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The Tories look set to take Hartlepool which has seen a huge turnout – politicalbetting.com
The Tories look set to take Hartlepool which has seen a huge turnout – politicalbetting.com
All the signs are that Hartlepool is going blue by some margin and the big news is that turnout is in excess of 50% – which is huge for a by-election in a seat where fewer than 60% voted at GE2019.
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Some question re: Hartlepool turnout, several numbers floating around.
Could be their still digging them out? And counting up the postals?
Almost like some people just say these things because they want them to be true rather than them actually being true.
The reason people love centrist Labour on this board is because it offers the Tories an easy ride to power.
Jefferson Airplane Volunteers (Live At Woodstock 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzHBr0ndKus&list=RDMM&index=7
This was a true wake-up call at Woodstock. Ear-ly in the morning!
In my lifetime I've seen two great realignments in British politics: 1979 and 1992.
This is the third.
It's like a bunch of people rocking up to their favourite Spoons and finding Carling is out so switching to Carlsberg instead. It's not a change of preferences, it's a substitution.
Lab 40 (-24)
Con 40 (+23)
So it's gone:
From 64-17
To 40-40
Bonnie Raitt - Runaway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPzcZNgVfpA&list=RDMM&index=12
This proves it was not temporary and nor was it just for UKIP. The blue Labour vote is real. The tories have stormed the Red Wall. The political landscape has altered.
So, no, not just like a pint of lager.
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1390404962665091074?s=20
"Britain Elects
@BritainElects
Westoe (South Tyneside) council result:
Grn: 51.2% (+42.0)
Lab: 31.0% (-13.1)
Con: 17.8% (+1.0)
No UKIP (-29.9) as prev.
Grn GAIN from Lab"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FywWztbig9k
We not only got another leader but one he liked and wanted being guided by his fan club within the party.
This could not be more what Blair wanted outside of personally leading the party.
20 points ahead?!
20 points ahead?!
Tony you are a few decades behind the country, you need to take up something less taxing like golf or crossword puzzles.
Centrism is an electoral joke.
My point is that what we are seeing tonight is largely the result of UKIP going out of business.
It's like a pub that has had 23% of beer sales be Carling for the last decade and 27% carlsberg. All of a sudden there's no Carling, so the Carling drinkers switch to Carlsberg.
The point is there's always been a slight, 53% majority for weak, fizzy piss.
Those (eg kyf_100 below) saying it is 'just UKIP' switching to the tories are neatly forgetting that UKIP didn't exist a decade or so back. The point is that the blue Labour voters haven't returned to Labour. They are now Boris tories.
It's a complete paradigm shift in British politics. Nothing less.
Back 2.26 / Lay 2.6
In terms of realignment we are seeing a reflection of a global trend of old vs young, post-industrial hinterland vs globalised cities. Not exactly a surprise since this has been happening the last decade or more.
All we are seeing tonight is the adding of the UKIP vote of the last few elections to the Con vote. Hardly surprising, unless you thought once Nige packed it in they were all going to vote Green?
Glorious revisionism from you. 1997-2010 Tony Blair's Labour was in power and you're taking your weak piss if you think that was a right wing majority. Cameron wasn't right wing. It was a coalition Gov't with the LibDems.
And Boris' capture of the Red Wall isn't about being 'Right Wing' which is such a 1950's outmoded way of thinking. This is about a realignment. Former natural Labour voters are aligning with the Conservatives. Boris has planted his brand of politics in the north, a populism that has captured old school right and left. He's a pickpocket of some renown.
I’m not surprised by tonight’s results (so far). Starmer’s Labour is bland nothingness. Most voters likely have no idea what the hell he stands for. They can reshuffle the shadow cabinet and blame people like Dodds all they like, it won’t actually change the crux of the problem. Even Blair in 1997 stood for something.
"I'm big, it's the pictures that got small".
Con 20 (+7)
Lab 12 (-7)
But being stuck in the last century is exactly what led Blair to being so disastrously wrong in his comments I mentioned above!
We need to move on from leaders selected in the past century because the electorate has moved on!
What Labour are doing now, which is going hilariously wrong is embracing centrism.
If Labour wants to win votes centrism is suicide as we can clearly see on the evidence. Stop talking with regards to what you want and look at the actual evidence instead.
When was that, 50 years ago?
Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qae25976UgA&list=RDMM&index=8
Johnny Cope · Planxty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeIufFgQf44
Con 25 (+7)
Lab 4 (-7)
Atlee, Wilson, Blair, all are about as relevant as each other given the passage of time.
But instead of arguing how many decades ago counts and how many doesn't why don't we just look at evidence we have from right now in 2021?
