just to meet existing spending commitments, never mind increasing spending in the way Labour voters will expect. As the IFS and others pointed out before the election, none of the sums in the various party manifestos added up, but it’s Starmer that will have to come up with something.
Increases in property and/or Council Tax; extending NI to unearned income: and increases in CGT and Inheritance Tax would help bridge the gap, but only if applied across the board. The notion that the sums required can just be extracted from the very rich is delusional. Those relatively well-off people who say they are happy to pay ‘ a bit more tax’ are going to have to pay rather more than a bit. How happy they will be if and when that happens remains to be seen.
The second issue, and the more important and difficult longer term challenge, is how to achieve real economic growth. Without that then you are always going to be trying to divide up the same sized cake between an increasing number of people. Starmer and Reeves seem to understand this, but I have no idea how they plan to do it. ( NB I could say the same about the Lib Dems and Tories. The Greens and Reform arguably had clearer, if very different, proposals, but their funding plans were wishful thinking).
That leaves a plethora of policy areas where there is no real consensus as to how to tackle the problems. Housing is a good example. It’s said that we need 100s of thousands more homes built each year. Starmer has said he will relax planning laws, yet he now has MPs in seats that are chock full of NIMBYs.
And all of this before the rude interruptions of the stuff in the wider world – the things that brought down both Blair and Johnson. As MacMillan said when asked what most concerned him, ” Events, dear boy, events”.
Not so long ago, a German politician said that politicians were usually perfectly aware of the decisions and choices that needed to be made. They just didn’t know to make them and then have any chance of getting re-elected. Let’s hope that the size of his majority emboldens Starmer to make the hard choices.
Starmer’s advantage is that he is inheriting a shit show, yet the economy is beginning to improve. He can claim the finances are terrible at a time when inflation is coming down and growth is picking up. He could adjust the fiscal rules on lending.
He is going to have to make a noticeable difference on immigration and the NHS pretty quickly.
Immigration is an interesting example. Despite all the noise from Reform, views on immigration have shifted, over the decades.That said, it’s not a binary choice. I suspect that many people will be concerned about net immigration outstripping housebuilding. Others are uneasy about importing so many people when such a large percentage of the existing population is economically inactive. Yet others are beginning to question the detail of the notion that immigration is always economically beneficial. ( Bringing people in might boost overall GDP, but it doesn’t seem to have done much for GDP per capita, which is what makes us better off).
For all that , this is a policy area where the government can make decisions that make a difference fairly quickly. Lowering the costs for skilled immigrants and raising the barriers for immigration that simply fuels poor productivity are relatively simple. They won’t, however, be popular in the urban areas where Labour has recently taken a pummeling from the ‘Pro -Palestine’ vote.
As for the NHS, doubtless cash will be found for some short-term improvements. Longer term, it’s often said that only a Labour leader could really reform the NHS. Something that will remain difficult whilst the country appears to wedded to a model no-one else in the world has chosen to adopt.
I’d say Johnson brought down Johnson. A balloon filled with sick with a face drawn on it would have handled the early days of the pandemic better than he did, but his constant attempts at deflection every time he was caught with his hand in the biscuit tin were going to get him at some point. It was his witless defence of sex-pest Pincher that finally tipped the scales, but it could have been the money given to mistresses, the wallpaper donor… something was always going to give because of who he is not, IMO, world events.
It would have caught up with him sooner or later, but there is a chance he could have winged it through to the end of the term in other circumstances. In any event, I would still contest that Covid was very much an issue that would expose his weaknesses particularly an inattention to detail, far quicker than many other crisis. Replace Covid with the Ukraine, for example, and I suspect the wheels would have stayed on longer.
Anyway, all old news now. The key points looking forward are whether Labour can address the challenges I mentioned. At the moment we simply don’t know, although things said off the record give some indication that they do have some idea, but have, probably wisely, kept it quiet. One idea that’s been whispered is large Council Tax or other property charges for people living in houses worth, say, over £1m. Nowadays, there are probably more of these in Labour voting areas than the formerly Tory shires.
Highlights of the night – well, Labour won, obvs, and Rees Mogg and Truss were sent packing. The loathsome George Galloway’s tenure in parliament this time round also rivals Truss’s time as PM for its brevity.
The lowlight was the poisonous Farage and the even more awful Lee Anderson taking seats. (Note to self – cancel bucket and spade holiday in Clacton). When Sir Keir is thanking the British people for placing their trust in him he will do well to remember that Labour’s share of the vote has increased by a mere 2%, whereas Farage’s shower of shits have increased theirs by 13%, mostly from Tory voters and largely gifting Labour 5 secure years in power. Let’s hope they don’t cock it up, or Farage’s ominous threat of “this is just the start” is likely to become a horrible reality.
Truss was as graceless as ever. An ex PM and local MP for 14 years just turned and walked off stage.
No thanks to anyone from her campaign or a farewell message to her constituents. A deeply odd person.
She’ll be making a statement later about how it’s all Jerry Manders’ fault
…and slow hand clapped for not bothering to turn up for the result on time. The Tory pundit wheeled out by the BBC absolutely laid into her, effectively saying she deserved to lose and good riddance.
She has to be properly diagnosed with psychopathic tendencies. That blank stare as the results were read out was something to behold. Off she’ll piss to the US, to whinge about the deep state in a highly paid pasture. I hope we never see her again.
According to the Graun she blamed the Tory defeat on their failure to deal with the legacy they were left 14 years ago…this was a direct quote, not a John Crace take.
Gutted to have missed it. I went to bed at 6am. I hope it’s on YouTube!
Aunty Beeb has helpfully compiled a short video of all the big guns losing their seats. Thick Lizzy looks like she doesn’t know why she’s there, or what’s going on.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2gezr05xko
Day 1 of a Labour Government, and it’s raining … that’s enough of the deep political insight.
With the betting thing fresh in people’s minds, the Truss experiment allowing Rishi to claim he has halved inflation (by bringing it back to a level it was near before), the perceived self-serving through Covid, and perceived ineptitude (in just about everything), this was a Vote for Change rather than a shift of political ideals.
Fair play, and good luck to Team KS – I think they’ll need it, certainly for the first 12 months as they get their feet under the table and the house in order.
Yes, I see turnout is predicted to have dropped again, from 67% in 2019 to just under 60%.
No Desert Island Discs on the wireless this morning. I blame the government.
Demand a recount, Mr F…
Labour win extremely welcome but it was hard to feel particularly triumphant as the evening unfolded. A concerning set of results from where I’m sat.
Our new government will have it all to do, and something very ugly is brewing here, just as it is elsewhere.
Regardless of the number of seats actually won by Reform, these results hand clear political leverage to Farage, and he’s shown how adept he is in that department.
Doubtless thee will be a load of nosie from Farage ( and possibly the Greens) about the voting system as well. Richard Tice has already written an article for th4 Telegraph bemoaning th4 unfairness of it all.
