But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.
Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.
I dunno. It strikes me as a moderately useful result for the Lib Dems, in that there's now a potential ally for them winning seats they wouldn't have fought anyway. Suburban/rural constituencies with a Gail's can vote Lib Dem, and urban constituencies full of graduates can vote Green. I'd be interested to see how many Lib Dem/Green battles there might be, but I suspect the answer is "not many".
Certainly here in Oxfordshire it makes it pretty clear that, at the next election, the Greens need to concentrate on winning Oxford East while the Lib Dems need to concentrate on winning Banbury.
I think we do have some potential LibDem/Green battlegrounds in the London council elections. We've seen Labour-dominated areas where the main opposition has switched from LibDem to Green. Take Islington. It was LibDem controlled 1999-2006, but there are now no LibDem councillors and the Greens are the opposition (if on only 3 seats). The Greens think they have an outside chance of winning control of the borough. I'm next door in Camden, which isn't very different to Islington. Here, the LibDems are the opposition and the Greens are weaker. In the north-west of the borough, traditional LibDem strength, I think we'll see the LibDems do well. In my ward, the one traditional area of Green strength, I'm sure the Greens will win all three seats. But what happens in other, traditionally Labour wards, where it's less clear who the opposition are: do they stay Labour? Go LibDem? Go Green?
I think we will see demographically fairly similar areas, but where the LibDems are campaigning hard, they'll go LibDem, and where the Greens are campaigning hard, they'll go Green, but if Labour are historically unpopular, there will be Labour seats falling where no-one expected them to fall, which could go any way. IYSWIM.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
The rightwing talking points on the Greens also seem a little confused; they're simultaneously an incoherent hodge-podge of liberal secularists and religious extremists, and so overall unstable hippy dreamers, and a calculating trojan horse for minorities.
That isn’t a confused view; liberal secularists are the gateway for Islamic extremists. Unstable Hippy dreamers are a Trojan horse for angry minorities
Wow. This one merits the hype. Terrible for Labour, disappointing but solid enough for Reform, given such a poor top-down carpetbagging choice of candidate, and truly spectacular for Polanski and the Greens. Not close at all (except for second between Labour and Reform and for nowhere between the Cons and the LDs).
Congrats to PBers who got on at a good price a few weeks ago and to those yesterday who predicted not the win (since it was odds-on by then) but the big win. I will earn no plaudits whatsoever for announcing here for the very first time that I had this as a likely scenario. So I won’t.
The fabled ‘Realignment of British Politics’ has officially arrived then. Leaving aside partisan crows and bleats and red herring talk of ‘Burnham’ this has to be the main takeout. GRN are as much a threat to LAB as RUK are to CON. We have genuine 5 party politics in England and 7 in GB. What a fascinating period. Glad to be on PB for it.
I see a particular fiendish symmetry in the (precarious) position of the old duopoly parties. The Cons have a serious national challenger to their Right (Reform) plus a specific threat to their Left in their traditional heartlands (the LDs in the affluent southern shires). Labour have a serious national challenger to their Left (Greens) plus a specific threat to their Right in their traditional heartlands (Reform in the red wall).
Between a Rock and a Hard, the both of them. I can’t speak for the Tories, that would be impertinent, but I can for Labour and I’m afraid the stock phrase ‘no easy answers’ applies. In fact it might be a case of no answers at all. Why must everything have an answer? Fwiw my view is there are two necessary (but still not necessarily sufficient) conditions for Labour to have a decent chance of largest party at the next GE. The economy picks up and stays up. SKS is replaced by a much better communicator. The second being more in their power than the first.
I think Labour fundamentally miscalculated by selling their incrementalism/status quo but “nicer” approach as being one of genuine change. Their best pathway forward now is to actually try and bring about meaningful reform in a number of areas, such that even if people don’t feel the benefit immediately they acknowledge the positive steps that have been taken.
Sorting out the utility companies is low hanging fruit, for instance, which would be universally welcomed. Being bolder on planning and housing policy. Leaning into the green transition and actually looking to persuade working people of the benefits rather than presenting it as globalist diktat. A clear statement of intent regarding future relations with the EU (get off the fence). Visibly looking for a cross-European solution on migration and the ECHR. Looking at targeted deregulation so they can get more done. A fresh offer on student loans and post-18 qualifications.
