While Labour’s narrow victory in Batley and Spen will mostly be analysed through the prism of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, a more compelling fault line is the apparent estrangement of some Muslim voters from a party that has until now been able to rely on their support. Labour may have held on but it also showed its hand. During the campaign, Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater posed for a photograph with local campaigners sporting T-shirts that depicted Israel as ‘Palestine’, issued both a leaflet and a letter touting her pro-Palestinian credentials (by heaping scorn on Israel, naturally), and defended a grim leaflet clearly geared towards tapping into anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudices. In the middle of the campaign, Sir Keir also used one PMQs to demand Boris Johnson convince other world leaders at the G7 to recognise a Palestinian state, presumably prior to any peace agreement with Israel....
The Labour view of British Muslims that comes across in these antics is fairly objectionable. In deploying the same sectarian, communalist politics that have previously been used against Labour in similar seats, the party won the by-election but lost the moral high ground. Now, the moral high ground doesn’t matter all that much in real politics but in Labour politics – that melange of virtue and sentiment – it is supposed to mean something.
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election. The problem for the Tories is that they have to win outright. There is no feasible coalition which contains the Tories so they have to get a majority on their own. The feeling after Chesham and Amersham was that a few losses in the south would be fine because there were still gains to be made in the north. There is no doubt that the south is angry with the Tories. That is not just the south east but stretch's across the rest of the south as well. They will not have been helped by bringing the G7 to Cornwall and a massive influx of COVID with it. So if they are looking at losses across the south of the UK and only marginal gains in the north I can see the next general election being tighter than it appeared a few months ago. I also wonder if the 'governments are always unpopular mid term' argument holds in the parliament. Governments are unpopular because the get the bad news done in the first two or three years and then splash the cash towards a general election. Given the current massive structural deficit in the UK that does not seem likely this time. I suspect that there will be mounting pressure in the party to quietly drop the emphasis on levelling up the north and to revert to trying to hang on to what they have. Time will tell.
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election. The problem for the Tories is that they have to win outright. There is no feasible coalition which contains the Tories so they have to get a majority on their own. The feeling after Chesham and Amersham was that a few losses in the south would be fine because there were still gains to be made in the north. There is no doubt that the south is angry with the Tories. That is not just the south east but stretch's across the rest of the south as well. They will not have been helped by bringing the G7 to Cornwall and a massive influx of COVID with it. So if they are looking at losses across the south of the UK and only marginal gains in the north I can see the next general election being tighter than it appeared a few months ago. I also wonder if the 'governments are always unpopular mid term' argument holds in the parliament. Governments are unpopular because the get the bad news done in the first two or three years and then splash the cash towards a general election. Given the current massive structural deficit in the UK that does not seem likely this time. I suspect that there will be mounting pressure in the party to quietly drop the emphasis on levelling up the north and to revert to trying to hang on to what they have. Time will tell.
the big thing the Tories have to work on is: the relative coherence of their spectrum of support across the country (the middling sort) and the potential for splitting the non Tory vote
You really do need to remember the victims of all this- Owen Jones, Bastani, Jezzas readmission to the labour party, Matt Hancock, BJs invincibility cloak.
I do recall some sage saying when Trump lost that people had just got a bit tired of all the drama. I wonder if that is where we are heading.
Starmer as the UK Biden was made for that scenario and is probably the only one where he can win in some form, I would say.
I've thought that since last year though, so nothing new to me.
A narrow Labour hold in urban West Yorkshire is not a result typically received with breathless gasps of relief by the party leadership. But for Keir Starmer and those desperate for party unity, it is without doubt a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
On our respective visits to Batley and Spen, my colleague Anoosh Chakelian and I remarked that Kim Leadbeater, the Labour candidate, was an unquestionable asset to the campaign. She appealed to would-be voters and her literature was markedly less Labour in branding than previous efforts by the party, and one wonders if it was this which proved key to the final result.
When approached on his preference, for instance, one resident remarked last week to a canvasser: “Yes, I’ll vote for Kim, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be supporting Labour!”
I’m old enough to remember folk saying Kim Leadbeater was a terrible candidate chosen only because of who she was related to and who couldn’t handle some lippy twats shouting at her.
In fairness I said that and I don't necessarily accept that I was wrong. But the Tories felt it necessary to hide their candidate pretty much completely so he was presumably even worse!
A few people were confidently asserting this but I don’t remember you being one of them, so wasn’t having a go, honest!
As to the Tory candidate, I’m guessing he will forever remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. His performance suggests that the current incarnation of the Tory party does not do well when not loudly bellowing over some issue or other.
Excellent result for Starmer, no gettting around it. He would have been in very serious trouble if he had lost but a win is a win and getting the win with Galloway over 8k is impressive.
The Tories have fallen back quite a bit. Still by no means the worst position for a mid term 4th term government but they are well off their peak. I would not be at all surprised to see polling with Labour level very soon.
Peak Tory is passed
Just because you keep writing something doesn't make it true.....eventually you'll be right, as all things change, but as ever the hot takes we are reading are "this result confirms my prejudices".
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election. The problem for the Tories is that they have to win outright. There is no feasible coalition which contains the Tories so they have to get a majority on their own. The feeling after Chesham and Amersham was that a few losses in the south would be fine because there were still gains to be made in the north. There is no doubt that the south is angry with the Tories. That is not just the south east but stretch's across the rest of the south as well. They will not have been helped by bringing the G7 to Cornwall and a massive influx of COVID with it. So if they are looking at losses across the south of the UK and only marginal gains in the north I can see the next general election being tighter than it appeared a few months ago. I also wonder if the 'governments are always unpopular mid term' argument holds in the parliament. Governments are unpopular because the get the bad news done in the first two or three years and then splash the cash towards a general election. Given the current massive structural deficit in the UK that does not seem likely this time. I suspect that there will be mounting pressure in the party to quietly drop the emphasis on levelling up the north and to revert to trying to hang on to what they have. Time will tell.
Regarding your last sentence, I don't think so. The fact is the Tories very nearly took Batley & Spen and there are considerably better prospects than that seat elsewhere in the North. Just look at the Nissan decision, for instance, and what that could mean in Co Durham and Teesside which are swinging violently to the Tories.
There could well be a LibDem problem in some Southern seats but I suspect, in terms of seats lost, it would be minor. It'll take another full turn of the electoral cycle, at least, before the Oranges make significant progress at Westminster.
You really do need to remember the victims of all this- Owen Jones, Bastani, Jezzas readmission to the labour party, Matt Hancock, BJs invincibility cloak.
I do recall some sage saying when Trump lost that people had just got a bit tired of all the drama. I wonder if that is where we are heading.
Starmer as the UK Biden was made for that scenario and is probably the only one where he can win in some form, I would say.
I've thought that since last year though, so nothing new to me.
That's about my take, CHB.
Politics is a bit dull at the moment and if Starmer has a long term future as Leader it will be as the dull and sensible alternative to wild and whacky Boris. The significance of Batley then would be that it buys SKS some time.
Whatever people think of Galloway he did very well here. The result was poor for the two main parties. The PB labour lot claiming it’s a stunning result are off their heads. They scraped home and only just. Had the election been last week I suspect they’d have lost. They clearly threw everything at it this last week.
Labour won and the party led by the disingenuous racist fat fornicator lost. That's the main takeaway and it's good news.
Agreed. And they didn’t just lose, they came third.
No, the Tories came second.
I’m sure Galloway was third.
"the party led by the racist fat fornicator" is the Tories surely.
Boris isn't racist. He's certainly the others.
The Workers Party ticks all three boxes.
If Johnson is not racist, why does he refer to black people as "piccanninies" with "watermelon" smiles? Why did he write as follows?
"If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there (...) It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."
Much later the Spectator, sneering at those who called him racist, said he was actually being "anti-imperialist".
Many readers of the Daily Telegraph and of the Spectator too - as Johnson must have been keenly aware - would have recalled another speech in which the racist word "piccaninnies" was used, there qualified with the adjective "wide-grinning". Of course he is a racist. No fault in anybody else can excuse that.
Presumably a racist who appoints minority ethnic people to be Home Secretary, Health Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer? Can you divorce colourful writing about colonialism from how a person behaves? I don't believe Johnson is racist - if its female he'd try to shag it, if its male he'll try to screw it over... Equal opportunities...
Is it not possible to treat individuals you know personally in a non racist way, but still be willing to use racist dog whistles and jokes to win votes?
This government, and therefore the PM, do deserve significant and real credit for the racial diversity in their cabinet, but equally that does not put them beyond reproach and scrutiny on the subject.
Except the quotes come from a journalist exercise, not campaign literature.
Some B&S thoughts: 1. Brilliant Labour expectation management. 2. Superb Labour GOTV operation. 3. Both suggest a significant uptick in party management after Starmer's recent backroom reshuffle. 4. Galloway got a lot more than Muslim votes. 5. By rooting so openly for Galloway, the far-left has done itself a great deal of harm inside Labour. 6. Hubris is always the Tory Achilles heal. It hurt them big time here. 7. The LibDem vote share was down only 1.3%. Compare and contrast with the fall in the Labour vote share in Chesham & Amersham. 8. We need to stop talking about politics as normal. We don't know what normal is anymore. 9. Above all else, the significance of this is that Labour did not lose and the headlines and summer the result has therefore prevented.
"7. The LibDem vote share was down only 1.3%. Compare and contrast with the fall in the Labour vote share in Chesham & Amersham."
Lab majority was 0.9% so LD tactical votes made the difference. The LD share drop of 1.3% was from 4.6% last time so over a quarter switched.
Excellent result for Starmer, no gettting around it. He would have been in very serious trouble if he had lost but a win is a win and getting the win with Galloway over 8k is impressive.
The Tories have fallen back quite a bit. Still by no means the worst position for a mid term 4th term government but they are well off their peak. I would not be at all surprised to see polling with Labour level very soon.
Peak Tory is passed
Just because you keep writing something doesn't make it true.....eventually you'll be right, as all things change, but as ever the hot takes we are reading are "this result confirms my prejudices".
That's a fair point to make but I feel very similarly to how I felt prior to the Tory lead dropping off last time, that something had changed. And I do feel much the same way now.
Excellent result for Starmer, no gettting around it. He would have been in very serious trouble if he had lost but a win is a win and getting the win with Galloway over 8k is impressive.
The Tories have fallen back quite a bit. Still by no means the worst position for a mid term 4th term government but they are well off their peak. I would not be at all surprised to see polling with Labour level very soon.
Peak Tory is passed
Just because you keep writing something doesn't make it true.....eventually you'll be right, as all things change, but as ever the hot takes we are reading are "this result confirms my prejudices".
Wasn’t there a huge swing *to* the Conservatives last night?
@Anabobazina to go back to my theory I plotted this just for the North West,
From the 1st to the 14th of June the Hospitalisation rate in the North West was increasing. The 14th was the peak day and it has fallen by 40% since then.
