Best Of

I doubt SNP will lose a lot of sleep over Aberdeen South. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is a more typical constituency for them and they won it easily.

Come now, the party that has been in charge of British oil and gas for 14 of the last 16 years and is not likely to be in government any where or any time soon has won a by election to defend British oil and gas.
Exciting times for British oil and gas!

I am quite green on environmental issues, but even I can see the sense of extracting the economically useful oil and gas from the North Sea.

It shouldn't stand in the way of our campaign for renewables and electrification which is the obvious future for both energy needs, jobs and security. It makes no sense when doing carbon accounting to merely substitute it with imported oil and gas.

We will need fossil fuels for chemical feedstock etc in the long term too.

As for Makerfield, I said at the start that Burnham would walk it and he did. Surprised at the majority but even so, this is a by election we will be talking about for decades.

Two big takeaways:

Reform are over. They can’t win by-elections, when they win council elections they shed councillors because they are racists or mad or even the ones they keep are in capable of the basics. And they virtue signal like crazy having said they would scrap all the one virtue signalling.
In essence, most voters aren’t racist fuck morons as Farage hopes they are. They’ve seen through him, they care not for cockwomble ex-Tory grifters like Jenrick, and the slide to Restore will gather pace as what is the point of Farage now?

Burnham will not face a contest. Not after this. A 6k majority over Reform and Restore combined is hope for all the 24 intake that they can win in 29. By delivering change as they were elected to do. The first change? Taxi for Starmer.

A for what Burnham will do, well there’s a big challenge there. But he’s already shown the way in GM so expect a lot of that to copy across. Invest in place - streets, communities, facilities. Scrap daft targets and let the police police. Pride in yourself and your town and your country. That worker bee ethos is desperately needed.

As Thatcha once said, Rejoice

Why do you spoil good analysis with hyberbole?

(1) This by-election won't be talked about "for decades", and Burnham probably won't even be PM in 3 years time, and;
(2) Reform are not "over"

The tea leaves might be starting to tell us some quite interesting things, but don't overdo it.

I think it will be talked about for decades, even if Labour lose the next election; it's an inflection point in the country's political history.
And Rochdale is right about the change in mood and approach - I suspect a lot of Londoners don't fully grasp that.

It won't be talked about for decades.

It's significant now and will be ancient history once Andy Burnham loses office.

I doubt SNP will lose a lot of sleep over Aberdeen South. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is a more typical constituency for them and they won it easily.

Indeed, there's a risk of taking the wrong lesson from a good result, as happened after Uxbridge.

Everyone, including Starmer and Burnham, concluded that bring the drivers' friend was the way to go, ignoring the detail that Zone 6 is an unusual bit of London. Chasing that vote was one of the signs of Sunak going mad.

Potentially, it's the same here, except eking out oil and gas for a bit longer. Obviously plays well in Aberdeen, not sure about nationwide.

Nobody will bring Aberdeen's glory days back. Geology prevents it even if saving the planet isn't your thing. But it's an emotional thing. People who made a good living out of the oil boom no longer do. Kemi Badenoch is playing the unlikely role of Arthur Scargill in his opposition to an unfeeling Margaret Thatcher towards the miners.

Collapsing the industry there, with high energy prices, is especially stupid.

I doubt SNP will lose a lot of sleep over Aberdeen South. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is a more typical constituency for them and they won it easily.

Indeed, there's a risk of taking the wrong lesson from a good result, as happened after Uxbridge.

Everyone, including Starmer and Burnham, concluded that bring the drivers' friend was the way to go, ignoring the detail that Zone 6 is an unusual bit of London. Chasing that vote was one of the signs of Sunak going mad.

Potentially, it's the same here, except eking out oil and gas for a bit longer. Obviously plays well in Aberdeen, not sure about nationwide.

Nobody will bring Aberdeen's glory days back. Geology prevents it even if saving the planet isn't your thing. But it's an emotional thing. People who made a good living out of the oil boom no longer do. Kemi Badenoch is playing the unlikely role of Arthur Scargill in his opposition to an unfeeling Margaret Thatcher towards the miners.

Good luck to the new PM on increasing health, welfare, and defence spending to keep the MPs happy, without any cuts.

Oh, and whilst reopening the assusted suicide debate.

Vibes theory of governing being more important may be proven.

People here constantly emphasise the challenges.

However its worth noting the upside.

The new PM is going to have 2.5 years in Downing Street with a landslide majority.

If you can't make it work with a landslide majority, you don't deserve another term.

Fair point. The Starmer government seemed bereft of ideas and tentative from the start.

The MPs want to be led, and they will take chances if they have confidence in who leads them. Andy should go bold and tell them they trusted him to save the party, they need to trust him even if a proposal might sound unpopular. Go big.

What though? There's no money left, for real this time.

Not entirely true. Starmer's in love with digital ID and ruinous, technologically deficient authoritarianism,

Those should be popular with the public tendency, making his unpopularity more notable.

It'd help if we had a media that wasn't either thick as pigshit or complicit in a desire by the Government to track the proletariat scum and force them to take on digital ID or upload personal documents to do almost anything on the internet.

A reminder that the ban on Social Media for the young is massively popular:

https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3mod7vtcxl22t

Even 77% of Gen Z agree on how harmful SM is:

https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3mod7vvnajk2t

The elephant trap here is the digital ID data being created and shared with Palantir et al.

It is perfectly possible to come up with Digital ID that *protects* personal data.

But government (both political and permanent) is institutionally opposed to that.

The ban will start out being popular with some. Then become a performative failure and then an embarrassment.