And yes I think that probably does need to be under new leadership because Starmer and Reeves aren’t imaginative enough to be bold on any of that. Or at least can’t sell it.
This is less about left v right and more about acknowledging the broad concerns of the electorate and actually trying to respond to doing something about it. There is still a place for Labour in the race for the next GE and they can still win that race, but to do so they need to shift up 3 or 4 gears from where they are now, and actually start governing rather than managing.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
The rightwing talking points on the Greens also seem a little confused; they're simultaneously an incoherent hodge-podge of liberal secularists and religious extremists, and an evil calculating trojan horse for the latter.
And an equivalent dichotomy has often been said about Reform's leadership and voters.
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
Are you allowed to film in polling stations - genuine question?
No! You're not even allowed to photo your own ballot paper
Hence the observers not filming the alleged activity.
And therefore the allegations are baseless if there is no evidence. It's down to he said she said.
You are missing the point. They are not talking about voiding this by-election or fining anyone, so they do not need investigations and evidence for some non-jury trial in 2028. They're calling for tightening up existing procedures.
Which detail exaclty?
Its always been one at a time into the booth, but not in the station itself. You can't stop chatting in the station crush area.
"station crush area".
Never once in my lifetime of voting have I witnessed a 'crush' in a polling station, unless one man and his dog count as a crush.
When I visited the seat I was struck just how many people liked the Greens and/or Spencer. But more importantly they knew what they didn’t want to happen, which was to wake up with a Reform MP, particularly one such as Matthew Goodwin, whose public pronouncements are so far from moderate opinion and whose statements about Britishness were seen by many people I spoke to as a direct attack on them personally.
Two polls published just before the by-election showed the Greens narrowly ahead. This was decisive in making the Greens the option of choice for anti-Reform voters.
Of the four by-elections that Reform has contested this parliament (two to the Westminster parliament, one to the Senedd in Wales, one in Holyrood) Nigel Farage’s party has won just one of them — in Runcorn, very narrowly. In that race, the previous Labour incumbent had literally been convicted for assaulting one of his own constituents.
Reform keeps adding more and more divisive positions to its platform and as a result, most British voters are going to try to stop it forming a government.
Labour is governing badly and over the past 18 months it has equivocated on the issues on which people most oppose Reform. So, where there is a viable way to stop Reform that doesn’t run through voting Labour, people will often take it. True of Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly and the Greens in Gorton. I’m not saying these parties don’t have an appeal of their own to some voters: they really do.
I didn't like the Tories but I never felt they were a direct threat to my family's security and wellbeing. Reform are completely different. They need to be stopped by any democratic and legal means from taking power in this country.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
Yes, fair point. It seems sectarian politics is here now, it was inevitable after mass immigration. It will only get nastier
I suppose I will just have to wearily accept that the word sectarian is going to be misused for the foreseeable future.
They’re out of volunteers for the meat grinder, and even the foreigners have stopped signing up for what they now see is certain death or serious injury.
It would be great if they were out of volunteers but IIUC they're not. The question is just how much they need to pay them. They're having to offer them ever more humongous sign-up bonuses, and maintain a system of very substantial payments to relatives to in the event of their deaths to persuade their wives to instill them with the necessary patriotism to sign up in the first place.
But also very bad indeed for the Lib Dems, who have failed to capitalise on the collapse of the two parties who (barring the Coalition) have held power since World War II, and Your Party, who have spent so much time trying to fight each other they were unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.
Meanwhile, the left wing lunatics and the latest Faragian vehicle are doing very well indeed.
No Gail's or Waitrose in Gorton and Denton, I am afraid it simply is not posh enough to vote LD now.
Charles Kennedy's LDs could have won it but most of those voters now back the Greens, the LDs now are largely made up of anti Brexit voters who voted for Cameron or Clegg in 2015
No Gail's or Waitrose in Streeting and Sunil's Ilford North either!
"Gails is the Greggs of the middle class" to quote Mrs Foxy.