John Burn Murdoch posted the following data re percentage of seats and votes
Labour. 34 % of vote. 65% of seats
Tory. 24. 18.
Reform. 14. 1
LibDems. 12. 11
Green. 7. 1
Well, I suppose the argument always was that FPTP produced a clear result and strong government. Time will tell.
PS It will also be interesting to see what happens in the 4 seats ( at least) that voted for independents campaigning on a Gaza ticket. It sounds easily have been 5, but Wes Streeting hung on by the skin of his teeth. Will normal service be resumed in a few years, as happened after the Iraq War dust settled. Or will see a Tower Hamlets type phenomena of what is essentially sectarian
Did FPTP produce strong government in the last 14 years? Not a great argument imo.
34% on a 57% turnout is 19% of the electorate and with a lower vote for Labour than they got in 2019. This does not scream legitimacy.
But when people complained about the impact of Brexit, Farage / Tice et al were very quick to say – “we had a referendum, you lost, get over it”
There was a referendum in 2011 on changing the voting system. They lost.
Fully agree, and the sooner we all wake up to something rotten in the state of Denmark the better for us all.
I think Sunak wound up the immigration debate (to his shame) whilst failing to “do” anything about it so made Reform’s case for them. If Starmer takes positive steps the steam might go out of Reform. Also Farage is a noise maker. I’m not sure he’ll be a particularly good MP. But he will cause a lot of pain for the Tories which is fine of course.
The date of the election – with a recess around the corner – gives Labour, and the country, time to recoup.
Keir, you have already pulled off the greatest turnaround in British politics there’s ever been, just one piece of advise, if I may…
When faced with a decision to make, a side to take, an attitude to adopt, take one minute to think what Boris the loser would do, and then do the exact opposite.
You do that, and the country might – no, will – make it out of the huge hole dug by Boris the loser and his pals.
Sincerely, good luck…
This day requires real quality. Two talks at the local Literary Festival, Solomon Burke, a King Records soul compilation, the ‘Rocksteady Soul’ comp, and ‘Hat’ by Davy Graham… that’ll do it.
You might want to rethink that, D
While no fan of Bojo, he was one of the first and most enthusiastic supporters of Zelensky.
Surely you’re not saying that SKS should start backing Putin?
Whatever next? Swingeing VAT Increases on Ace compilations?
We await impatiently to find out what his policies will be.
Deram’s?
CDs widely available in supermarkets, in place of food if necessary. 60s music to be exclusively heard playing from windows along the high street. All dodgers to be removed from positions of authority. All post 60s arts to be destroyed.
But but- I threw my CD player away long ago.
If seen as a broadly centre-left bloc, the votes for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens is a cause for optimism. The biggest % share of the vote and the most seats.
Yes, I was just marvelling at the % on the other side of the divide. Of course that’s MPs rather than votes, but if nothing else, it’ll mean the government can get stuff done.
I was trying to say that the pure % of votes is also decisive- I make it 15m vs 11m. The latter group will be dying off in time.
This is daftness though as they will be replaced by others moving into their age group. And apparently we aren’t breeding at the required rate for population equilibrium .
I’m also quite happy that for all the talk about Reform making gains, their vote share is only 1% or so higher than UKIP achieved in 2015.
Yep, but look how that turned out.
Waking up here now, bit disappointed Tories weren’t completely obliterated but very happy Truss and Rees -Mogg got their marching orders. Hopefully they won’t be parachuted into safe seats at future by-elections. My Plaid Cymru forecast proved correct, doubled their seats.
My Plaid prediction worked out, too! 😄
May I congratulate @tiggerlion for a remarkably accurate prediction of the number of Labour seats, even if anti-Tory tactical voting for the Lib Dems seems to have been more effective than he reckoned. Still a great shout by Mystic Tiggs.
@Gatz
Ahem…
Jaygee says
04/07/2024 at 19:09
Mordaunt must be a shoe-in for Strictly
While I’m a Celeb would want Bojo or Mogg, they’d never be able to afford them and will have to settle for McVey – if only because she’ll look better in a bikini under the jungle shower than Hunt or Shapps.
Labour to get 410
Tories to get 120
Lib Dems to get 40
Reform to get 4
The rest to get the rest
Mystic Jaygee? With the notable exception of your McVey prediction…
I had a feeling someone would say that…
It all goes to show that all those mid-70s afternoons watching the Amazing Kristin (Puts hand on Tempes and gravely intones “Is anyone in the audience….married?”)
“Mystic Tiggs” – that’s a nickname which I hope gains some traction on here…
Why, thank you @Gatz and very well done, @Jaygee.
Would have to agree Mystic Tiggs has a better ring than Mystic Jaygee
Jonathan Pie seems happy
“We’re going to professionalise the party”, claims Farage after sneering and jeering back at hecklers in a thoroughly unprofessional, unstatesmanlike ‘I’m only brave enough to sneer because I’m surrounded by heavies’ kind of manner. By ‘professional’ he of course means disguising his bullying beer hall rally brand of politics with the veneer of respectability. Too late Nige. Many of us can already see you for exactly what you are.
Farage is as eloquent an argument as you can get for keeping FPTP (not that the Labour is likely to be agitating for change now it’s sitting on a stinking great majority).
The sad, scary thing is that countless more people either unwilling or unable to see that, far from having no clothes, he and and his mate 30p Lee are wearing a black Sturmbannführers’ uniforms with death’s heads on their collars.
With parliament giving the odious pair’s every incendiary utterance the thin veneer of credibility/respectability, it promises to be a long five years until the next election.
Let them rant on.
There’s only 4 Reform MPs. The rest of parliament don’t have to take a blind bit of notice of them.
Outnumbered by Sinn Fein. Equalled in numbers by The Greens.
Farage made Brexit happen with no parliamentary respresentation at all.
Spot on.
I don’t like him but he has been the most influential political figure of the last 15 years.
He’s going to attempt to either infiltrate the Conservative Party or simple steer them from outside.
He doesn’t need the Reform Party to be a particularly serious outfit, he just needs a platform, a megaphone and the legitimacy that his vote share has just given him.
Like him or not (full disclosure: like most here, I loathe him) he’s the most effective British politician of this era. Which is a scary thought.
I agree he’s effective but I think Brexit was significantly propelled by Cummings who was the brains behind Farage’s mouth. I wonder how effective he can be going forward without the kind of insight DC added. Which isn’t to say Farage won’t get offers.
He’s definitely got people around him who – unfortunately – know what they’re doing. I’d thought that he and Cummings never got on, but maybe that’s mistaken.
The Tory leadership contest is now going to revolve around how they respond to Reform and Farage. Personally think it’s imperative they don’t invite him in.