Whatever people think of Galloway he did very well here. The result was poor for the two main parties. The PB labour lot claiming it’s a stunning result are off their heads. They scraped home and only just. Had the election been last week I suspect they’d have lost. They clearly threw everything at it this last week.
Labour won and the party led by the disingenuous racist fat fornicator lost. That's the main takeaway and it's good news.
Agreed. And they didn’t just lose, they came third.
No, the Tories came second.
I’m sure Galloway was third.
"the party led by the racist fat fornicator" is the Tories surely.
Boris isn't racist. He's certainly the others.
The Workers Party ticks all three boxes.
If Johnson is not racist, why does he refer to black people as "piccanninies" with "watermelon" smiles? Why did he write as follows?
"If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there (...) It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."
Much later the Spectator, sneering at those who called him racist, said he was actually being "anti-imperialist".
Many readers of the Daily Telegraph and of the Spectator too - as Johnson must have been keenly aware - would have recalled another speech in which the racist word "piccaninnies" was used, there qualified with the adjective "wide-grinning". Of course he is a racist. No fault in anybody else can excuse that.
Presumably a racist who appoints minority ethnic people to be Home Secretary, Health Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer? Can you divorce colourful writing about colonialism from how a person behaves? I don't believe Johnson is racist - if its female he'd try to shag it, if its male he'll try to screw it over... Equal opportunities...
Is it not possible to treat individuals you know personally in a non racist way, but still be willing to use racist dog whistles and jokes to win votes?
This government, and therefore the PM, do deserve significant and real credit for the racial diversity in their cabinet, but equally that does not put them beyond reproach and scrutiny on the subject.
Except the quotes come from a journalist exercise, not campaign literature.
The stuff from 25 years ago should carry low weight anyway, people do change over that period of time. More the letter box stuff. Again, it was as nominally as a journalist, but also whilst an MP clearly campaigning for leadership against his party leader.
People thought they'd pick up most of the 12% for the Heavy Woollens.
If the Heavy Wollens were going to vote Conservative they would have done so in 2019.
I don't think the Conservatives have reached 40% in any election in this constituency, local or general, since 1992.
I think you are right about the Heavy Woollens and I never expected them to move en masse to the Tories. In the absence of a HW candidate this time I did expect the Tories to be the net beneficiaries though, albeit by 1000-2000 votes.
However it seems pretty clear that the 8000 Galloway votes came from previous Labour voters mainly from the Muslim community.
In those circumstances Labour did very well to hold the seat.
Normal politics has been largely suspended during the pandemic but I suspect it will be resumed shortly. The Government is going to have to start taking some pretty tough measures to get the nation's finances back in shape, there is one hell of a hangover heading our way and I would expect the Tories to be polling around 35% by the end of the year.
I don't understand the complacency of the Boris fans on PB, much of his support is skin deep. Many of his own supporters don't believe he is fit for purpose. He got his 43% vote against the worst Labour candidate in my lifetime. Starmer has had an indifferent start but he does not repel voters in the way Corbyn did. If Boris is still in place in 2024 I believe he will lose his overall majority and the problem he has at that stage is that he has zero potential allies amongst the SNP, Lib Dems, Greens or Plaid.
Some B&S thoughts: 1. Brilliant Labour expectation management. 2. Superb Labour GOTV operation. 3. Both suggest a significant uptick in party management after Starmer's recent backroom reshuffle. 4. Galloway got a lot more than Muslim votes. 5. By rooting so openly for Galloway, the far-left has done itself a great deal of harm inside Labour. 6. Hubris is always the Tory Achilles heal. It hurt them big time here. 7. The LibDem vote share was down only 1.3%. Compare and contrast with the fall in the Labour vote share in Chesham & Amersham. 8. We need to stop talking about politics as normal. We don't know what normal is anymore. 9. Above all else, the significance of this is that Labour did not lose and the headlines and summer the result has therefore prevented.
"7. The LibDem vote share was down only 1.3%. Compare and contrast with the fall in the Labour vote share in Chesham & Amersham."
Lab majority was 0.9% so LD tactical votes made the difference. The LD share drop of 1.3% was from 4.6% last time so over a quarter switched.
Not just that- from memory, someone involved in the LD campaign was on here saying that the LDs were pretty chilled about LD->Lab switchers in Cleckheaton but were picking up Con->LD switchers elsewhere.
If the old tactical voting group are getting back together after the trauma of 2019, that's significant in itself.
Whatever people think of Galloway he did very well here. The result was poor for the two main parties. The PB labour lot claiming it’s a stunning result are off their heads. They scraped home and only just. Had the election been last week I suspect they’d have lost. They clearly threw everything at it this last week.
Labour won and the party led by the disingenuous racist fat fornicator lost. That's the main takeaway and it's good news.
Agreed. And they didn’t just lose, they came third.
No, the Tories came second.
I’m sure Galloway was third.
"the party led by the racist fat fornicator" is the Tories surely.
Boris isn't racist. He's certainly the others.
The Workers Party ticks all three boxes.
If Johnson is not racist, why does he refer to black people as "piccanninies" with "watermelon" smiles? Why did he write as follows?
"If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there (...) It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."
Much later the Spectator, sneering at those who called him racist, said he was actually being "anti-imperialist".
Many readers of the Daily Telegraph and of the Spectator too - as Johnson must have been keenly aware - would have recalled another speech in which the racist word "piccaninnies" was used, there qualified with the adjective "wide-grinning". Of course he is a racist. No fault in anybody else can excuse that.
Presumably a racist who appoints minority ethnic people to be Home Secretary, Health Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer? Can you divorce colourful writing about colonialism from how a person behaves? I don't believe Johnson is racist - if its female he'd try to shag it, if its male he'll try to screw it over... Equal opportunities...
Is it not possible to treat individuals you know personally in a non racist way, but still be willing to use racist dog whistles and jokes to win votes?
This government, and therefore the PM, do deserve significant and real credit for the racial diversity in their cabinet, but equally that does not put them beyond reproach and scrutiny on the subject.
Except the quotes come from a journalist exercise, not campaign literature.
The stuff from 25 years ago should carry low weight anyway, people do change over that period of time. More the letter box stuff. Again, it was as nominally as a journalist, but also whilst an MP clearly campaigning for leadership against his party leader.
If you actually read what he wrote, he is imputing those beliefs to the Queen and Tony Blair.
To the extent that it matters, which is hardly at all, May would probably be a perfectly functional NATO SecGen. She'd be one of the few qualified British politicians that the US would tolerate which is the only opinion that really matters.
Johnson would prefer that she dies in a fire but having a 'Brit' in the corner office on Boulevard Léopold III is still probably a net positive even if it is May.
While Labour’s narrow victory in Batley and Spen will mostly be analysed through the prism of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, a more compelling fault line is the apparent estrangement of some Muslim voters from a party that has until now been able to rely on their support. Labour may have held on but it also showed its hand. During the campaign, Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater posed for a photograph with local campaigners sporting T-shirts that depicted Israel as ‘Palestine’, issued both a leaflet and a letter touting her pro-Palestinian credentials (by heaping scorn on Israel, naturally), and defended a grim leaflet clearly geared towards tapping into anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudices. In the middle of the campaign, Sir Keir also used one PMQs to demand Boris Johnson convince other world leaders at the G7 to recognise a Palestinian state, presumably prior to any peace agreement with Israel....
The Labour view of British Muslims that comes across in these antics is fairly objectionable. In deploying the same sectarian, communalist politics that have previously been used against Labour in similar seats, the party won the by-election but lost the moral high ground. Now, the moral high ground doesn’t matter all that much in real politics but in Labour politics – that melange of virtue and sentiment – it is supposed to mean something.
London media types think they're experts on all things northern after spending an afternoon somewhere they couldn't find on a map the previous week.
That comment does rather imply that savvy locals knew which way this was going, while the London media missed it.
I rather doubt that, myself. Would be interesting had there been polls of residents in Batley & Spen yesterday, and Chesham & Amersham a couple of weeks ago, along the lines, "Regardless of who you want to win, who do you think will win?" Suspect local people would have called both wrongly by significant margins.
It's not that it isn't quite funny to see commentators getting it wrong. Just that I don't really buy into the argument that it shows how out of touch commentators are with ordinary folk. What it shows is that by-elections are really quite difficult to predict for both commentators and people on the ground, beyond the glaringly obvious points like don't bet on Labour in Chesham or the Lib Dems in Batley.
Whatever people think of Galloway he did very well here. The result was poor for the two main parties. The PB labour lot claiming it’s a stunning result are off their heads. They scraped home and only just. Had the election been last week I suspect they’d have lost. They clearly threw everything at it this last week.
Labour won and the party led by the disingenuous racist fat fornicator lost. That's the main takeaway and it's good news.
Agreed. And they didn’t just lose, they came third.
No, the Tories came second.
I’m sure Galloway was third.
"the party led by the racist fat fornicator" is the Tories surely.
Boris isn't racist. He's certainly the others.
The Workers Party ticks all three boxes.
If Johnson is not racist, why does he refer to black people as "piccanninies" with "watermelon" smiles? Why did he write as follows?
"If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there (...) It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."
Much later the Spectator, sneering at those who called him racist, said he was actually being "anti-imperialist".
Many readers of the Daily Telegraph and of the Spectator too - as Johnson must have been keenly aware - would have recalled another speech in which the racist word "piccaninnies" was used, there qualified with the adjective "wide-grinning". Of course he is a racist. No fault in anybody else can excuse that.
Presumably a racist who appoints minority ethnic people to be Home Secretary, Health Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer? Can you divorce colourful writing about colonialism from how a person behaves? I don't believe Johnson is racist - if its female he'd try to shag it, if its male he'll try to screw it over... Equal opportunities...
Is it not possible to treat individuals you know personally in a non racist way, but still be willing to use racist dog whistles and jokes to win votes?
This government, and therefore the PM, do deserve significant and real credit for the racial diversity in their cabinet, but equally that does not put them beyond reproach and scrutiny on the subject.
That can be true, but people do sometimes overdo the racist stuff to the point that if you didn't know the cabinet people would be surprised at its diversity under Johnson.
It does seem notable to me how often the very same quotes and anecdotes are used to shame Boris in this issue, some of them pretty old at this point. That doesn't mean they are irrelevant, and some are good quotes, but I think to persuade people he personally is a racist more effort needs to be made on demonstration of a pattern and incidents beyond the most famous ones which go back a bit
Otherwise it will just be dismissed because of how diverse his Cabinet is. People will put that over a newspaper column many years ago for example.
You really do need to remember the victims of all this- Owen Jones, Bastani, Jezzas readmission to the labour party, Matt Hancock, BJs invincibility cloak.
I do recall some sage saying when Trump lost that people had just got a bit tired of all the drama. I wonder if that is where we are heading.
Starmer as the UK Biden was made for that scenario and is probably the only one where he can win in some form, I would say.
I've thought that since last year though, so nothing new to me.