Yes any suspected Reform voters trying to enter a Gails are redirected to their nearest Greggs so as not to lower the tone and put its posh customers off their sourdough, cinnamon bun and lattes
Sourdough is overrated!
Sourdough works for toast but is ghastly for sandwiches.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
The rightwing talking points on the Greens also seem a little confused; they're simultaneously an incoherent hodge-podge of liberal secularists and religious extremists, and so overall unstable hippy dreamers, and a calculating trojan horse for minorities.
That isn’t a confused view; liberal secularists are the gateway for Islamic extremists. Unstable Hippy dreamers are a Trojan horse for angry minorities
But not if the former are in leadership. This falls flat on many voters if the main public faces are liberal young white people, who also look confidently in charge.
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
Are you allowed to film in polling stations - genuine question?
No! You're not even allowed to photo your own ballot paper
Hence the observers not filming the alleged activity.
And therefore the allegations are baseless if there is no evidence. It's down to he said she said.
You are missing the point. They are not talking about voiding this by-election or fining anyone, so they do not need investigations and evidence for some non-jury trial in 2028. They're calling for tightening up existing procedures.
Which detail exaclty?
Its always been one at a time into the booth, but not in the station itself. You can't stop chatting in the station crush area.
"station crush area".
Never once in my lifetime of voting have I witnessed a 'crush' in a polling station, unless one man and his dog count as a crush.
The lobby in my primary school was known as the "crush hall". Colloquially, but not as a joke.
Hadn't thought about that for 35 years until your comment.
Gorton and Denton can be treated as two by elections in one, with both of them heralding doom for Labour. They stand to lose the red wall en masse to Reform and their rainbow coalition seats to the Greens.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
Yes, fair point. It seems sectarian politics is here now, it was inevitable after mass immigration. It will only get nastier
I suppose I will just have to wearily accept that the word sectarian is going to be misused for the foreseeable future.
What is the definition? I thought voting along racial or religious lines was sectarian, but maybe not
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
Yes, fair point. It seems sectarian politics is here now, it was inevitable after mass immigration. It will only get nastier
Rob Ford et al. eviscerated this take on BlueSky recently: https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3mfrflexwd22i His thesis is that sectarian politics has been a feature of UK politics for many years. Protestant vs Catholic divides go back centuries and were a defining part of the history of this country. They still dominate in Northern Ireland, of course. Immigrant communities voting differently is decades old.
Will Cooling pointed out https://bsky.app/profile/willcooling.bsky.social/post/3mfral5dtvc25 that "every analysis of voting behaviour shows that which christian denomination you belong to (Anglican, Catholic or Non-Conformist) is a good predictor of whether you're a Tory, Labourite or LibDem. Just Islamophobia to think British Muslims invented religious voting".
"Family interference" in UK politics is nothing new.
The fact a guy in a turban or Muslim or Jewish attire does it now S nothing new.
For generations the mainstream party votes were based on the patriarch doing what his father and grandfather had done. Educate brainwash bribe the kids to vote the way we always have.
More prevalent and successful for the Tories, quite simply because a Tory vote labelled you "middle class" at least, not like the riff raff Labour lot.
I chslkenge anyone over 50 not to recognise this, it was endemic.
The allegation isn't that people had a chat at home about their vote and acted on it, its that people were going into polling booths together to ensure compliance. Of course people have voted down family lines forever, and no doubt will do into the far future.
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
I have no idea however if they are “independent observers” I guess their role is to observe and then report what they see. If it happened and the people running the polling station didn’t do anything to stop it then that is an observation and the electoral commission will need to react and ensure that polling staff prevent it in the future.
When independent observers go to elections around the world they don’t step in at polling and intervene, they observe and report. Dangerous ground if independent observers start intervening as next thing all the parties have “independent observers” at polling stations stepping in and causing chaos.
Democracy Volunteers appear to form a significant and important part of the electoral observer corps in UK elections. They represent about 25% of the total neutral voting observers accredited by the Electoral Commission.
Lets be honest, this is just about a further drift to voter supression in the UK
1) A comparativlely difficult voter regsitration process by European standard.
2) Spurious requirement for photo ID that blatantly discriminated against the young & BME population.
3) Largely bogus suspicion over postal voting the use of which might be summed up as 'White pensioners good' / 'South Asian women bad'.