Unfortunately, a lot of the moderates in the party were removed last night, so we could well up in a position where you have to hope for Badenoch, rather than Patel or Braverman. They’re going to swing right, but it’s a question of how far.
I know it all seems a bit comic and remote today, but this is clearly a restless electorate. There are no guarantees for Labour at the next election, particularly given what they’re up against.
“He has never liked me…He has huge personal enmity with the true believers in Brexit”.”
NF on DC
Cummings was insistent that Vote Leave shoved and kept Farage as far away from their campaign as possible.
Michael Crick’s splendidly titled One Party After Another NF bio is well worth reading if you’d like to know more about who he is and what makes him tick.
Cummings despises Farage but it was serendipity. Cummings had the brains but loathed publicity. Farage has never seen a camera he didn’t like, and unintentionally they became a powerful combination.
The Crick book JG mentions below gives some great insight. I wrote half a review and then lost interest – I might see if I can finish it off.
Back in 2019 the Tories thought they’d rule the world forever and most wanted nothing to do with Banks and Farage. But to your point above with almost all the moderates gone, the likes of Braverman and Patel (a former UKIP member) only hesitation would be having to share the limelight. And Farage famously doesn’t play well with others so there might be some spectacular infighting to come.
I believe the rump Tory parliamentary party is actually more centrist than it was, despite the three right wing ones you mention.
A lot of Brexiteers and Johnsonites are left.
Not sure who the moderate candidate will be. Hunt has a majority that could be overturned by a bad flu season. Tugendhat, maybe?
It’s significant that people think Reform is synonymous with Farage. So far as the wider public is concerned he’s all they’ve got. Look at how social media was electrified when he said he was going to make an announcement, and how the polls jumped when he stuck his oar in.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the other Reform MPs find themselves in trouble because past or current language/behaviour comes to light which confirms the impression many already have of the. Farage won’t settle down to being a local MP looking after the interests of his constituents, and if he gets bored and heads off for some new grift then Reform is likely to crumble in his absence.
His appeal is lost on me but he knows how to motivate his base like no one else.
How many people voted for Sinn Fein and the Greens combined ? How many voted for Reform ?
A steady-as-she-goes cabinet. Pretty much all the Shadow Ministers are now Ministers.
Though a victory by the Greens in Bristol Central deprived one shadow cabinet member of her seat, and robbed us all of the chance to have a Culture Secretary with the splendidly Day Today name Thangam Debbonaire.
And also deprived us of someone who is a very talented and former professional musician. A real loss as the likely culture secretary, had she been re-elected.
Yes. But Carla Denyer is likely to be a fantastic asset in Westminster.
If you are a fan of regressive taxation, then possibly so.
I presume you are referring to the Carbon Tax because the Wealth Tax and the uncapping of NI cannot be described as regressive.
I am. Lest we forget, it was the tax estimated to make the most money under the Green’s proposals for new taxes.
The wealth tax wouldn’t be regressive. Nor would it work, at least in terms of being able to raise a fraction of the sums claimed. Unless, of course, the Greens have magically found a way of doing it that eluded the French when they tried something similar 10 years ago. Or have found a way to avoid what the Norweigians have encountered more recently, with people simply moving to Switzerland.
When even Richard Murphy thinks the Green’s tax proposals, whilst well intentioned, are essentially unworkable, it’s perhaps time to try something else.
Really? I’m struggling to see how someone opposed to medical research is an asset to anything except rats and mice. I’d rather vote Tory than Green.
You won’t have voted Labour either, then? From the ‘Change’ manifesto –
Stronger animal welfare
Labour will improve animal welfare. We will ban trail hunting and the import of hunting trophies. We will end puppy smuggling and farming, along with the use of snare traps. And we will partner with scientists, industry, and civil society as we work towards the phasing out of animal testing.
They’ve already reneged on their badger culling promises.
Labour out!
That wording doesn’t bother me. I’m all for phasing out animal testing. Might even happen by the end of this century.
I’m not sure I see the big difference from this:
“Greens oppose the importation of monkeys for
use in labs, and will work towards an outright ban
on all animal testing. We would also end the use
of live animals in military training and support the
production, promotion and transition to nonanimal
technologies for use in experiments.”
“outright ban” – what does that suggest to you? To me it suggests an outright ban.
Also, the policy document on their website (now firewalled) calls for an immediate ban on the use of animals in testing and research.
These people are vile.
an outright ban, which they will work towards, like the Labour Party will work towards phasing out animal testing.
I think the policy document could be related to their 2015 manifesto, which is referenced in this critical article. I don’t think it’s mentioned in the 2024 manifesto.
The Greens appear to have distanced themselves from the Anti-Science fringe, in party policy at least. As regards membership, all political parties have supporters that they need but would rather not have.
My health has generally relied on products tested on animals. I’d literally be dead without it.
Are there any other Afterworders you’re OK with losing?
Hi Si. As I think this was addressed to me (I could be wrong), I’ll respond.
I haven’t said, in any of my comments, that I am for or against animal testing. I don’t feel qualified to give an opinion on that. Political Parties have many policies over a wide range of areas, and my support for the Green Party refers to areas such as climate. I would,hope, when it comes to medical matters, no changes to the law are introduced without the involvement of medical science and health experts.
I was just trying to make the point that the Green Party was not alone in seeking to end animal testing, if that is, as it is for Lando, a decisive factor in who to vote for.
Fair point, and a possible overreaction from me.
But any time support for a ban on animal testing comes up, I get defensively annoyed.
That’s perfectly reasonable and understandable when you explain it, so thank you for doing so.
It simply isn’t true to say that any other party supports the “outright ban” on animal research that the Greens advocate. Indeed, historically, I can only think of one other that has done so… I shall not invoke Godwin’s Law by naming them.
It’s literally in the Labour Party manifesto, as I quoted above.
As with all political parties, there are some things I don’t agree with. However, she is bright, engaging and has a good sense of humour. I think she’ll bring some fun to our po-faced parliament.
“Bringing fun” is how we ended up with that idiot Johnson.
I’m all for po faced serious people in government.
Don’t worry. The adults are firmly in charge.
Serious? yes.
Po-faced? No thankyou.
@Mike_H
Poo-faced is surely more of a Tory thing, though
I think someone who would rather stand and watch a child die from cystic fibrosis than have mice used to develop a treatment is someone who is not fit to be in public life.
Apart from anything else, I find myself asking the question “Is it because they really, really like mice? Or is it because of an underlying attitude to people with disabilities?”
Perhaps a clue is that I’ve never seen an instance of a Green councillor objecting to their council’s pest control service.
I’m afraid there’s a hint of the brownshirt about the Greens.
The Cystic Fibrosis Trust are uncomfortable with the use of animals for research and would like it phased out. They are pleased to see human stem cells and other in vitro methods increasingly being used.
Nobody has to *like* it. However the use of animals in medical research has been – and will remain for the foreseeable future – essential for medical progress.