That's about my take, CHB.
Politics is a bit dull at the moment and if Starmer has a long term future as Leader it will be as the dull and sensible alternative to wild and whacky Boris. The significance of Batley then would be that it buys SKS some time.
Hi Peter, hope you are well, I have not seen you around here for a while, albeit I've also been dipping in and out myself. So apologies if I have missed you.
It buys SKS some time certainly but it really needs him to do something with it, my biggest problem with him thus far is that he hasn't really done very much at all.
But I am not wanting him to go big on 2019 redux which can only lead to disaster, frankly it's time for him to split the party if that is what is needed. Even if he doesn't win then that will in time, lead back to a Labour Government which is ultimately what I am interested in.
The clock has been restarted - but is ticking again. Another year for Starmer.
For those like Phillip Thompson who (apparently sincerely) believe that Brexit is all done and dusted and marvellous, here is yet another example of the problems we are facing:
Now you may think this is trivial chaff in the wind but it isn't. We're talking about a shortage of lorry drivers. This isn't some highfalutin or esoteric debate, this is Brexit at the coalface. Trouble among the very people whom Boris wooed in 2019.
It's another reason why the gloss has come off Brand Boris.
If England win Euro 2020 it might stop his slide. Otherwise it's pretty obvious to me and many others that we passed peak Boris a month or so back: May 25th to be precise: the day before Dom Cummings launched the first of his Exocets.
Once again - this has little to nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with the working conditions of HGV drivers.
Remember these issues kicked off not in January but from mid April after IR35 changes reduced a lot of agency drivers wages - who have suddenly found that local jobs now pay the same as driving and don't require them being away in a crap cabin overnight.
IR35 is one of the stupidest bits of tax/employment law ever invented. People should be free to set up their business affairs as they see fit, rather than be dictated to by a greedy tax office which always sees more PAYE as a cash cow to be milked.
To the extent that it matters, which is hardly at all, May would probably be a perfectly functional NATO SecGen. She'd be one of the few qualified British politicians that the US would tolerate which is the only opinion that really matters.
Johnson would prefer that she dies in a fire but having a 'Brit' in the corner office on Boulevard Léopold III is still probably a net positive even if it is May.
Getting her out of Westminster makes it a positive.
Actually, the Titanic didn't sink because of arrogance or idiocy on the part of the Captain. It sank because, despite being pretty much best in class for safety, trained crew etc, it turned out that the best practise of the day was wrong.
In fact it is an interesting example of survivor bias. Previously, icebergs weren't thought of a massive problem. After the Titanic, they went back and discovered that if you correlated the time of year to ships vanishing without trace....
It was because the Titanic had fairly decent compartmentation, radio etc that people survived to tell the tale....
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election.
I think even more interesting is the combination of the locals and the three by-elections. If that was repeated at a general election, everybody would remember Paddy Ashdown's comment about 2010 - "the people have spoken, and we've no idea what they've said".
Great line, and I do miss Paddy.
Another in the roster of notable hat-eaters, mind, in 2015.
[EDIT - actually, was it 2010? Something along the lines of not believing the Lib Dems would end up down a few seats after the campaign Cleggasm]
Missed opportunity though this was first the Tories, its hardly a titanic like catastrophe. Feels more like needing to take just one more wicket to win the test match but missing out.
Labour will be hoping it's an England 2005 situation.
Whatever people think of Galloway he did very well here. The result was poor for the two main parties. The PB labour lot claiming it’s a stunning result are off their heads. They scraped home and only just. Had the election been last week I suspect they’d have lost. They clearly threw everything at it this last week.
Labour won and the party led by the disingenuous racist fat fornicator lost. That's the main takeaway and it's good news.
Agreed. And they didn’t just lose, they came third.
No, the Tories came second.
I’m sure Galloway was third.
"the party led by the racist fat fornicator" is the Tories surely.
Boris isn't racist. He's certainly the others.
The Workers Party ticks all three boxes.
If Johnson is not racist, why does he refer to black people as "piccanninies" with "watermelon" smiles? Why did he write as follows?
"If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there (...) It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."
Much later the Spectator, sneering at those who called him racist, said he was actually being "anti-imperialist".
Many readers of the Daily Telegraph and of the Spectator too - as Johnson must have been keenly aware - would have recalled another speech in which the racist word "piccaninnies" was used, there qualified with the adjective "wide-grinning". Of course he is a racist. No fault in anybody else can excuse that.
Presumably a racist who appoints minority ethnic people to be Home Secretary, Health Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer? Can you divorce colourful writing about colonialism from how a person behaves? I don't believe Johnson is racist - if its female he'd try to shag it, if its male he'll try to screw it over... Equal opportunities...
Is it not possible to treat individuals you know personally in a non racist way, but still be willing to use racist dog whistles and jokes to win votes?
This government, and therefore the PM, do deserve significant and real credit for the racial diversity in their cabinet, but equally that does not put them beyond reproach and scrutiny on the subject.
That can be true, but people do sometimes overdo the racist stuff to the point that if you didn't know the cabinet people would be surprised at its diversity under Johnson.
It does seem notable to me how often the very same quotes and anecdotes are used to shame Boris in this issue, some of them pretty old at this point. That doesn't mean they are irrelevant, and some are good quotes, but I think to persuade people he personally is a racist more effort needs to be made on demonstration of a pattern and incidents beyond the most famous ones which go back a bit
Otherwise it will just be dismissed because of how diverse his Cabinet is. People will put that over a newspaper column many years ago for example.
I don't disagree with any of that. Evidence that he is personally racist is pretty weak and aged, but the evidence that he is willing to use racist dog whistles for electoral advantage is higher. But then Labour are willing to do the same as we have seen recently, so perhaps it is similar in most countries that a small amount of that is viewed by those seeking power as a price worth paying.
Mucking about on Betfair after the polls closed cost me about £300 🙈 Should have just gone to bed
Looks like the poll, and @NickPalmer, vastly undercooked the GG vote.
Yes, it did and I did, and there's an interesting possible reason which, to be fair Mr Ed pointed out in a private exchange. There is a linguistic problem in canvassing/polling voters whose first language isn't English. By chance most of the voters who I phone-canvassed didn't have that issue, but where it arose we exchanged polite mumbles and I wasn't sure what I'd been told. It's much easier on the doorstep, but Survation polls nowdays are I think phone polls.
It's possible, as another_richard has suggested, that a chunk of the Galloway vote was ex-Heavy Woollen, which would fit with the Muslim vote actually being divided between Galloway and Labour, as I'd heard. But actual sightings of non-Muslim voters saying they were voting Galloway have been almost non-existent. So I think we need to concede that the Muslim vote probably did go heavily for Galloway.
A large Muslim vote from Labour AND a large islamophobic vote from the Woollens? - that would be quite a coalition George put together if so. I'm dubious. I'd think it was mainly the former. Take out GG - oh please - and Labour have a much bigger win here. In fact the more I think about this from a structural GE perspective the better a result for Labour it looks. Cons still clear favourites but Lab right back in the game.
Can I suggest that we take turnout into account. 48% of electors actually went to vote, in a constituency where over the past few years 66% of so have. Therefore a little difficult to be definite about any group going anywhere.
This is the sort of result I expected for Hartlepool.
Governments don't win by-elections.
They could if the Tories put Gorgeous up as alternative to Labour at every Lab/Con by election between now and the GE.
If the Tories put up Galloway, I'd support the Liberal Democrats.
No, no. Galloway as a third way. Tories, Labour and Galloway.
Galloway doesn't seem to have hurt Labour here.
Galloway seems to have taken the Heavy Woolens vote. The Tories have gained a small swing from Labour, but not enough to take the seat given it was already Labour's.
I seriously doubt the Muslim pro-Palestine voters that switched to Galloway previously voted for the Heavy Woollens.
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election.
I think even more interesting is the combination of the locals and the three by-elections. If that was repeated at a general election, everybody would remember Paddy Ashdown's comment about 2010 - "the people have spoken, and we've no idea what they've said".
Great line, and I do miss Paddy.
Another in the roster of notable hat-eaters, mind, in 2015.
[EDIT - actually, was it 2010? Something along the lines of not believing the Lib Dems would end up down a few seats after the campaign Cleggasm]
No way Galloway will eat his dandruff speckled hat, he sees it as a sign of weakness to be held accountable for his statements. In fact he’ll probably put his lawyers on to anyone who brings it up.
A narrow Labour hold in urban West Yorkshire is not a result typically received with breathless gasps of relief by the party leadership. But for Keir Starmer and those desperate for party unity, it is without doubt a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
On our respective visits to Batley and Spen, my colleague Anoosh Chakelian and I remarked that Kim Leadbeater, the Labour candidate, was an unquestionable asset to the campaign. She appealed to would-be voters and her literature was markedly less Labour in branding than previous efforts by the party, and one wonders if it was this which proved key to the final result.
When approached on his preference, for instance, one resident remarked last week to a canvasser: “Yes, I’ll vote for Kim, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be supporting Labour!”
I’m old enough to remember folk saying Kim Leadbeater was a terrible candidate chosen only because of who she was related to and who couldn’t handle some lippy twats shouting at her.
In fairness I said that and I don't necessarily accept that I was wrong. But the Tories felt it necessary to hide their candidate pretty much completely so he was presumably even worse!
A friend knows the chap, Ryan Stephenson, slightly. Not a bad bloke personally by all accounts, very ambitious. Nothing wrong with that. He's a councillor for one of the wealthy parts of Leeds, Harewood. Likes the rough and tumble in the council chamber, puts Labour backs up a bit, all part of the game I suppose. Close to the MP Alec Shelbrooke. He's been employed by Shelbrooke since he became an MP, I think.
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election.
I think even more interesting is the combination of the locals and the three by-elections. If that was repeated at a general election, everybody would remember Paddy Ashdown's comment about 2010 - "the people have spoken, and we've no idea what they've said".
Great line, and I do miss Paddy.
Another in the roster of notable hat-eaters, mind, in 2015.
[EDIT - actually, was it 2010? Something along the lines of not believing the Lib Dems would end up down a few seats after the campaign Cleggasm]
I've a vague feeling that Paddy was quoting someone else, but I'm not sure.
By the way, the worst prediction for the night was whoever said turnout was 70%, when it barely cleared 45%.
Which is normal. 70% was thrown out so soon that it was clearly nothing but a guess as theyd have had no way of estimating. Would have been nice though.
Whatever people think of Galloway he did very well here. The result was poor for the two main parties. The PB labour lot claiming it’s a stunning result are off their heads. They scraped home and only just. Had the election been last week I suspect they’d have lost. They clearly threw everything at it this last week.
Labour won and the party led by the disingenuous racist fat fornicator lost. That's the main takeaway and it's good news.
Agreed. And they didn’t just lose, they came third.
No, the Tories came second.
I’m sure Galloway was third.
"the party led by the racist fat fornicator" is the Tories surely.