4) 'Independent' monitoring that is statistically dubious, targetting polling stations in predominantly asian area, exaggerating the issue and fanning the flames of look what "they" are doing now.
Is it that hard to register to vote? Really? We get sent a letter every year and respond. Pretty easy.
They’re out of volunteers for the meat grinder, and even the foreigners have stopped signing up for what they now see is certain death or serious injury.
It would be great if they were out of volunteers but IIUC they're not. The question is just how much they need to pay them. They're having to offer them ever more humongous sign-up bonuses, and maintain a system of very substantial payments to relatives to in the event of their deaths to persuade their wives to instill them with the necessary patriotism to sign up in the first place.
They’re out of money to pay the massive signup and death in service bonuses they were paying last year.
"Family interference" in UK politics is nothing new.
The fact a guy in a turban or Muslim or Jewish attire does it now S nothing new.
For generations the mainstream party votes were based on the patriarch doing what his father and grandfather had done. Educate brainwash bribe the kids to vote the way we always have.
More prevalent and successful for the Tories, quite simply because a Tory vote labelled you "middle class" at least, not like the riff raff Labour lot.
I chslkenge anyone over 50 not to recognise this, it was endemic.
The allegation isn't that people had a chat at home about their vote and acted on it, its that people were going into polling booths together to ensure compliance. Of course people have voted down family lines forever, and no doubt will do into the far future.
And that allegation (people were going into polling booths together to ensure compliance) doesn't seem to have much evidence behind it.
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
Are you allowed to film in polling stations - genuine question?
No! You're not even allowed to photo your own ballot paper
Hence the observers not filming the alleged activity.
And therefore the allegations are baseless if there is no evidence. It's down to he said she said.
Not baseless. If Democracy Volunteers (I don’t know who they are) is a legitimate set up then their concerns should absolutely be taken into account even if there is insufficient evidence for a prosecution
Question: if you do care about the environment, passionately, from global warming to cleaner rivers, but you’re somewhat less keen on supporting Hamas or hating Hindus, exactly who are you meant to vote for now?
The Greens are entirely vacating the traditional “green” sector of British politics
It’s quite peculiar. Presumably some other party will seize that ground. Indeed it might be a useful way for Labour to recover. Eventually
Weirdly, I think the Lib Dems fit the brief best, but they are a party of the well off south of England who is scared of voting labour but no longer votes Tory.
Very interesting, how big the Mail is suddenly goimg on the Greens today.
"Gloating Greens predict they will crush Labour with 100 seats at the General Election" , is their main story.
The right-wing media has rather shot itself in the foot. They went full on in destroying Sir Keir thinking it would pave the way for a triumphant Nigel, but it now looks like it will pave the way for a triumphant Zak. Careful what you wish for and all that.
One freak by-election is hardly proof of anything, no matter how hysterical people get the day after. Otherwise the LibDems would win every general election and the Conservatives would have spent the past century nowhere.
As for the Greens, their coalition of supporters is even more fractious than Reform's - Islamic militants, sandal wearers and single issue cranks. They have no knowledge of, or even interest in, whole areas of domestic policy, starting with economics, and their immigration and identity policies are about as realistic as Starmer appointing Mandelson and thinking he'd stay out of trouble.
So overall I don't think that, besides giving the government a bloody nose, we can read anything about the national picture into this result, as is true for 95% of by-elections.
Other than that the government is catastrophically unpopular, but we knew that anyway.
Hodges: "there is now no prospect of [Reform] winning an election outright. They have hit their ceiling."
I think that's a big call. Getting 28% of the vote in that seat isn't that bad and the rise of the Greens is probably to their advantage.
It's a silly call but Hodges type journos feel they have to do this to earn their digital corn in the short attention span economy of online-X punditry.
"No more than a 15% chance" becomes "now no prospect of".
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
Yes, fair point. It seems sectarian politics is here now, it was inevitable after mass immigration. It will only get nastier
I suppose I will just have to wearily accept that the word sectarian is going to be misused for the foreseeable future.