Labour being centrist is a huge vote loser, it is much preferred by Tories on here that Labour is centrist. Call me cynical but are you sure it isn't just because you prefer the Tories to have an easy ride?
Hung parliament up against a lefty or easy historical gains against a centrist, I can understand why so many Tories are desperate for Labour to keep centre.
I agree that this realignment is in part, motivated by age. Many of these areas the Tories are doing well in are areas that are becoming older. The younger voters aren’t coming home, which makes things a lot more difficult for Labour regardless who is leader and whether or not they are a ‘centrist.’
The Conservatives have scooped up the UKIP/BXP vote. That's a lot of DNV/WNV/ex-Lab voters who have gone to them. And that's a great achievement, which bodes well for them keeping the "Red Wall" seats in 2024.
But there is also a reminder here. Labour won these seats because their denizens felt that they had been forgotten and left behind by the party of government. (That party, most of the time, being the Conservative Party.) They have given the Conservatives a chance, because the Conservatives delivered Brexit and delivered vaccines.
But go back a mere fifteen years. In many cases these places gave the LibDems a chance. And when the LibDems did nothing for them, then dumped them like third period French.
Having an external enemy - the EU, the metropolitan elite, the woke - helps. But it isn't the same as jobs and homes and flourishing shops and safe streets. Akron, Ohio loved that Trump spoke to them. But to win these voters long term, you don't need just to speak to them, you need to turn their lives and their communities around.
Winning is easy. Governing and maintaining a coalition is harder.
2015 fought on PR terms would have delivered us a Con/UKIP pact.
My point is quite simple, if you add up the Con + Ukip vote of tonight, you'd end up with the same result as you might have in 2015.
Nothing has changed, except UKIP has gone out of business.
In which case "Keir Starmer" may be the more appropriate party to ask?
2015?
Centrism has been losing for Labour for years
I took your 'properly embraced' with good will as being Blair but if we want to be picky and funny about it what is your argument then?
If the Labour Party embraces the provincial WWC vote, they risk losing the globalist, metropolitan elite to the LibDems.
Simply they need to step back and ask what's the coalition that gets to 40%?
All example from this century show the exact opposite of what you are saying.
Centrism electoral wilderness going left coming out of it.
The evidence is once again here tonight.
Blair is no more a magic answer than Atlee is, the evidence of how people vote in the modern day is here in recent elections not ones from leader selected in previous centuries, you just want Labour to stay right because it is easy to beat.
If the left can get big losses and hung parliaments then where is the centrist hung parliament?
Also how come the centrist is losing from the low point of the left wing person?
It is almost as if all these things add up to a centrist being less electable than a left winger.
The new coalition can be formed vs boomers (who own 57% of all wealth) vs everyone else, e.g. millennials owning 3% of all wealth.
The new coalition will be old vs young, but it might take another election cycle or two.
https://twitter.com/MattSingh_/status/1390507846866022400?s=20
Brown is a smidgen away from Blair politically and Ed may be left himself but he was under strict orders of the progress wing of the party (Blairs fan club)
Aside from 2017 and 2019 Labours position has been firmly decided by those on the right on the party.
"One more heave" eh comrades.
I had to sit here and listen to the unelectable jibes but all the evidence is showing centrism is actually less electable (for Labour)
I am supposed to ignore evidence showing I am right?
Centrism is less electable, the numbers agree with me.
The question is what works? What makes peoples' lives better? What is it people are crying out for?
That's not left vs right; it's a pragmatic focus on peoples' problems rather than an obsession with (for example) Palestine.
What they need to do is more of this centrism nonsense that is currently losing them votes, clearly the right answer but they must not be doing it properly!
Politico.com - Diplomats to Biden: Don’t give the plum Europe posts to donors and allies
President Joe Biden is expected to release his first batch of political nominees for ambassadorships in the coming weeks. “Right now, every post has significance,” a former officer warns.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/06/biden-diplomats-europe-ambassadors-485593
Haven't actually read a word of this beyond the headline.
But can tell you this much. The President of the United States, and I mean ANYONE who is POTUS - must to some extent, typically quite large, use the post of Ambassador for domestic political as well as foreign policy purposes.
Washington did it, Lincoln did it, Roosevelt (both of em) did it, they ALL do it. And often for good reasons, with respect to getting good things done AND preventing bad things from happening at home.
Lincoln put a first-rate man in London as American Minister in 1861 when it was THE most critical post in the diplomatic corps (some would say it still is). He set political hacks or problems (Simon Cameron Secretary of War > Minister to Russia fit both categories) to many other capitals. To get them out of the way or kick them upstairs or both.
POTUS needs this flexibility.