Boris isn't racist. He's certainly the others.
The Workers Party ticks all three boxes.
If Johnson is not racist, why does he refer to black people as "piccanninies" with "watermelon" smiles? Why did he write as follows?
"If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there (...) It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."
Much later the Spectator, sneering at those who called him racist, said he was actually being "anti-imperialist".
Many readers of the Daily Telegraph and of the Spectator too - as Johnson must have been keenly aware - would have recalled another speech in which the racist word "piccaninnies" was used, there qualified with the adjective "wide-grinning". Of course he is a racist. No fault in anybody else can excuse that.
He may well be a racist, but it doesn't follow from anything you quote that he is.
Hmm, Johnson characterises Africans as gun-toting tribal warriors hacking at each others' flesh with machetes, who have never seen an aeroplane. And uses a racial slur, one that was famously employed in the most well-known example of British political racism of all. The racism is plain to anyone who's not willfully blind to it.
Some final remarks then I must get to writing some code.
Has the element of tactical voting been shown yet again? We saw in Amersham Labour voters going to the Lib Dems, has this happened again and ensured victory? Without trying to guess too much about a national trend, this has now happened in two by-elections.
If repeated at a GE it might be quite interesting. I would suspect there are a lot more Lib Dems willing to have Starmer as PM than Corbyn and former Tories I suspect are far less concerned about accidentally letting in Starmer as well.
Some interesting times ahead, I think. I wonder if that Labour/Lib Dem voteshare is more efficient and malleable than it might appear.
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election.
I think even more interesting is the combination of the locals and the three by-elections. If that was repeated at a general election, everybody would remember Paddy Ashdown's comment about 2010 - "the people have spoken, and we've no idea what they've said".
Great line, and I do miss Paddy.
Another in the roster of notable hat-eaters, mind, in 2015.
[EDIT - actually, was it 2010? Something along the lines of not believing the Lib Dems would end up down a few seats after the campaign Cleggasm]
No way Galloway will eat his dandruff speckled hat, he sees it as a sign of weakness to be held accountable for his statements. In fact he’ll probably put his lawyers on to anyone who brings it up.
I think that, regardless of political differences on here, we can all agree that George Galloway is and always has been a complete and utter [redacted for legal reasons].
Mucking about on Betfair after the polls closed cost me about £300 🙈 Should have just gone to bed
Looks like the poll, and @NickPalmer, vastly undercooked the GG vote.
Yes, it did and I did, and there's an interesting possible reason which, to be fair Mr Ed pointed out in a private exchange. There is a linguistic problem in canvassing/polling voters whose first language isn't English. By chance most of the voters who I phone-canvassed didn't have that issue, but where it arose we exchanged polite mumbles and I wasn't sure what I'd been told. It's much easier on the doorstep, but Survation polls nowdays are I think phone polls.
It's possible, as another_richard has suggested, that a chunk of the Galloway vote was ex-Heavy Woollen, which would fit with the Muslim vote actually being divided between Galloway and Labour, as I'd heard. But actual sightings of non-Muslim voters saying they were voting Galloway have been almost non-existent. So I think we need to concede that the Muslim vote probably did go heavily for Galloway.
A large Muslim vote from Labour AND a large islamophobic vote from the Woollens? - that would be quite a coalition George put together if so. I'm dubious. I'd think it was mainly the former. Take out GG - oh please - and Labour have a much bigger win here. In fact the more I think about this from a structural GE perspective the better a result for Labour it looks. Cons still clear favourites but Lab right back in the game.
Its not that strange a coalition kinabalu, its classic horseshoe politics.
Its worth noting that a large portion of the none-of-the-above vote went 2010 to 2015 directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Islamists and the Woolens have more in common with each other than they do with either main party and Galloway as a political outsider appeals to both.
London media types think they're experts on all things northern after spending an afternoon somewhere they couldn't find on a map the previous week.
That comment does rather imply that savvy locals knew which way this was going, while the London media missed it.
I rather doubt that, myself. Would be interesting had there been polls of residents in Batley & Spen yesterday, and Chesham & Amersham a couple of weeks ago, along the lines, "Regardless of who you want to win, who do you think will win?" Suspect local people would have called both wrongly by significant margins.
It's not that it isn't quite funny to see commentators getting it wrong. Just that I don't really buy into the argument that it shows how out of touch commentators are with ordinary folk. What it shows is that by-elections are really quite difficult to predict for both commentators and people on the ground, beyond the glaringly obvious points like don't bet on Labour in Chesham or the Lib Dems in Batley.
Narratives form and its often easier to agree with them than question them.
There was a widespread and simplistic assumption that the Heavy Wollens would all vote Conservative.
I had strong doubts about that, said so, bet accordingly and it turned out I was right.
But how many of the media 'experts' considered the Heavy Wollens ?
Or did they just file them under {wwc and wwc love Boris} while focussing on the Muslim - Galloway - Labour issue.
OGH strikes again. and I trust his winnings on this one are as substantial as in C&A. Galloway spreads his own brand of populist evil and he fails in his objectives, albeit that his vote was distressingly high, given the man and his poisonous brand of politics. The viciousness and nastiness of the campaign is typical of his previous outings, and like Boris, people are prepared to vote for him becuase he is a "character". His defeat is nearly as satisfying as the defeat of the Tory backing punters who actually beleived that this was in the bag for them. Mike gave several pretty broad hints through the campaign, and those that recognised the message cleaned up.
Well done also to Nick Palmer, a measured head in a sea of insanity.
As for what next? Well "too soon to tell", but the Tories are going to be facing ever greater problems as we come out of the pandemic and the Brexit baggage more obviously weighs down on the economy. The Tories should not even have been close in B&S, but they were, albeit that victory eluded them at the last. Hancock can probably take the blame for that, but Labour have still had a hell of a scare.
On the other hand, governments lose elections more often than oppositions win them. Hartlepool could indeed be peak Johnson, and the pendulum is swinging. Flag waving braggadoccio and trite and banal national songs are PR bullshit and the country faces problems that will take a lot more than bullshit to deal with.
Because of the narrow margin in a defence, it would be easy to underestimate and dismiss how good a win this is for Labour.
Not every Galloway campaign has caught light like this one - he got little traction on the left flank of Corbyn, but where they have he has sunk both Blair and Milliband in far more Labour dominated seats than this one.
That Labour successfully defended despite a 20% Galloway share is pretty damn good. In truth, I think the damage to Labour was no more than if Galloway had got 7-8%, a good deal of the extra was from the anti-social WWC ex-Heavy Woollen / BNP vote - not every Muslim voted GG by a long chalk, so it is the only logical conclusion.
In other words GG was a true horseshoe candidate, outflanking the Tories on the right as well as Labour on the left. I didn't think that possible for him in 2021. It shows the Tories still vulnerable on their right flank in the red wall - no doubt Farage and his ilk will be studying this. It remains a lowish chance, but the right message from the right party could yet peel off Red Wall socially conservative votes in the next GE, and they would almost exclusively come from the Tories.
Also, the extent to which there was Tory -> Leadbeater switching compensated the losses to GG by enough. In this respect B&S, in its wealthier parts, mirrored C&A. Simply getting the right candidate out and campaigning hard may bring rewards.
The calls for clarity on the policy platform are valid, Labour needs to project an identity, but the Starmer loser narrative has been stopped in its tracks, campaign wise it is onwards and upwards and who is to say that Delyn and Wakefield won't come around and provide decent opportunities for gains.
On the narrative of Starmer bolstered = good night for the Tories. Will Boris get unpopular enough / quick enough to ditch? Could one cheekily summarise, Tories got too close = good night for Labour?
I don't have to wait for my second vaccine appointment letter. All NHS Lothian vaccine centres are now open to drop-in vaccinations for first doses and second doses eight weeks after first dose.
For those like Phillip Thompson who (apparently sincerely) believe that Brexit is all done and dusted and marvellous, here is yet another example of the problems we are facing:
Now you may think this is trivial chaff in the wind but it isn't. We're talking about a shortage of lorry drivers. This isn't some highfalutin or esoteric debate, this is Brexit at the coalface. Trouble among the very people whom Boris wooed in 2019.
It's another reason why the gloss has come off Brand Boris.
If England win Euro 2020 it might stop his slide. Otherwise it's pretty obvious to me and many others that we passed peak Boris a month or so back: May 25th to be precise: the day before Dom Cummings launched the first of his Exocets.
Once again - this has little to nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with the working conditions of HGV drivers.
Remember these issues kicked off not in January but from mid April after IR35 changes reduced a lot of agency drivers wages - who have suddenly found that local jobs now pay the same as driving and don't require them being away in a crap cabin overnight.
IR35 is one of the stupidest bits of tax/employment law ever invented. People should be free to set up their business affairs as they see fit, rather than be dictated to by a greedy tax office which always sees more PAYE as a cash cow to be milked.
Two major causes of IR35
- The big consultancies saw alot of contracts being missed because organisation wanted to hire a number of individual contractors but keep the management of the project in house. The big consultancies were heavily tied into New Labour. In fact, comically, Blair asked what was wrong with IR35, since Accenture and McKinsey were both in favour
- In much of government it took a surprisingly long time to ban the practise of leaving your job and coming back as a contractor. This was banned in most private sector companies before 2000. This resulted in large numbers of the Professional Management class in government swapping from payroll to contracting. Suddenly, some *council* jobs paid more than the PM... As for the NHS..... The result was envy and rage throughout alot of permanent governmental structure.
A narrow Labour hold in urban West Yorkshire is not a result typically received with breathless gasps of relief by the party leadership. But for Keir Starmer and those desperate for party unity, it is without doubt a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
On our respective visits to Batley and Spen, my colleague Anoosh Chakelian and I remarked that Kim Leadbeater, the Labour candidate, was an unquestionable asset to the campaign. She appealed to would-be voters and her literature was markedly less Labour in branding than previous efforts by the party, and one wonders if it was this which proved key to the final result.
When approached on his preference, for instance, one resident remarked last week to a canvasser: “Yes, I’ll vote for Kim, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be supporting Labour!”
I’m old enough to remember folk saying Kim Leadbeater was a terrible candidate chosen only because of who she was related to and who couldn’t handle some lippy twats shouting at her.
In fairness I said that and I don't necessarily accept that I was wrong. But the Tories felt it necessary to hide their candidate pretty much completely so he was presumably even worse!
A friend knows the chap, Ryan Stephenson, slightly. Not a bad bloke personally by all accounts, very ambitious. Nothing wrong with that. He's a councillor for one of the wealthy parts of Leeds, Harewood. Likes the rough and tumble in the council chamber, puts Labour backs up a bit, all part of the game I suppose. Close to the MP Alec Shelbrooke. He's been employed by Shelbrooke since he became an MP, I think.
I think the idea the Conservatives "hid" Mr Stephenson is probably rather harsh on him.