Those who choose to throw the seriously ill under the bus to make themselves feel better are not fit to be in public life.
And that is why I would rather vote Tory than Green.
What do you base your assertion that “the use of animals in medical research has been –and will remain for the forseeable future– essential for medical progress” upon?
The objective facts.
The Greens are a bunch of nutters once you scratch beyond the acceptable environmental policies,
Well then – let the Lib Dems steal all the acceptable environmental policies, and ignore the rest.
I think you’re looking for reasons to justify an uninformed prejudice.
I’ve actually met Thangam several times through work stuff. Thought she was impressive.
Me too and it’s a real shame. Lisa Nandy is a very good sub as Culture Secretary although unlike Debbonaire I doubt it’s a job she really wanted.
I’m sure TD will get a safe seat at the earliest opportunity.
Is any seat safe any more when previous majorities of 26,000 can be overturned? By elections occur regularly. Reform seem best placed to win most of them for the next year or two.
Depressing but true
History also shows that voters in constituencies chosen as parachute seats for more “deserving” candidates don’t always welcome them with open arms
Most worrying thing about what the Tories and their press gang supporters are billing as the “Loveless landslide” is how volatile voting patterns have become.
Like the Brexit referendum, Trump vs Clinton, Johnson vs Corbyn and Biden vs Trump before it, it seems to be more a case of people voting against something they don’t want/like/understand rather than for something. And as the cases qoted show, this rarely seems to end well.
Those thinking a 170-seat majority means Labour will be in power for the next 15 years or more, should remember the Tories’ glee that no govt had ever completely lost power after winning an 85-seat majority as Johnson did five years ago.
On a brighter note, the Antrim constituency that had been a Paisley family fiefdom for the best part of 50 years, gave Ian Paisley Junior his marching orders
The solution to this issue is to make people’s lives better so they will vote for you. What’s worrying is that the only change Starmer will make is to the noses in the trough and Labour will be replaced by a far right government at the next election.
And yet we already have a cabinet largely made up of people who went to state schools. Try not to take it personally.
Certainly, ‘make people’s lives better so they will vote for you’ seems like a sensible guide to government policy, although it feels like the levers of power are only loosely and complicatedly connected to the gears and engine of effective action.
Trotting out the predictable ‘voting against something they don’t want/like/understand rather than for something’would be less the case if the constituency-based electoral system was bolstered by some element of proportionality, as is the case in Germany and other parts of Europe. I’m well pleased that the Greens won 4 seats*, but my vote in safe seat Witham would have been a fart in a hurricane. Making progress in that area should be a complement to policies to improve well-being, if there is to be an improvement in the democratic deficit.
____
*though I would have liked Caroline Lucas to have still been one of them, so she could have experienced being more than a one-woman show, responsible for every policy area. Though I’m sure she’ll coach the 4 new Green MPs on the arcane processes of the Commons.
The reason why the “voting against” argument is predictable is it is demonstrably true.
Equally true is that with PR rather than FPTP, the 14% share of the total vote Farage et attracted on Thursday would give them a shitload more seats than the 1% share of the seats (5 of 650) they won.
indeed. it was me being predictable trotting out the pr argument as extrapolation from what you said, rather than any criticism of what you said.
Calculating from the
Full fact site, it looks like the following would be the outcome from a fully proportional system (though I think the ideal system would be a bit geographical, so this wouldn’t necessarily be the outcome) for 650 seats:
Labour (37.7%) – 219
Tories (24%) – 156
Reform (14%) – 91
Lin Den (12%) – 78
Green (7%) – 45
A progressive coalition would be able to outvote a Tory Reform pact.
It will also be entertaining looking to see how the Greens reconcile two entirely different groups of supporters. Two of their seats are essentially Nimbyshire, with socially and economically conservative people who,e.g., have no intention of giving up their cars. The other group are social justice warriors in Bristol and Brighton, who have little. As the Tories found trying to please both wealthy Remain voters in Surrey and jobless Brexit supporters elsewhere, it’s easier said than done.
Whilst there are grounds for delight that Paisley Jr has bit the dust, unfortunately his replacement at Westminster, Jim Allister, makes Paisley look enlightened and progressive.
Interestingly, I see that the Labour vote fell in Wales, i.e. the one part of the UK where they have been in power.
Realistically we will have 2 full terms under Labour. While that majority might likely be reduced next time around it’s highly unlikely to be overturned. Who knows where the world will be in 8-10 years time. I’m happy to see a very capable new team installed. Starmer also has the luxury of being able to do some things that might not be popular but likely to bring results over a longer period of time. I think this is what he was implying in his speech. There isn’t a whole lot of cash hiding under the sofas.
The thing that will make this so will be the LibDems digging their heels in in those seats that they’ve won this time. They have been good at that in the past. It was only the harsh reality of coalition government that dislodged so many in 2015. The LibDems tend to eat in to far more Tory seats than Labour, so LibDem success suits Labour.
Saw a piece yesterday about the similarity in stats between UKIP in the 2015 election (if you remember them in an episode of ‘Pointless’, believe me, you walk away with the prize money) and Fromage’s latest roadshow… if it was a ‘spot the difference’ competition, it was an exceedingly hard ‘spot the difference’ competition.
Prediction: Fromage will not see out the five years, Reform will not exist at the next General Election, and the people who voted for Brexit/UKIP/Reform will be voting for a new bunch of snake oil salesmen… probably called Have You Still Not Cottoned On To This Garbage? Party… and no doubt led by Fromage.
Quick question – Do you have to be a slap-head to join Reform? Is it mandatory?
Nigel Farage is sixty years old, he smokes and he drinks. I’m surmising he eats a lot of red meat, doesn’t attend health checks and refuses tablets for cholesterol or blood pressure. The next five years are peak heart attack/stroke time.
Without him, Reform won’t exist, except in name only, so you may be right.
Not that I wish ill of anyone…
H’mmm, Fromage….perhaps he eats of lot of cheese too. Just saying.
Fromage? Non, inte nu.
Reform voters, largely from deprived areas with crumbling public services, on low pay, in zero hours jobs, living in often poor quality, pricey insecure housing have lost faith in the major parties.
Being dismissed as “thick” , or “racist” is another reason for them to opt for Reform. I think they are people who are held in contempt by too many MPs in both the major parties who have no interest in why Reform is seen as a better option. When they realise that their votes might matter, their solution is to bash immigrants while all the other issues are left unaddressed.
@Alias
aka: Hoi polloi or the “lumpenproletariat”
Grew up, went to Uni and lived and worked in towns and cities most of whose populaces
many better-educated people who consider themselves more tolerant/compassionate are quick to dismiss as brainless drones.
Despite seeing what had happened in the UK’s Brexit referendum of 2016, Hilary Clinton stupidly dismissed their US cousins as “deplorable” in that year’s US election with equally disastrous results.