It is the duty of the Foreign Service to supply highly qualified, dedicated and connected (in their assigned stations AND back at State Dept) to make sure that ex-Senator Snort is kept reasonably on track AND out of trouble (to extent humanly possible).
Politically speaking, its also a good idea for fundraising to have some prizes to be able to hand out to top donors. That's one reason why vast majority of US Minsters & Ambassadors to UK and France have been VERY rich people. Another reason is that the cost of much ambassadorial pomp & circumstance - no small thing in diplomacy - has been born by . . . guess who . . . the ambassadors.
Which is somewhat helpful when the diplomats and their minders at Foggy Bottom have to justify the cost of the Foreign Service establishment here & abroad AND the entire foreign aid budget.
Of course you cannot - or at least should not - put the kind of clowns that Trumpsky dispatched hither and yon (including the Court of St James) to hand out MAGA hats and advance the Putinist agenda abroad as well as at home.
I don't expect people to embrace the idea of an opposition party offering different ideas out of some love of democracy or anything like that.
I just expect some honesty about it being less electable than Labour offering a left wing platform in a political discussion based on the available evidence.
I know, I know, but you don't like it.
That is fine.
Labour got that 40% without YOUR vote. Labour left wing ideas to improve peoples lives are very unpopular on this forum but capable of getting 40% in the real world.
Centrist Labour is nowhere near capable of doing that.
Labour has done exactly that to get tummy rubs from the right wing press and as a result Labour voters have gone elsewhere.
40% guy didn't do that, which is how he got to 40%.
It is the centrists who have been scaring voters away, look at Starmer losing compared to Corbyn's low point.
So long as your obsession is with not being "centrist" Labour, which you have hilariously managed to define as support for Saudi Arabia, you will continue to fail the people say you love.
My own thought is that, in this climate, rising turnout floats a lot of boats, and helps all parties, helping to balance & cancel out differentials. Like what happened in US last year.
But of course some differentials will remain, and can make the difference in close situations. Esp when bet like your could turn on a single seat, constituency OR list.
Kind like how New York State has just lost one seat - the last one apportioned #435 - by just 89 residents to Minnesota.
The problem is Starmer and centrism.
CWU did some polling on Hartlepool
https://twitter.com/liamyoung/status/1379208239942922242?lang=en
____________________________________________________
CWU Hartlepool by-election poll: Conservative 49%, Labour 42%. More importantly shows massive support for transformative policies (69% support free broadband, 67% more investment in public services, 57% support renationalising Royal Mail)
______________________________________________________
The people of Hartlepool want left wing policies not empty centrism.
Quite frankly if they aren't going to get left wing policies from a Labour government they may as well vote Tory and get some investment from them as a reward instead.
Both paths lead to investment, only one requires the trouble of having to vote for Labour so that one is probably preferable for Labour...
But, spilt milk an all
(I'd just like to gauge the depth of your delusion.)
Or are only left wing people allowed to be criticised for their foreign policy views?
Labour has done more successfully (without looking into the distant past) recently on the left and worse in the centre, if Labour wants to win and help people then it needs to be on the left.
The evidence is very clear tonight, on the left wing low point Starmer is losing badly. Centrism does not work electorally for Labour.
What were his secret centrist tendencies that dragged him down?
Come to mention it, the only person that Corbyn 2019 seemed to beat was... ummm...
Fuck me. He was beaten by Foot in 1983, who managed 209 seats against Corbyn's 202.
At the turn of the millennium WV & western PA was still mostly Democratic turf, way that North of England was still mostly Labour region.
The times they are a changing. Already have in the Mountain State & western PA. Appear to be heading same trajectory in North of England.
When such shifts occur, they may be temporary. But more often they are both sudden (relatively speaking) and long-lasting. Often with an emotional catalyst (depression, war, Trump, Boris) to really get the ball rolling.
The massive difference between 2017 and 2019 was people not voting Labour over Brexit.
https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1344031412815589383
Voters who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019 were asked to list the main reason for their vote.
The results were:
34% ~ To get Brexit done
18% ~ To stop Brexit
14% ~ NHS & public services
10% ~ Policies
6% ~ Economy
5% ~ Corbyn
Purists may see this as positive. But you really DO need some folks around who know how to make the trains run at all, let alone on time.
Just ask the spirit of Leon!
Trotsky that is. Who harnessed the Czarist officer corps to win the Russian Civil War for the Red Army.
Now let me gauge your delusion, do you really believe a left wing Labour leader wouldn't be doing better than Starmer right now?
Hope I won't have to stay up TOO much longer for the Hartlepool result!
Apparently, the weather has delayed there appearance (do you say 'appearance' when it is really their noise you notice?)