It's simply not all that surprising that the Tories wanted to cast the election as Red v Blue, whereas Labour wanted it to be Leadbeater v Stephenson. So Tories highlighted party, Labour highlighted candidate. I have no idea whether Stephenson was a good person, but the reality is he couldn't possibly with the best will in the world match Leadbeater's personal story, so the Conservative approach is totally understandable.
From all I see from Chesham & Amersham, the Conservatives chose a duff candidate there who actively put people off, and should've been kept in a locked cupboard throughout the campaign (albeit the defeat was large enough that he can't really carry the full can). But not sure that applied in Batley & Spen.
While Labour’s narrow victory in Batley and Spen will mostly be analysed through the prism of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, a more compelling fault line is the apparent estrangement of some Muslim voters from a party that has until now been able to rely on their support. Labour may have held on but it also showed its hand. During the campaign, Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater posed for a photograph with local campaigners sporting T-shirts that depicted Israel as ‘Palestine’, issued both a leaflet and a letter touting her pro-Palestinian credentials (by heaping scorn on Israel, naturally), and defended a grim leaflet clearly geared towards tapping into anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudices. In the middle of the campaign, Sir Keir also used one PMQs to demand Boris Johnson convince other world leaders at the G7 to recognise a Palestinian state, presumably prior to any peace agreement with Israel....
The Labour view of British Muslims that comes across in these antics is fairly objectionable. In deploying the same sectarian, communalist politics that have previously been used against Labour in similar seats, the party won the by-election but lost the moral high ground. Now, the moral high ground doesn’t matter all that much in real politics but in Labour politics – that melange of virtue and sentiment – it is supposed to mean something.
Is support for a two state solution in Israel/Palestine an indicator of anti-Semitism now? Desperate stuff.
Where does Daisley mention anti-semitism? Dismissing the rather unfortunate elements of the Labour campaign is what is desperate stuff. They had the best candidate and the best GOTV operation - but elements of the campaign aren't pretty...
Mucking about on Betfair after the polls closed cost me about £300 🙈 Should have just gone to bed
Looks like the poll, and @NickPalmer, vastly undercooked the GG vote.
Yes, it did and I did, and there's an interesting possible reason which, to be fair Mr Ed pointed out in a private exchange. There is a linguistic problem in canvassing/polling voters whose first language isn't English. By chance most of the voters who I phone-canvassed didn't have that issue, but where it arose we exchanged polite mumbles and I wasn't sure what I'd been told. It's much easier on the doorstep, but Survation polls nowdays are I think phone polls.
It's possible, as another_richard has suggested, that a chunk of the Galloway vote was ex-Heavy Woollen, which would fit with the Muslim vote actually being divided between Galloway and Labour, as I'd heard. But actual sightings of non-Muslim voters saying they were voting Galloway have been almost non-existent. So I think we need to concede that the Muslim vote probably did go heavily for Galloway.
A large Muslim vote from Labour AND a large islamophobic vote from the Woollens? - that would be quite a coalition George put together if so. I'm dubious. I'd think it was mainly the former. Take out GG - oh please - and Labour have a much bigger win here. In fact the more I think about this from a structural GE perspective the better a result for Labour it looks. Cons still clear favourites but Lab right back in the game.
Its not that strange a coalition kinabalu, its classic horseshoe politics.
Its worth noting that a large portion of the none-of-the-above vote went 2010 to 2015 directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Islamists and the Woolens have more in common with each other than they do with either main party and Galloway as a political outsider appeals to both.
If he got a big chunk of Woollens vote it would make the result slightly less disappointing for the Cons. But I really doubt that he did.
Mucking about on Betfair after the polls closed cost me about £300 🙈 Should have just gone to bed
Looks like the poll, and @NickPalmer, vastly undercooked the GG vote.
Yes, it did and I did, and there's an interesting possible reason which, to be fair Mr Ed pointed out in a private exchange. There is a linguistic problem in canvassing/polling voters whose first language isn't English. By chance most of the voters who I phone-canvassed didn't have that issue, but where it arose we exchanged polite mumbles and I wasn't sure what I'd been told. It's much easier on the doorstep, but Survation polls nowdays are I think phone polls.
It's possible, as another_richard has suggested, that a chunk of the Galloway vote was ex-Heavy Woollen, which would fit with the Muslim vote actually being divided between Galloway and Labour, as I'd heard. But actual sightings of non-Muslim voters saying they were voting Galloway have been almost non-existent. So I think we need to concede that the Muslim vote probably did go heavily for Galloway.
A large Muslim vote from Labour AND a large islamophobic vote from the Woollens? - that would be quite a coalition George put together if so. I'm dubious. I'd think it was mainly the former. Take out GG - oh please - and Labour have a much bigger win here. In fact the more I think about this from a structural GE perspective the better a result for Labour it looks. Cons still clear favourites but Lab right back in the game.
As far as I could see, GG was selling his full crypto-muslim thing this time around. Not sure how much that would attract many in the hard core Islamaphobic lot.
I think what this also means is that both life and politics are returning 'to normal' after at least 2 years of not being normal with both Brexit and COVID.
That means a shift in the narrative and new opportunities and threats for both parties.
Starmer has a change to seize the initiative and he should take it. New reforms both in and outside the party and policies now for the 'post pandemic period'
For those like Phillip Thompson who (apparently sincerely) believe that Brexit is all done and dusted and marvellous, here is yet another example of the problems we are facing:
Now you may think this is trivial chaff in the wind but it isn't. We're talking about a shortage of lorry drivers. This isn't some highfalutin or esoteric debate, this is Brexit at the coalface. Trouble among the very people whom Boris wooed in 2019.
It's another reason why the gloss has come off Brand Boris.
If England win Euro 2020 it might stop his slide. Otherwise it's pretty obvious to me and many others that we passed peak Boris a month or so back: May 25th to be precise: the day before Dom Cummings launched the first of his Exocets.
Once again - this has little to nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with the working conditions of HGV drivers.
Remember these issues kicked off not in January but from mid April after IR35 changes reduced a lot of agency drivers wages - who have suddenly found that local jobs now pay the same as driving and don't require them being away in a crap cabin overnight.
IR35 is one of the stupidest bits of tax/employment law ever invented. People should be free to set up their business affairs as they see fit, rather than be dictated to by a greedy tax office which always sees more PAYE as a cash cow to be milked.
If you come from the prospective of a well paid IT contractor IR35 is a bad piece of law.
When you look at it as a vanguard designed to stop companies abusing employment law while avoiding paying Employer NI and other taxes it starts to make perfect sense.
While @Malmesbury covers other bits his are the historic reasons for it - post 2010 there are significant other factors in play...
Nice win since I threw a few hopeful quid on Lab late in the day at the silly looking 7. But this in no way burnishes my superforecaster credentials. It was all hope rather than expectation.
Kudos in this case to others. Those who actually called the result. The likes of @HYUFD and @OnlyLivingBoy and @apologiesforomissions. Also @Cookie with his 20/1 tip on low Con vote share. And - although he got the result wrong - @AndyJS who was right about a strong showing from Gruesome Gurning George.
Because of the narrow margin in a defence, it would be easy to underestimate and dismiss how good a win this is for Labour.
Not every Galloway campaign has caught light like this one - he got little traction on the left flank of Corbyn, but where they have he has sunk both Blair and Milliband in far more Labour dominated seats than this one.
That Labour successfully defended despite a 20% Galloway share is pretty damn good. In truth, I think the damage to Labour was no more than if Galloway had got 7-8%, a good deal of the extra was from the anti-social WWC ex-Heavy Woollen / BNP vote - not every Muslim voted GG by a long chalk, so it is the only logical conclusion.
In other words GG was a true horseshoe candidate, outflanking the Tories on the right as well as Labour on the left. I didn't think that possible for him in 2021. It shows the Tories still vulnerable on their right flank in the red wall - no doubt Farage and his ilk will be studying this. It remains a lowish chance, but the right message from the right party could yet peel off Red Wall socially conservative votes in the next GE, and they would almost exclusively come from the Tories.
Also, the extent to which there was Tory -> Leadbeater switching compensated the losses to GG by enough. In this respect B&S, in its wealthier parts, mirrored C&A. Simply getting the right candidate out and campaigning hard may bring rewards.
The calls for clarity on the policy platform are valid, Labour needs to project an identity, but the Starmer loser narrative has been stopped in its tracks, campaign wise it is onwards and upwards and who is to say that Delyn and Wakefield won't come around and provide decent opportunities for gains.
On the narrative of Starmer bolstered = good night for the Tories. Will Boris get unpopular enough / quick enough to ditch? Could one cheekily summarise, Tories got too close = good night for Labour?
The other 2 right wing candidates got 600 votes between them - that is again more than the Labour majority.
Mucking about on Betfair after the polls closed cost me about £300 🙈 Should have just gone to bed
Looks like the poll, and @NickPalmer, vastly undercooked the GG vote.
Yes, it did and I did, and there's an interesting possible reason which, to be fair Mr Ed pointed out in a private exchange. There is a linguistic problem in canvassing/polling voters whose first language isn't English. By chance most of the voters who I phone-canvassed didn't have that issue, but where it arose we exchanged polite mumbles and I wasn't sure what I'd been told. It's much easier on the doorstep, but Survation polls nowdays are I think phone polls.
It's possible, as another_richard has suggested, that a chunk of the Galloway vote was ex-Heavy Woollen, which would fit with the Muslim vote actually being divided between Galloway and Labour, as I'd heard. But actual sightings of non-Muslim voters saying they were voting Galloway have been almost non-existent. So I think we need to concede that the Muslim vote probably did go heavily for Galloway.
A large Muslim vote from Labour AND a large islamophobic vote from the Woollens? - that would be quite a coalition George put together if so. I'm dubious. I'd think it was mainly the former. Take out GG - oh please - and Labour have a much bigger win here. In fact the more I think about this from a structural GE perspective the better a result for Labour it looks. Cons still clear favourites but Lab right back in the game.
Its not that strange a coalition kinabalu, its classic horseshoe politics.
Its worth noting that a large portion of the none-of-the-above vote went 2010 to 2015 directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Islamists and the Woolens have more in common with each other than they do with either main party and Galloway as a political outsider appeals to both.
If he got a big chunk of Woollens vote it would make the result slightly less disappointing for the Cons. But I really doubt that he did.
I wonder if Galloway provoked his own backlash. Galloway is such an odious figure, Leadbeater seems an alright sort and Starmer is not Corbyn. Surely some Tories would have voted for Leadbeater to avoid risking Galloway winning. It seems even more likely to me, when I remember a lot of people don't follow the ins and outs of politics, that some Tories might well have thought 'I hate George Galloway, and this seat is Labour so I will vote Labour to keep him out.'
Not to take away from this victory, because Labour need Con to Lab switchers to win at GE. That I think they have done it (albeit in favourable circumstances) is encouraging.
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election.