Are these Reform voters aware who these MPs are they have elected and whose interests they are likely to serve? Perhaps their lot is so dire that they don’t care.
@allium-sativum
@Alias
Do yourselves a favour and watch David Edgar’s fabulous 1978 play, Destiny.
Its message about right wing parties’ cynical use of easy solutions to build their power base is as relevant and powerful today as it was when it was broadcast
Excellent essay on the play here
http://www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk/?p=7040&more=1
That may be true of some of the constituencies that returned a Reform MP (high Brexit voting areas), but the Reform vote was much broader than that. I live close to an area that is characterised as one of England’s most affluent with one of its lowest crime rates. Over 9000 of the buggers (18%) still voted for Farage. They are far more likely to be retired and disillusioned Tory little Englanders who are cross because they can’t see a doctor and the woman in the post office speaks with a foreign accent. And yes, they are too stupid to see the permanent damage, division and chaos the far right is likely to inflict on their country.
From what I’ve noticed, a large swathe of the people in zero hours jobs, living in social housing or renting from private landlords and only just getting by, will not vote/have never voted. They don’t see voting as making any difference to their lives.
Except in the case of the Brexit referendum. There was an opportunity to stick two fingers up at all of the political parties, which is why the referendum’s turnout figures were so high compared to parliamentary/council election figures. Brexit hasn’t changed anything for them either and I’m not sure they’d bother again. Their concerns are a lot more with the day-to-day.
The natural constituency for Reform/Farage etc. is self-employed sole-trader White Van Man types and the half-educated semi-skilled and skilled manual workers, who, while complaining a lot, generally do OK, ducking and diving a bit, no matter who is in power.
Before the election, I posted above about the LibDems winning the 2021 by-election in true blue Amersham and Chesham, Buckinghamshire – which felt like a protest vote against HS2. They won the seat by around 8,000 votes at the time, but I wasn’t sure if people would be protested out by now.
The LibDem incumbent clung onto the seat on Thursday by a few thousand votes, but if all the Reform votes had gone to the Conservatives, her majority would have been just 141.
Not sure what point I’m trying to make there, but there you go.
Having said that, the Labour vote in our constituency went up from 600-odd to 6000-odd, so it’s not only the Right where the vote was split, and I don’t know if the point I wasn’t sure about even stands up.
Apparently, only 36% of Reform voters would have voted Conservative if Reform weren’t an option.
..but I suspect a large swathe of the rest would have just stayed at home, unwilling to vote for either Labour or Lib-Dem.
I think they could do ok in the Welsh valleys which are traditionally Labour strongholds. My former constituency had the strongest pro Brexit vote in England or Wales I believe 🙁 , but a conservative candidate could never win there. I checked results for this time and it seemed the Reform party did not field a candidate there
Big tax rises in 4 years time, Lib Dems win a few bye elections before the 2029 election and become the official opposition to labour.
Tories are lead by….Nigel Farage?
Ian Dunt, one of the Conservatives’ greatest critics
“Let’s have an honest conversation about the election result: No party should secure 63.2% of MPs on 33.7% of the popular vote. And that’s as true for Labour as it was for the Tories. And much as I hate him, Farage should have more seats”
There’s something quite psychologically appealing about French two-round voting isn’t there? Round One: Vote with your heart. How’s that working out? Pretty scary isn’t it? Round Two: Let’s vote with our heads this time.
Be interesting to see how things would have panned out if this UK election
Had been carried out over two-rounds.
My guess is Labour would have ended up with far fewer seats and
Reform many more
If the UK followed the French rule (excluding Parties securing less than 12.5% of registered voters) – with a reported voter turn out of 60%, only the Labour (33.7%) and Tory (24%) candidates would get through to the second round in many cases.
Then, it would be up to minority Party voters to choose who to select. As, reportedly, only a third of Reform voters would vote Tory if no Reform candidate was available, would combined Lib Dem and Green voters bolster Labour? Possibly.
In those seats where it was Labour/Reform run off (second candidate getting through even if below 12.5%), how many non-Labour voters would vote Reform?
If voters were offered such a Head/Heart system, would Green and Lib Dem get more support in the first round?
It’s all conjecture, isn’t it? But the French election results suggest that electorates do what is necessary to keep out extreme politicians when they can.
@Salwarpe
The fact that that voters in such systems know they have a second round in which to express “buyers remorse” would surely impact their first round choices -as clearly happened in France.
As for French voters keeping out extreme politicians when they can is surely undermined by the fact that Marine Le Pen and her mates seems to be increasing their share of influence and seats with every passing year.
While don’t know enough about French politics to comment, Mr. Melenchon seems to be being tarred with the extremist tag himself…
Jaygee, I am not sure there’s much disagreement between us. in your first paragraph – it’s kind of what I was saying in my 4th paragraph.
The increase in votes for the extreme right doesn’t undermine the efforts of non-extreme right voters in blocking their accession to power, but rather illustrates what they are prepared to do in a system that gives them more gears than a basic FPTP one vote version – e.g. “Vote for the Crook, not the Fascist”
The underlying problems of increasing support for the far right need tackling elsewhere than in changes to the electoral system.
I just don’t think that Labour would have got far fewer and Reform far more. It might even have been that more people would have voted Labour in seats where they voted tactically for Lib Dem candidates.
Melanchon is evidently extreme and appears unwilling to compromise. Maybe there can be horse trading between the Centre and the more soft left members of his coalition?
I don’t think the French system is an easy alternative, but at least is transparent, reflecting and responding to the complexities in and subdivisions between different political groupings, rather than hiding them all in the big tent politics of the Labour and Tory Parties.
No worries. Quite complex discussing hypothetical scenarios like this based on existing circs.
Here in Ireland, they’ve gone full tilt on transferable votes which meant the recent EU elections took four or five days to resolve.
No thrilling Portillo moments here!
Problem is with the current system is that even when facing a lengthy spell out of power, the big two parties have no real reason to change it.
With a lot of the Tories’ existing hardcore voting base – and future prospects – likely to die off if the party is out of power for two (or more) terms, be interesting to see if they move towards some form of PR themselves
Anything that helps to rebuild trust in politics would be good. Keeping FPTP just adds to the perception of same old same old – putting yourself and your Party above the country, and for the fine words of his opening days to ring hollow.
We can’t say for sure of course, but I would have thought the reverse. The voters mobilised by Reform already had been, and some of those might have retreated from the brink while others who sat on their hands in the first round would have been motivated to vote by the Reform threat.
But as someone has said we had a referendum on changing the voting system* in 2011 and it was rejected so surely isn’t the time to demand a new referendum on changing the voting system.
Not the best system either but better than FPTP.
Libdems forgot about it pretty quickly when they formed a coalition with the Tories
I thought that the Libdems would only join the coalition in 2010 so that there would be a referendum on a new voting system. As I said it wasn’t the best system either.