I think even more interesting is the combination of the locals and the three by-elections. If that was repeated at a general election, everybody would remember Paddy Ashdown's comment about 2010 - "the people have spoken, and we've no idea what they've said".
Great line, and I do miss Paddy.
Another in the roster of notable hat-eaters, mind, in 2015.
[EDIT - actually, was it 2010? Something along the lines of not believing the Lib Dems would end up down a few seats after the campaign Cleggasm]
No way Galloway will eat his dandruff speckled hat, he sees it as a sign of weakness to be held accountable for his statements. In fact he’ll probably put his lawyers on to anyone who brings it up.
But anyone would boke at having to eat it, the way you describe it.
I'm not surprised Labour held B&S. If Galloway hadn't stood then they would have won by a long way. I think the fact that he got over 8K votes is disturbing given all the communications he put out. Unfortunately Labour got drawn into this too with their disgraceful leaflets. I also think that if Labour had put up another candidate other than Jo Cox's sister that they would have lost. There must have been more than a few hundred sympathy votes.
Tories can spin this as a very close vote and governments normally lose by elections. SKS can say he won a by election. Momentum types will say SKS should have won by more (he ought to have) but won't have enough backing to launch a challenge. My take away though is that in some seats you can do very well by being sectarian. Very sad.
For those like Phillip Thompson who (apparently sincerely) believe that Brexit is all done and dusted and marvellous, here is yet another example of the problems we are facing:
Now you may think this is trivial chaff in the wind but it isn't. We're talking about a shortage of lorry drivers. This isn't some highfalutin or esoteric debate, this is Brexit at the coalface. Trouble among the very people whom Boris wooed in 2019.
It's another reason why the gloss has come off Brand Boris.
If England win Euro 2020 it might stop his slide. Otherwise it's pretty obvious to me and many others that we passed peak Boris a month or so back: May 25th to be precise: the day before Dom Cummings launched the first of his Exocets.
Once again - this has little to nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with the working conditions of HGV drivers.
Remember these issues kicked off not in January but from mid April after IR35 changes reduced a lot of agency drivers wages - who have suddenly found that local jobs now pay the same as driving and don't require them being away in a crap cabin overnight.
IR35 is one of the stupidest bits of tax/employment law ever invented. People should be free to set up their business affairs as they see fit, rather than be dictated to by a greedy tax office which always sees more PAYE as a cash cow to be milked.
Two major causes of IR35
- The big consultancies saw alot of contracts being missed because organisation wanted to hire a number of individual contractors but keep the management of the project in house. The big consultancies were heavily tied into New Labour. In fact, comically, Blair asked what was wrong with IR35, since Accenture and McKinsey were both in favour
- In much of government it took a surprisingly long time to ban the practise of leaving your job and coming back as a contractor. This was banned in most private sector companies before 2000. This resulted in large numbers of the Professional Management class in government swapping from payroll to contracting. Suddenly, some *council* jobs paid more than the PM... As for the NHS..... The result was envy and rage throughout alot of permanent governmental structure.
The latter point is definetely true, you could reduce your tax from 50% to 20% by reemerging as a contractor. I tend to take the view that you must pay as little tax as you can whilst following the rules, but it somehow felt unethical to take advantage of this arrangement.
As for labour shortages - good if your wage goes up but this is bound to be passed on in rising prices and inflation. I've been trying to buy bike parts recently, they are selling for 30% over list price on amazon.
Mucking about on Betfair after the polls closed cost me about £300 🙈 Should have just gone to bed
Looks like the poll, and @NickPalmer, vastly undercooked the GG vote.
Yes, it did and I did, and there's an interesting possible reason which, to be fair Mr Ed pointed out in a private exchange. There is a linguistic problem in canvassing/polling voters whose first language isn't English. By chance most of the voters who I phone-canvassed didn't have that issue, but where it arose we exchanged polite mumbles and I wasn't sure what I'd been told. It's much easier on the doorstep, but Survation polls nowdays are I think phone polls.
It's possible, as another_richard has suggested, that a chunk of the Galloway vote was ex-Heavy Woollen, which would fit with the Muslim vote actually being divided between Galloway and Labour, as I'd heard. But actual sightings of non-Muslim voters saying they were voting Galloway have been almost non-existent. So I think we need to concede that the Muslim vote probably did go heavily for Galloway.
A large Muslim vote from Labour AND a large islamophobic vote from the Woollens? - that would be quite a coalition George put together if so. I'm dubious. I'd think it was mainly the former. Take out GG - oh please - and Labour have a much bigger win here. In fact the more I think about this from a structural GE perspective the better a result for Labour it looks. Cons still clear favourites but Lab right back in the game.
Its not that strange a coalition kinabalu, its classic horseshoe politics.
Its worth noting that a large portion of the none-of-the-above vote went 2010 to 2015 directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Islamists and the Woolens have more in common with each other than they do with either main party and Galloway as a political outsider appeals to both.
"Its worth noting that a large portion of the none-of-the-above vote went 2010 to 2015 directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP."
The north part of Barnes is an ex council estate. Basically Labour working class but solid LD tactical voters. The rest of Barnes is wealthy Tories.
In the 2017 GE, when I was canvassing in the ex council estate, I found that the LD tacticals had gone over to UKIP because of Brexit. In the 2019 GE it had become Tory.
Meanwhile the rest of wealthy Remainer Barnes is flirting with the LDs, as seen in the recent GLA elections.
An interesting inversion, to some extent reflecting what is happening elsewhere.
While Labour’s narrow victory in Batley and Spen will mostly be analysed through the prism of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, a more compelling fault line is the apparent estrangement of some Muslim voters from a party that has until now been able to rely on their support. Labour may have held on but it also showed its hand. During the campaign, Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater posed for a photograph with local campaigners sporting T-shirts that depicted Israel as ‘Palestine’, issued both a leaflet and a letter touting her pro-Palestinian credentials (by heaping scorn on Israel, naturally), and defended a grim leaflet clearly geared towards tapping into anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudices. In the middle of the campaign, Sir Keir also used one PMQs to demand Boris Johnson convince other world leaders at the G7 to recognise a Palestinian state, presumably prior to any peace agreement with Israel....
The Labour view of British Muslims that comes across in these antics is fairly objectionable. In deploying the same sectarian, communalist politics that have previously been used against Labour in similar seats, the party won the by-election but lost the moral high ground. Now, the moral high ground doesn’t matter all that much in real politics but in Labour politics – that melange of virtue and sentiment – it is supposed to mean something.
Fair play to Nick Palmer, who called this to perfection. Has the Boris magic started to wane, or was it waning already and Hartlepool was a chimera?
The Tories won’t be too upset.
They’ve turned a 21.7% Labour lead in 2017, to a 6.7% lead in 2019 and now a 0.9% lead. Will be on the target list for the next election, without the GG factor.
That Labour squeaked the win, has also called off the far-left mob trying to unseat Starmer.
I don't have to wait for my second vaccine appointment letter. All NHS Lothian vaccine centres are now open to drop-in vaccinations for first doses and second doses eight weeks after first dose.
For those wondering why vaccination rates in London are lower part of the answer is in the admin.
I have already had my second jab now but received a text this week listing available drop in centres. For Londoners it is "Do not come early (before 11 weeks) for your 2nd dose as you will be turned away."
What I find interesting is the combination of the last two byelection results. Tory strategists will be scratching their heads this morning trying to work out what it means for the next general election.
I think even more interesting is the combination of the locals and the three by-elections. If that was repeated at a general election, everybody would remember Paddy Ashdown's comment about 2010 - "the people have spoken, and we've no idea what they've said".
My favourite was Gyles Brandreth on losing Chester (although he may have been re-quoting someone else) - "The people have spoken; the bastards"
Why would May, who has atrocious people skills, be any more successful as secretary-general of NATO, which is a strained alliance that needs exceptional leadership and engagement to repivot and reinvigorate itself in the years to come?
For those like Phillip Thompson who (apparently sincerely) believe that Brexit is all done and dusted and marvellous, here is yet another example of the problems we are facing:
Now you may think this is trivial chaff in the wind but it isn't. We're talking about a shortage of lorry drivers. This isn't some highfalutin or esoteric debate, this is Brexit at the coalface. Trouble among the very people whom Boris wooed in 2019.
It's another reason why the gloss has come off Brand Boris.
If England win Euro 2020 it might stop his slide. Otherwise it's pretty obvious to me and many others that we passed peak Boris a month or so back: May 25th to be precise: the day before Dom Cummings launched the first of his Exocets.
Once again - this has little to nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with the working conditions of HGV drivers.
Remember these issues kicked off not in January but from mid April after IR35 changes reduced a lot of agency drivers wages - who have suddenly found that local jobs now pay the same as driving and don't require them being away in a crap cabin overnight.
IR35 is one of the stupidest bits of tax/employment law ever invented. People should be free to set up their business affairs as they see fit, rather than be dictated to by a greedy tax office which always sees more PAYE as a cash cow to be milked.
Two major causes of IR35
- The big consultancies saw alot of contracts being missed because organisation wanted to hire a number of individual contractors but keep the management of the project in house. The big consultancies were heavily tied into New Labour. In fact, comically, Blair asked what was wrong with IR35, since Accenture and McKinsey were both in favour
- In much of government it took a surprisingly long time to ban the practise of leaving your job and coming back as a contractor. This was banned in most private sector companies before 2000. This resulted in large numbers of the Professional Management class in government swapping from payroll to contracting. Suddenly, some *council* jobs paid more than the PM... As for the NHS..... The result was envy and rage throughout alot of permanent governmental structure.
The latter point is definetely true, you could reduce your tax from 50% to 20% by reemerging as a contractor. I tend to take the view that you must pay as little tax as you can whilst following the rules, but it somehow felt unethical to take advantage of this arrangement.
As for labour shortages - good if your wage goes up but this is bound to be passed on in rising prices and inflation. I've been trying to buy bike parts recently, they are selling for 30% over list price on amazon.
The swapping of jobs to contracting became an epidemic in local government and the NHS. Complete with discovering management consultancy style rates per day - it wasn't simply give-the-contractor-their-cost-of-employment.
As to the first point - Quite a few Labour voters/supporters thought that IR35 was going to hit the big consultancies! The fact that it actually helps them is unsurprising, since they backed New Labour to win. Arthur Anderson etc....
There’s hospitality vacancies all over the Lake District. Same as in Haulage. What the consequences are of a severe labour shortage, I don’t know.
I think @Philip_Thompson is right that it isn’t entirely down to Brexit but it does likely plays a part.
I think I've been highlighting this for the past 3 weeks. According to the twins wages are definitely rising - the teenagers in Bowness Co-op and Tesco have / are moving elsewhere as wages elsewhere are now higher than those chains national payscales.
Matt Hancock had pushed for the reforms, but Javid is much cooler, warning the Pm: "All health Bills are, by their very nature, controversial and in the context of the fight against Covid, this will be even more so."
The new health secretary told the PM that Covid has “so far distracted political attention from these reforms, but as we move further into the recovery phase of the pandemic the controversies of this Bill are likely to grow”.
But Downing Street told him there was no time to lose as delaying the bill beyond parliament's summer recess would mean new NHS structures would not be ready by April next year
I don't have to wait for my second vaccine appointment letter. All NHS Lothian vaccine centres are now open to drop-in vaccinations for first doses and second doses eight weeks after first dose.
Just had mine one day shy of eight week gap (was invited at seven weeks, but I was away). My wife's got hers tomorrow at seven week gap. This is all via GP text, not the English national website.
There’s hospitality vacancies all over the Lake District. Same as in Haulage. What the consequences are of a severe labour shortage, I don’t know.
I think @Philip_Thompson is right that it isn’t entirely down to Brexit but it does likely plays a part.
Hospitality vacancies are everywhere. But then you have over two million on furlough still. Many of those jobs will go when furlough is withdrawn so some of these vacancies will be filled.
Anecdotal, but when we were having a meal locally I spoke to the restaurant manager and he said a few of their former staff had got jobs on the same salary but more social hours in local supermarkets and warehouses.
Because of the narrow margin in a defence, it would be easy to underestimate and dismiss how good a win this is for Labour.
Not every Galloway campaign has caught light like this one - he got little traction on the left flank of Corbyn, but where they have he has sunk both Blair and Milliband in far more Labour dominated seats than this one.
That Labour successfully defended despite a 20% Galloway share is pretty damn good. In truth, I think the damage to Labour was no more than if Galloway had got 7-8%, a good deal of the extra was from the anti-social WWC ex-Heavy Woollen / BNP vote - not every Muslim voted GG by a long chalk, so it is the only logical conclusion.
In other words GG was a true horseshoe candidate, outflanking the Tories on the right as well as Labour on the left. I didn't think that possible for him in 2021. It shows the Tories still vulnerable on their right flank in the red wall - no doubt Farage and his ilk will be studying this. It remains a lowish chance, but the right message from the right party could yet peel off Red Wall socially conservative votes in the next GE, and they would almost exclusively come from the Tories.
Also, the extent to which there was Tory -> Leadbeater switching compensated the losses to GG by enough. In this respect B&S, in its wealthier parts, mirrored C&A. Simply getting the right candidate out and campaigning hard may bring rewards.
The calls for clarity on the policy platform are valid, Labour needs to project an identity, but the Starmer loser narrative has been stopped in its tracks, campaign wise it is onwards and upwards and who is to say that Delyn and Wakefield won't come around and provide decent opportunities for gains.
On the narrative of Starmer bolstered = good night for the Tories. Will Boris get unpopular enough / quick enough to ditch? Could one cheekily summarise, Tories got too close = good night for Labour?
The PB Tories have written off Starmer as hopeless but I don't think that that is necessarily true of the wider electorate.
Fair play to Nick Palmer, who called this to perfection. Has the Boris magic started to wane, or was it waning already and Hartlepool was a chimera?
Too early to make this kind of assessment. It was a by-election with a low turnout and their vote share was at the same level as historic averages, and the unfortunate Hancock scandal will have suppressed their vote.
I think that Boris will keep find ways of renewing the conservative offer. He has reinvented the party already pursuing previously unthinkable popular policies, it is a completely different party to that which existed before. I think it has a long run ahead of it.
Because of the narrow margin in a defence, it would be easy to underestimate and dismiss how good a win this is for Labour.
Not every Galloway campaign has caught light like this one - he got little traction on the left flank of Corbyn, but where they have he has sunk both Blair and Milliband in far more Labour dominated seats than this one.
That Labour successfully defended despite a 20% Galloway share is pretty damn good. In truth, I think the damage to Labour was no more than if Galloway had got 7-8%, a good deal of the extra was from the anti-social WWC ex-Heavy Woollen / BNP vote - not every Muslim voted GG by a long chalk, so it is the only logical conclusion.
In other words GG was a true horseshoe candidate, outflanking the Tories on the right as well as Labour on the left. I didn't think that possible for him in 2021. It shows the Tories still vulnerable on their right flank in the red wall - no doubt Farage and his ilk will be studying this. It remains a lowish chance, but the right message from the right party could yet peel off Red Wall socially conservative votes in the next GE, and they would almost exclusively come from the Tories.
Also, the extent to which there was Tory -> Leadbeater switching compensated the losses to GG by enough. In this respect B&S, in its wealthier parts, mirrored C&A. Simply getting the right candidate out and campaigning hard may bring rewards.
The calls for clarity on the policy platform are valid, Labour needs to project an identity, but the Starmer loser narrative has been stopped in its tracks, campaign wise it is onwards and upwards and who is to say that Delyn and Wakefield won't come around and provide decent opportunities for gains.
On the narrative of Starmer bolstered = good night for the Tories. Will Boris get unpopular enough / quick enough to ditch? Could one cheekily summarise, Tories got too close = good night for Labour?
The PB Tories have written off Starmer as hopeless but I don't think that that is necessarily true of the wider electorate.
"The PB Tories have written off Starmer as hopeless " - have they? He's struggling to cut through.
But his biggest critics are in his own party who think he can't cut through now, he won't ever. We learn even Rayner (not known for far-left tendencies) was considering a run.
Because of the narrow margin in a defence, it would be easy to underestimate and dismiss how good a win this is for Labour.
Not every Galloway campaign has caught light like this one - he got little traction on the left flank of Corbyn, but where they have he has sunk both Blair and Milliband in far more Labour dominated seats than this one.
That Labour successfully defended despite a 20% Galloway share is pretty damn good. In truth, I think the damage to Labour was no more than if Galloway had got 7-8%, a good deal of the extra was from the anti-social WWC ex-Heavy Woollen / BNP vote - not every Muslim voted GG by a long chalk, so it is the only logical conclusion.
In other words GG was a true horseshoe candidate, outflanking the Tories on the right as well as Labour on the left. I didn't think that possible for him in 2021. It shows the Tories still vulnerable on their right flank in the red wall - no doubt Farage and his ilk will be studying this. It remains a lowish chance, but the right message from the right party could yet peel off Red Wall socially conservative votes in the next GE, and they would almost exclusively come from the Tories.
Also, the extent to which there was Tory -> Leadbeater switching compensated the losses to GG by enough. In this respect B&S, in its wealthier parts, mirrored C&A. Simply getting the right candidate out and campaigning hard may bring rewards.
The calls for clarity on the policy platform are valid, Labour needs to project an identity, but the Starmer loser narrative has been stopped in its tracks, campaign wise it is onwards and upwards and who is to say that Delyn and Wakefield won't come around and provide decent opportunities for gains.
On the narrative of Starmer bolstered = good night for the Tories. Will Boris get unpopular enough / quick enough to ditch? Could one cheekily summarise, Tories got too close = good night for Labour?
The PB Tories have written off Starmer as hopeless but I don't think that that is necessarily true of the wider electorate.
Interesting. Didn’t expect home to back Starmer so strongly.
Very surprising. I thought Starmer had kicked him out? Sounds like a genuine fan.
Yes. Cuddly Ken also, more broadly, easily outclasses many current pundits here. With all his complexities and controversies, he still instantly reminds of a higher intellectual level of politics between the early 1980's and the early 2000's.
There’s hospitality vacancies all over the Lake District. Same as in Haulage. What the consequences are of a severe labour shortage, I don’t know.
I think @Philip_Thompson is right that it isn’t entirely down to Brexit but it does likely plays a part.
Hospitality vacancies are everywhere. But then you have over two million on furlough still. Many of those jobs will go when furlough is withdrawn so some of these vacancies will be filled.
Anecdotal, but when we were having a meal locally I spoke to the restaurant manager and he said a few of their former staff had got jobs on the same salary but more social hours in local supermarkets and warehouses.
There’s hospitality vacancies all over the Lake District. Same as in Haulage. What the consequences are of a severe labour shortage, I don’t know.
I think @Philip_Thompson is right that it isn’t entirely down to Brexit but it does likely plays a part.
Hospitality vacancies are everywhere. But then you have over two million on furlough still. Many of those jobs will go when furlough is withdrawn so some of these vacancies will be filled.
Anecdotal, but when we were having a meal locally I spoke to the restaurant manager and he said a few of their former staff had got jobs on the same salary but more social hours in local supermarkets and warehouses.
Supermarkets offer very attractive salary packages at the moment for the nature of the work in comparision to other industries.
Comments
The Labour view of British Muslims that comes across in these antics is fairly objectionable. In deploying the same sectarian, communalist politics that have previously been used against Labour in similar seats, the party won the by-election but lost the moral high ground. Now, the moral high ground doesn’t matter all that much in real politics but in Labour politics – that melange of virtue and sentiment – it is supposed to mean something.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-price-labour-paid-for-victory-in-batley
No Greens.
I've thought that since last year though, so nothing new to me.
As to the Tory candidate, I’m guessing he will forever remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. His performance suggests that the current incarnation of the Tory party does not do well when not loudly bellowing over some issue or other.
It's interesting that Momentum could not perform this kind of analysis at say Peterborough or after 2017.
But I suspect the conclusion would have been "Corbyn resign"
There could well be a LibDem problem in some Southern seats but I suspect, in terms of seats lost, it would be minor. It'll take another full turn of the electoral cycle, at least, before the Oranges make significant progress at Westminster.
Politics is a bit dull at the moment and if Starmer has a long term future as Leader it will be as the dull and sensible alternative to wild and whacky Boris. The significance of Batley then would be that it buys SKS some time.
#c4news #skynews #bbcnews #lbc #itvnews
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news/gavin-esler-on-the-age-of-unreason-8036652
Lab majority was 0.9% so LD tactical votes made the difference.
The LD share drop of 1.3% was from 4.6% last time so over a quarter switched.
From the 1st to the 14th of June the Hospitalisation rate in the North West was increasing. The 14th was the peak day and it has fallen by 40% since then.
However it seems pretty clear that the 8000 Galloway votes came from previous Labour voters mainly from the Muslim community.
In those circumstances Labour did very well to hold the seat.
Normal politics has been largely suspended during the pandemic but I suspect it will be resumed shortly. The Government is going to have to start taking some pretty tough measures to get the nation's finances back in shape, there is one hell of a hangover heading our way and I would expect the Tories to be polling around 35% by the end of the year.
I don't understand the complacency of the Boris fans on PB, much of his support is skin deep. Many of his own supporters don't believe he is fit for purpose. He got his 43% vote against the worst Labour candidate in my lifetime. Starmer has had an indifferent start but he does not repel voters in the way Corbyn did. If Boris is still in place in 2024 I believe he will lose his overall majority and the problem he has at that stage is that he has zero potential allies amongst the SNP, Lib Dems, Greens or Plaid.
If the old tactical voting group are getting back together after the trauma of 2019, that's significant in itself.
Johnson would prefer that she dies in a fire but having a 'Brit' in the corner office on Boulevard Léopold III is still probably a net positive even if it is May.