I should also have said that reply was to someone who has said we can’t have a new brexit referendum previously because the people spoke in 2016 and that decision should be upheld. Odd how they’ve now decided FPTP isn’t a fit system.
Just because the UK rejected a new voting system 13 years ago doesn’t mean we should stick with FPTP which this time round gave , roughly, 66% of the seats to 33% of the vote.
Too late at night for me to look up the actual figures but each Labour seat cost 15,000 votes and each Green 495,000 (fact check possibly needed)
“Roughly 66% of the seats to 33% of the vote…
….each Labour seat cost 15,000 votes and each Green 495,000 (fact check possibly needed)
While Labour is uniquely placed to give the UK’s not-fit-for-purpose voting system a long overdue overhaul, those figures show why it doesn’t seem likely they will
“We gave you a choice between the status quo and something else nobody wanted. We won, get over it and never ask again, peasants”
*Repeat with fingers in ears whenever asked, even if in office “to serve the country, not the party”*
Tone deaf.
The voting system offered by the PR referundum was a half-baked travesty of PR. Which nobody in their right mind would vote for. The Conservatives knew this, the Lib-Dems were hoodwinked (again).
The voting public were less than enthusiastic for good reason. Those few who understood it recognised it as a useless fudge. The majority were unable to make head nor tail of it.
They weren’t hoodwinked, it was an unhappy compromise which they thought was at least better than what we currently have.
I think we should just do it. Another referendum would be irrelevant had Labour put it in their manifesto but they didn’t.
I think the public exploited the FPTP intelligently to kick the Tories and SNP out. Tactical voting was rife.
Who knows how people would have voted in a different system but, that figure suggesting 64% voted Reform to protest, indicates it might well have been markedly different.
Tactical voting is probably now a thing, so we can expect very big changes in numbers of seats with much smaller swings of votes.
With poor turn outs becoming a problem, maybe our lords and
masters need to look at ways of encouraging “ordinary people”
to get off their arses and exercise the privilege of actually having
a vote
Is there any strict rule that UK elections have to be held on a Thurs?
Many other countries seem to conduct polling on. Sat or Sun.
In Australia, it ‘s apparently a big community day out with the schools
Used as polling stations also hosting barbies, etc
Make it compulsory for all and on the voting slip a great big box marked “None of the fuckers”?
I think the Aussie system allows you to abstain – albeit in slightly less Ockerish terms than you suggested.
Interesting but useless fact, it was disgraced MP John Stonehouse’s failure to vote in an Australian election that led to his being arrested and returned to the UK (The police who felt his collar apparently originally thought he might be Lord Lucan)
Nice use of ockerish…
Voting should be compulsory in any and all democracies otherwise what is the point of having a vote?
I don’t think compelling people to vote when they really don’t want to is democratic.
Well, think of all the other things one is compelled to do, or forbidden to do, in a functioning democracy such as we still, just, have in order for it to function properly. Voting is at the base of all of the rest of that.
True dat, very true
How do we ‘just’ have a functioning democracy? We had an election literally last week last week. The result highlighted the difference between percentages of national votes and seats but it was carried out in the same way as usual. Whichever candidate in each seat got most votes won the seat, and when candidates for one party won most of the seats the party was invited to form a government.
The right not to vote is integral to the right to vote otherwise it’s an order not a right. I always do, even in relatively meaningless elections for Police Commissioners, but I wouldn’t want to see voters compelled.
I was being tongue in cheek a bit.
I don’t agree but that’s part of being a democr…. cont. p 94
Everybody has their own lines they’ve drawn, beyond which they don’t wish to go. And there are very many common-consensus lines.
Compulsory voting is on the wrong side of one of my lines.
I don’t really get this idea that now is the time to fiddle around with the electoral system.
I’m someone who started off believing in FPTP, made the journey to supporting PR and who is now probably swinging back the other way a bit.
It seems pretty clear to me that there is virtually zero public appetite for a change of this type right now. We’ve had nigh on a decade of absolute chaos and mismanagement. What people want is for a government to quickly start fixing practical things that aren’t working, to make the proverbial trains run on time. We’ve finally got a chance at some stability; we’ve just had 3 Prime Ministers and 5 Chancellors in 5 years.
This is massively not the moment for political navel-gazing, and if anyone were to attempt to take electoral reform to the voters right now via another referendum I think they’d be met with a good deal of resistance, perhaps even outright disgust. We’ve only just got through the shitshow caused by the last one. Just trying governing properly for a bit.
I also think it’s pretty pointless translating last week’s result into what it would have meant under some form of PR. Under a different electoral system people would have voted differently (I know I certainly would have) and the parties would have campaigned differently: the Labour Party, in particular would have had much more incentive to make a proper pitch to the public rather than just staying quiet and still.
I also don’t massively understand the apparent willingness of Dunt et al to simply hand 90 seats to a literal Far Right party. I guess if you podcast for a living maybe you’re looking to live in interesting times.
I agree that there are far more important things to focus on politically. Stability and coherence, Constructive plans to make improvements in the many areas of public life that need them.
However, in the days after an election, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at the event and try to understand what happened, why it happened and how things could be improved for democracy. – when more immediate concerns have been addressed, not now.
👍🏼
I think you are correct.
The referendum in 2011 was on the Alternative Vote, which is not the same as PR. It strengthens the link of the MP to their constituency, as over 50% would have to lean towards them, but it can lead to greater disproportionality, as it would have done in 2015.I
The electoral system is not going to change to suit Nigel Farage. Smaller parties have to learn how to play their cards better, as did the Lib Dems this time.
Political theorists like Ian Dunt have their place, but it’s not as important a place as they’d have you/they’d like to believe. The ordinary “Clapham Omnibus” people don’t know or care about them and their theories. Us “educated” people should know better than to pay them the attention that we do.
Haven’t we learnt by now that referendums are bad? We elect governments to govern and hopefully make wise decisions beyond our pay-grade, not to throw everything back at a mostly non-qualified populace.
I 100% agree that after 14 years of misrule now is not the time to go changing the voting system but wouldn’t it be nice if in the future politicians of all hues and colours said “”Know what, this just ain’t fair”?
And,Tigger, how can small parties play their cards better when the deck is so stacked against them?
The Lib Dems focussed their resources and attention on particular seats during this election. They know their localities well, having a long history of performing better in the council elections.
On particular seats in and around places like Alton Towers…
So, taps calculator, if we stay with the same system and , for example, by concentrating on local issues, taps calculator again, in 214 years time The Greens will be in power.
No amount of brilliant campaign strategy will make up for the iniquities of FPTP
If the UK used the additional member system of PR, used for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, Reform would have won 94 seats across the country on Thursday and the Greens 42, according to the Electoral Reform Society.
I retract all that I have said above. FPTP is perfect. Debate over.