I rather doubt that, myself. Would be interesting had there been polls of residents in Batley & Spen yesterday, and Chesham & Amersham a couple of weeks ago, along the lines, "Regardless of who you want to win, who do you think will win?" Suspect local people would have called both wrongly by significant margins.
It's not that it isn't quite funny to see commentators getting it wrong. Just that I don't really buy into the argument that it shows how out of touch commentators are with ordinary folk. What it shows is that by-elections are really quite difficult to predict for both commentators and people on the ground, beyond the glaringly obvious points like don't bet on Labour in Chesham or the Lib Dems in Batley.
And just have it with chips and salad. Don't gild the lily.
It does seem notable to me how often the very same quotes and anecdotes are used to shame Boris in this issue, some of them pretty old at this point. That doesn't mean they are irrelevant, and some are good quotes, but I think to persuade people he personally is a racist more effort needs to be made on demonstration of a pattern and incidents beyond the most famous ones which go back a bit
Otherwise it will just be dismissed because of how diverse his Cabinet is. People will put that over a newspaper column many years ago for example.
It buys SKS some time certainly but it really needs him to do something with it, my biggest problem with him thus far is that he hasn't really done very much at all.
But I am not wanting him to go big on 2019 redux which can only lead to disaster, frankly it's time for him to split the party if that is what is needed. Even if he doesn't win then that will in time, lead back to a Labour Government which is ultimately what I am interested in.
The clock has been restarted - but is ticking again. Another year for Starmer.
In fact it is an interesting example of survivor bias. Previously, icebergs weren't thought of a massive problem. After the Titanic, they went back and discovered that if you correlated the time of year to ships vanishing without trace....
It was because the Titanic had fairly decent compartmentation, radio etc that people survived to tell the tale....
Another in the roster of notable hat-eaters, mind, in 2015.
[EDIT - actually, was it 2010? Something along the lines of not believing the Lib Dems would end up down a few seats after the campaign Cleggasm]
The warning signals are starting to ring for the Tories. A case of too much hubris?
And it seems the forever war in the labour party will rumble on. The lefties will be sobbing into their morning star this morning.
Labour will be hoping it's an England 2005 situation.
probably true though
An early tip but Labour might have found a future PM
At the other end technocrats and consensualists like Biden, Macron, Merkel and possibly Starmer also seem to do well.
Has the element of tactical voting been shown yet again? We saw in Amersham Labour voters going to the Lib Dems, has this happened again and ensured victory? Without trying to guess too much about a national trend, this has now happened in two by-elections.
If repeated at a GE it might be quite interesting. I would suspect there are a lot more Lib Dems willing to have Starmer as PM than Corbyn and former Tories I suspect are far less concerned about accidentally letting in Starmer as well.
Some interesting times ahead, I think. I wonder if that Labour/Lib Dem voteshare is more efficient and malleable than it might appear.
Its worth noting that a large portion of the none-of-the-above vote went 2010 to 2015 directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Islamists and the Woolens have more in common with each other than they do with either main party and Galloway as a political outsider appeals to both.
There was a widespread and simplistic assumption that the Heavy Wollens would all vote Conservative.
I had strong doubts about that, said so, bet accordingly and it turned out I was right.
But how many of the media 'experts' considered the Heavy Wollens ?
Or did they just file them under {wwc and wwc love Boris} while focussing on the Muslim - Galloway - Labour issue.
Well done also to Nick Palmer, a measured head in a sea of insanity.
As for what next? Well "too soon to tell", but the Tories are going to be facing ever greater problems as we come out of the pandemic and the Brexit baggage more obviously weighs down on the economy. The Tories should not even have been close in B&S, but they were, albeit that victory eluded them at the last. Hancock can probably take the blame for that, but Labour have still had a hell of a scare.
On the other hand, governments lose elections more often than oppositions win them. Hartlepool could indeed be peak Johnson, and the pendulum is swinging. Flag waving braggadoccio and trite and banal national songs are PR bullshit and the country faces problems that will take a lot more than bullshit to deal with.
Galloway is Trump and I claim £5
Not every Galloway campaign has caught light like this one - he got little traction on the left flank of Corbyn, but where they have he has sunk both Blair and Milliband in far more Labour dominated seats than this one.
That Labour successfully defended despite a 20% Galloway share is pretty damn good. In truth, I think the damage to Labour was no more than if Galloway had got 7-8%, a good deal of the extra was from the anti-social WWC ex-Heavy Woollen / BNP vote - not every Muslim voted GG by a long chalk, so it is the only logical conclusion.
In other words GG was a true horseshoe candidate, outflanking the Tories on the right as well as Labour on the left. I didn't think that possible for him in 2021. It shows the Tories still vulnerable on their right flank in the red wall - no doubt Farage and his ilk will be studying this. It remains a lowish chance, but the right message from the right party could yet peel off Red Wall socially conservative votes in the next GE, and they would almost exclusively come from the Tories.
Also, the extent to which there was Tory -> Leadbeater switching compensated the losses to GG by enough. In this respect B&S, in its wealthier parts, mirrored C&A. Simply getting the right candidate out and campaigning hard may bring rewards.
The calls for clarity on the policy platform are valid, Labour needs to project an identity, but the Starmer loser narrative has been stopped in its tracks, campaign wise it is onwards and upwards and who is to say that Delyn and Wakefield won't come around and provide decent opportunities for gains.
On the narrative of Starmer bolstered = good night for the Tories. Will Boris get unpopular enough / quick enough to ditch? Could one cheekily summarise, Tories got too close = good night for Labour?
https://www.nhslothian.scot/Coronavirus/Vaccine/Pages/Drop-in-Clinics.aspx
- The big consultancies saw alot of contracts being missed because organisation wanted to hire a number of individual contractors but keep the management of the project in house. The big consultancies were heavily tied into New Labour. In fact, comically, Blair asked what was wrong with IR35, since Accenture and McKinsey were both in favour
- In much of government it took a surprisingly long time to ban the practise of leaving your job and coming back as a contractor. This was banned in most private sector companies before 2000. This resulted in large numbers of the Professional Management class in government swapping from payroll to contracting. Suddenly, some *council* jobs paid more than the PM... As for the NHS..... The result was envy and rage throughout alot of permanent governmental structure.
It's simply not all that surprising that the Tories wanted to cast the election as Red v Blue, whereas Labour wanted it to be Leadbeater v Stephenson. So Tories highlighted party, Labour highlighted candidate. I have no idea whether Stephenson was a good person, but the reality is he couldn't possibly with the best will in the world match Leadbeater's personal story, so the Conservative approach is totally understandable.
From all I see from Chesham & Amersham, the Conservatives chose a duff candidate there who actively put people off, and should've been kept in a locked cupboard throughout the campaign (albeit the defeat was large enough that he can't really carry the full can). But not sure that applied in Batley & Spen.
That means a shift in the narrative and new opportunities and threats for both parties.
Starmer has a change to seize the initiative and he should take it. New reforms both in and outside the party and policies now for the 'post pandemic period'
When you look at it as a vanguard designed to stop companies abusing employment law while avoiding paying Employer NI and other taxes it starts to make perfect sense.
While @Malmesbury covers other bits his are the historic reasons for it - post 2010 there are significant other factors in play...
Nice win since I threw a few hopeful quid on Lab late in the day at the silly looking 7. But this in no way burnishes my superforecaster credentials. It was all hope rather than expectation.
Kudos in this case to others. Those who actually called the result. The likes of @HYUFD and @OnlyLivingBoy and @apologiesforomissions. Also @Cookie with his 20/1 tip on low Con vote share. And - although he got the result wrong - @AndyJS who was right about a strong showing from Gruesome Gurning George.
Not to take away from this victory, because Labour need Con to Lab switchers to win at GE. That I think they have done it (albeit in favourable circumstances) is encouraging.
Tories can spin this as a very close vote and governments normally lose by elections. SKS can say he won a by election. Momentum types will say SKS should have won by more (he ought to have) but won't have enough backing to launch a challenge. My take away though is that in some seats you can do very well by being sectarian. Very sad.
As for labour shortages - good if your wage goes up but this is bound to be passed on in rising prices and inflation. I've been trying to buy bike parts recently, they are selling for 30% over list price on amazon.
Sure, it wasn't Hartlepool again, but objectively it's still an unusually strong result for a party of government.
The north part of Barnes is an ex council estate. Basically Labour working class but solid LD tactical voters. The rest of Barnes is wealthy Tories.
In the 2017 GE, when I was canvassing in the ex council estate, I found that the LD tacticals had gone over to UKIP because of Brexit. In the 2019 GE it had become Tory.
Meanwhile the rest of wealthy Remainer Barnes is flirting with the LDs, as seen in the recent GLA elections.
An interesting inversion, to some extent reflecting what is happening elsewhere.
I think @Philip_Thompson is right that it isn’t entirely down to Brexit but it does likely plays a part.
They’ve turned a 21.7% Labour lead in 2017, to a 6.7% lead in 2019 and now a 0.9% lead. Will be on the target list for the next election, without the GG factor.
That Labour squeaked the win, has also called off the far-left mob trying to unseat Starmer.
She’s potentially a star but potentially lobby fodder.
I have already had my second jab now but received a text this week listing available drop in centres. For Londoners it is "Do not come early (before 11 weeks) for your 2nd dose as you will be turned away."
I wouldn't support her candidacy.
As to the first point - Quite a few Labour voters/supporters thought that IR35 was going to hit the big consultancies! The fact that it actually helps them is unsurprising, since they backed New Labour to win. Arthur Anderson etc....
He warned No10 to that "significant areas of contention" in the NHS hadd yet to be ironed out in the legislation - but was overruled
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dont-delay-nhs-reform-sajid-javid-told-827qc3wp2
Matt Hancock had pushed for the reforms, but Javid is much cooler, warning the Pm: "All health Bills are, by their very nature, controversial and in the context of the fight against Covid, this will be even more so."
The new health secretary told the PM that Covid has “so far distracted political attention from these reforms, but as we move further into the recovery phase of the pandemic the controversies of this Bill are likely to grow”.
But Downing Street told him there was no time to lose as delaying the bill beyond parliament's summer recess would mean new NHS structures would not be ready by April next year
Hospitality vacancies are everywhere. But then you have over two million on furlough still. Many of those jobs will go when furlough is withdrawn so some of these vacancies will be filled.
Anecdotal, but when we were having a meal locally I spoke to the restaurant manager and he said a few of their former staff had got jobs on the same salary but more social hours in local supermarkets and warehouses.
I think that Boris will keep find ways of renewing the conservative offer. He has reinvented the party already pursuing previously unthinkable popular policies, it is a completely different party to that which existed before. I think it has a long run ahead of it.
But his biggest critics are in his own party who think he can't cut through now, he won't ever. We learn even Rayner (not known for far-left tendencies) was considering a run.
Replacing was not hard though.