Thank you for your comments. I have always felt it’s very important to have a representative of the drunken community involved in any discussion of this issue and your voice matters.
Due to an ongoing bout of Labyrinthitis I haven’t drunk alcohol in over two weeks. I suspect that’s why my rambles are even more rambling than even you expect. I offer fulsome apologies to one and all and remind you FPTP is the only system that truly reflects the will of the British People. God Save The King, Harry Kane and Ally McCoist.
Labyrinthitis! I had to look it up – thought it would be something to do with being trapped in a maze, but no it’s an “inner-ear infection”. Welcome to my world!
Virus which stays quiet for over twenty years then knocks on your door – “Hey, fancy having a couple of days and nights where the room spins round and round and you vomit and vomit till your insides slide into the basin? Thought you did, let’s get started shall we? Oh, I’ll let you feel almost human for a couple of days then we’ll do it all over again, yeah?”
I thought it was something you got after reading too much Jorge Louis Borges
I see Starmer got fewer votes in his constituency than he did in 2017 or 2019. I bet that’s cos the Holbornites are afeared he’ll be partying too hard at number 10 to come and fix their potholes.
Sir Rodney of Stewart will do it for him.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-60722727
Sir RODERICK of Stewart!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Stewart
Cripes! You’re quite right. My apologies to His Rodness.
Two years to fix one pothole? I’d have the police on him except the rosier who came round to cuff the Rodster would probably be his auxiliary police officer missus and I doubt if it would be the first time she’d ordered him to “assume the position”
Minor reductions in votes are not necessarily significant. All 3 major parties had a reduction in votes in my local constituency.
The Tories had a 17.3% reduction, Labour (winners) had a 4.0% reduction and the Lib-Dems a negligible 0.7% reduction. The Greens increased their share by 5.2%.
Of the newcomer parties, Reform got an 11.1% share. Workers Party Of Britain had a surprising 6.0% share and the Heritage Party got 0.4%.
I presume the Workers Party’s result was down to the sizeable long-established South Asian Muslim population in the town. South Asian muslims are usually Labour supporters but Labour’s stance on Gaza is now a factor for them.
Turnout was 61%, which is down 7.5% from 2019’s figure.
The candidate who came second was Andrew Feinstein, who got 7,000 votes. His campaign leaflet was all about Gaza, nothing about the constituency or even the UK. He then issued a second with some platitudes about saving the NHS added.
I talked to a couple of his campaigners (I live in the constituency) and they were pleasant enough but seemed driven by a personal dislike of Starmer. They couldn’t really explain, even about Gaza, what Feinstein wanted or how he would achieve it. Probably unfair of me to say, but I thought they were just more privileged pensioners who don’t really understand the problems facing most people. When I moved here about thirty years ago, I met some people like this. Working in the public sector in middling jobs, and had been able to afford three storey houses on that because they belonged to a lucky generation. Now living on comfortable pensions, and still obsessed with “principles”. The cliché of the pensioner who couldn’t care less about the younger generation is that they’re right wing and will vote for Reform. There’s also this side, who think they’re left wing, but also vote for someone as detached as Farage is from the grind of making the country better.
I have a friend who was delighted by the idea of Corbyn, hates Blair and sees Starmer as no better than the Tories. He is fixated with Gaza. No other issue matters much. Nothing to say about any other conflict, like that one in Ukraine. Maintains a soft spot for Russia perhaps. There’s always a way to twist things to suit. I think he believes he thinks for himself, but his political stance is very much the gospel according to the hard left. Of course we are all following a certain set of beliefs or views that we can put on like a set of clothes but I prefer the more pragmatic path, without the ideology and commandments. People cling on to these extremist demi-gods, whether right or left.
I like what I’ve seen of Feinstein. He seems like a smart, passionate and compassionate chap. He was in the post-apartheid South African govt (ANC) but resigned and moved to London in protest against its refusal to investigate allegations of huge bribes and large-scale corruption in a £5 billion arms deal. Unlike Starmer, he lives in the constituency and I think he probably would have made a good local MP. (Not one worth toppling Labour’s elected leader for though, obviously.) Should Gaza be prioritised? Hell, yes; it’s a totally unacceptable situation, an appalling reflection on all of humanity. Would electing Feinstein instead of Starmer in Holborn have made any difference to the situation in Gaza? Dunno, but I doubt it very much.
Keir Starmer is a long term resident of the constituency. The Guardian had a picture of him and his wife going to their polling station, and I noticed it was the same one I vote in. Feinstein did say in the local paper that you don’t see Starmer in the area, but I don’t think even that’s true. I see him every couple of weeks in the main street chatting to people he knows or even standing behind me in the queue in the local Sainsburys. True, he probably won’t be around so much since last Friday.
I don’t think one issue MPs last long, like Martin Bell, who stood against corruption but then found that you have to get involved in a lot of other things as an MP – lots of case work and administration and not just the big speeches. Andrew Feinstein might be more effective as a campaigner on issues outside parliament.
You’ve reminded me of when I was a train in 1997 & I overheard a posh sounding older lady, telling a fellow passenger that she lived in Tatton, where they now had “Bell” (she spat the word out) & how sad she was to lose “Neil and Christine”
I was out leafletting for Martin Bell. I contacted him as my constituency MP afterwards. He dealt with things properly as an MP. The word was that he wished he hadn’t made a specific commitment to stand for one term only, as he would have liked to have fought again.
As an independent, what you won’t get involved with is Select Committees. You also don’t have a peer group in the same way as a newbie from a party. I think he must have felt quite isolated.
And yes @Timbar is correct. There is a rump of folks round here whose loyalty to the Tories will blind them to all faults. 18,000 still voted for the clearly corrupt Neil Hamilton, even when they had two alternative ‘Independent Conservative’ candidates to vote for. I guess that’s why we’ve still got Esther McVey as our MP, to my great disappointment. We had a great candidate and he got so close; one day he will find a winnable seat and be a great MP.
I read his on-line manifesto. It’s trite, soundbitey, misunderstands how the political process works, and not thought through.
I must admit I hadn’t read it. Looking at it now it looks like the same sort of “I’ll do loads of good things” meaningless promises that every party’s manifesto makes. “Trite” and “soundbitey”? Yep, but aren’t they all? Is there anything particular you found objectionable or ridiculous? I’m not saying people should have voted for the guy (for one thing, I imagine unseating Starmer in his constituency would have led to a right political palaver, last thing the country needs right now), but I like some of his investigative work on YouTube, particularly regarding the arms trade. I don’t agree with him on everything, but I certainly agree with his opposition to Israel’s actions (and I think that to suggest, as Lando does, that his opposition to Israel’s actions is motivated by anti-semitism just shows how meaningless that slur has become).
Edit: Totally irrelevant aside: I wrote “the last thing the country needs right now”, but of course it’s not “the country”, it’s the countries of the United Kingdom. I saw at the football match that they’ve changed the lyrics of the English national anthem to “God save the King“. It’s got me wondering why they never changed the name of the countries to “the United Queendom”. Sexists.
My merton-esque query about why the world’s only Jewish state attracts such disproportionate levels of opposition was a general one and not aimed at the one hobbyist crank.
Millions of people around the world are horrified by the killing of so many innocent children and the consequences it may have in the future. For the vastissimo majority of those people their horror has absolutely nothing to do with anti-semitism. I’m sorry but I think to suggest as much is both ridiculous and dangerous.
“If Israel’s cause is just, let it speak eloquently in its own defense. It is very telling that some of Israel’s own supporters instead go to extraordinary lengths to utterly silence the other side. Smearing one’s opponents is rarely a tactic employed by those confident that justice is on their side. If Israel’s case requires branding its critics antisemites, it is already conceding defeat.”
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/29/steinberg-weaponizing-antisemitism/
Yes, Hamas does indeed have a lot to answer for. However, I’m not clear that the situation they have caused in Gaza is so much worse than what is going on elsewhere in the world.
And therefore your conclusion is genuinely that the wide-scale objection to its continuation is motivated by anti-semitism?
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the article above.
The only comparable situation going on elsewhere in the world is the appalling conflict in Ukraine (being perpetuated, imho, by another mad killer without a conscience). There was, very rightly, a great deal of opposition and protest regarding Putin’s invasion before October 7th 2023. I think the number of defenceless, innocent children being killed in Gaza has now, understandably, focussed greater international opposition and outrage on that conflict.
I don’t accept that Palestinian grievances can be used to justify the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th. That terrorist attack was bound to (most likely planned to) provoke a violent reaction by Israel. But equally I don’t accept that the October 7th attack can be used to justify the killing of so many children. Where does this end? Can the bombing even eventually hope to wipe out Hamas? Or will it just inevitably perpetuate more violence?
I’m no expert on the issue (never been to Gaza or Israel) but, as much as I wish it were possible, I don’t see in practical terms how violence will destroy Hamas and I think the longer it continues the more hatred it stirs up (which I believe is exactly what Hamas leaders want). The longer the bombing continues the harder it becomes to envisage the path to a peaceful solution. Eventually, I think dialogue is the only hope and the dialogue will, unfortunately, have to involve both Hamas and some of the more bloodthirsty characters in Israel’s government. The big problem being that both are completely untrustworthy. Independent, international peace activists with years of experience in both Gaza and Israel are the first people I’d turn to for advice on how to frame any dialogue.
There’s Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Burkina Faso….
The relevant difference being that these states are not Jewish or that these states are not seen as our friendly allies in democracy and are not seen as an international threat?
Sorry. Missed that bit.
However, many are based on religious/racist fervour.
There was no bit to miss, I just asked that question cos obviously I believe the latter, that the situations in Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Burkina Faso are not comparable to the situation in Israel because they are internal conflicts unlikely to threaten western democracy and that’s why they don’t attract the level of international attention and subsequent outrage that Israel currently attracts.
While I have seen an element of racist fervour in the protests I believe it represents a tiny minority and it’s very wrong to suggest otherwise. I believe the daily killing of children would be abhorrent to the vast majority of those opposed no matter who was doing it but especially so when it’s one of our “allies” and I agree with Steinberg (link above):
“As a leader in the Jewish community, I am particularly alarmed by today’s McCarthyist tactic of manufacturing an antisemitism scare, which, in effect, turns the very real issue of Jewish safety into a pawn in a cynical political game to cover for Israel’s deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine.“
” I will divest our Council from the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and halt the sale of arms to Israel and any other state in violation of human rights.”
I might have missed changes in government but this strikes me as not being part of the MP’s powers.
It’s not an immoral position to take, but it does sound like a ridiculous one though. Shoulda said “I will put pressure on the Government to halt… etc.”
Hobbyists gonna hobby…
There is, sadly, no end of repressive regimes in the world. As Mrs Merton might have put it, what is it about the world’s only Jewish state that attracts such opposition?
Feinstein is, like much of the hobbyist left, a complete fruit loop. And judging by his twitter activity, quite an unpleasant one at that. I struggle to see these people as genuine left-wingers. Hopefully, now that Labour is back in the hands of grown-ups, they can congregate in some new Ken Loach vanity party and pass stern resolutions to their hearts’ content.
There is, sadly, no end of repressive regimes in the world. As Mrs Merton might have put it, what is it about the world’s only Jewish state that attracts such opposition?
I hardly think the anti-semitism slur will wash as far as Feinstein’s opposition to Israel’s actions is concerned. Him having lost many family members in the Holocaust. I think the age of the human beings being slaughtered on mass might have more to do with it.
It’s all over now…move on to discussing the greatest Rush album.
No Rush
A Farewell To Kings (although in this context “Kings” is spelt slightly differently)
Grace Under Pressure – precious little of that on show
Moving Pictures for me.
Signals.
That’s what I thought….what??
Triple hamper time. Yum!
This election is the gift that keeps giving though, isn’t it. I just learned that Tory half wit Marcus Fysh lost his seat and has been slagging off the Tory party on Twitter. Splendid.
Just watched the new parliament gather in the House of Commons on the Beeb.
Some rather fine words shared as the various congratulations were made. Sunak was gracious. Starmer was delighted but courteous. The two Irish lads stole the show with eloquent humour.
Farage was a leaden and graceless ****.
I thought Ed Davey was unnecessarily partisan (as did a lot of the MPs present) in what seems to be expected to be a series of paeans to the Speaker. Later Ed – now is not the time for kicking the Tories for leaving the country in a shit state.
Ed looks likely to receive a bit of a kicking himself when he comes before the PO. Horizon enquiry a week tomorrow (18/7)
On the basis of his shiftiness at the PO enquiry yesterday, it’s a good job Ed D didn’t get into Number 10 a couple of weeks back.
He’d be so busy signing off on answers he hadn’t written to complaints/warnings he hadn’t bothered to read, the UK would be sliding into a fascist dictatorship.
Even the appalling Priti Patel did more to address the issue than he did.
I thought that too. Tradition requires some eloquence and courtesy on this first day of a new government. Starmer and Sunak hit the right notes, as did most everyone else.
Farage and Davey were hopeless. Like a couple of 6th Formers out of their depth in the moment.
There are some comments above about the drop in the Labour vote. I suspect a lot of it was down to the polls predicting such a huge win, and amplified by the Tories and their mates in the press, leading to many not bothering to vote, especially in safer seats where the outcome was pretty predictable, and there would also be the obvious tactical voting.
I would like to see some in depth analysis, but my feeling is that the most motivated voters would be for the minor parties and independents, thus accounting for their results.
This Yougov graphic suggests that there was some vote swapping between last election and this
Here’s the link to the whole set of stats:
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election