What is the definition? I thought voting along racial or religious lines was sectarian, but maybe not
The classic British definition from which most of this chat emanates is Northern Ireland where two sects of the same religion battled it out for power, or to retain supremacy in the Prods’ case. Oddly they probably had more in common culturally than either side would admit.
Wow. This one merits the hype. Terrible for Labour, disappointing but solid enough for Reform, given such a poor top-down carpetbagging choice of candidate, and truly spectacular for Polanski and the Greens. Not close at all (except for second between Labour and Reform and for nowhere between the Cons and the LDs).
Congrats to PBers who got on at a good price a few weeks ago and to those yesterday who predicted not the win (since it was odds-on by then) but the big win. I will earn no plaudits whatsoever for announcing here for the very first time that I had this as a likely scenario. So I won’t.
The fabled ‘Realignment of British Politics’ has officially arrived then. Leaving aside partisan crows and bleats and red herring talk of ‘Burnham’ this has to be the main takeout. GRN are as much a threat to LAB as RUK are to CON. We have genuine 5 party politics in England and 7 in GB. What a fascinating period. Glad to be on PB for it.
I see a particular fiendish symmetry in the (precarious) position of the old duopoly parties. The Cons have a serious national challenger to their Right (Reform) plus a specific threat to their Left in their traditional heartlands (the LDs in the affluent southern shires). Labour have a serious national challenger to their Left (Greens) plus a specific threat to their Right in their traditional heartlands (Reform in the red wall).
Between a Rock and a Hard, the both of them. I can’t speak for the Tories, that would be impertinent, but I can for Labour and I’m afraid the stock phrase ‘no easy answers’ applies. In fact it might be a case of no answers at all. Why must everything have an answer? Fwiw my view is there are two necessary (but still not necessarily sufficient) conditions for Labour to have a decent chance of largest party at the next GE. The economy picks up and stays up. SKS is replaced by a much better communicator. The second being more in their power than the first.
There is a long history of reading too much into by-election results.
They’re out of volunteers for the meat grinder, and even the foreigners have stopped signing up for what they now see is certain death or serious injury.
It would be great if they were out of volunteers but IIUC they're not. The question is just how much they need to pay them. They're having to offer them ever more humongous sign-up bonuses, and maintain a system of very substantial payments to relatives to in the event of their deaths to persuade their wives to instill them with the necessary patriotism to sign up in the first place.
They’re out of money to pay the massive signup and death in service bonuses they were paying last year.
Question: if you do care about the environment, passionately, from global warming to cleaner rivers, but you’re somewhat less keen on supporting Hamas or hating Hindus, exactly who are you meant to vote for now?
The Greens are entirely vacating the traditional “green” sector of British politics
It’s quite peculiar. Presumably some other party will seize that ground. Indeed it might be a useful way for Labour to recover. Eventually
Weirdly, I think the Lib Dems fit the brief best, but they are a party of the well off south of England who is scared of voting labour but no longer votes Tory.
Ed Davey came up with the ultimate dog whistle policy when he spoke about tackling people who listen to music on loudspeakers in public.
For all the soul searching from the Right about how and why the combined progressive forces got 69% if the vote, one massive question has to be asked
Given that there is a very sizable right wing vote in that constituency, 30 to 40% potentially, how the hell did the centre right, moving right Official Government Party manage to attract barely 700 votes and 1.9 of the vote (rounded to under 2% by the BBC)
Now we're told they had an impressive candidate. They have the vast majority of the print and MSM backing them They are consistent on 18% in the Opinion Polls They claim to be the only serious Political Party in the UK
What went wrong?
What evidence after yesterday is there that this next 12 months IS extinction moment?
It was officially their worst ever result.
You would assume there are crisis meetings going on, or are they so completely and utterly comotose or arrogant, or both to the fact that literally no one lioves them, or do they just not care anymore.
The majority after all robbed the coffers during Covid with corrupt deal after corrupt deal.
When I visited the seat I was struck just how many people liked the Greens and/or Spencer. But more importantly they knew what they didn’t want to happen, which was to wake up with a Reform MP, particularly one such as Matthew Goodwin, whose public pronouncements are so far from moderate opinion and whose statements about Britishness were seen by many people I spoke to as a direct attack on them personally.
Two polls published just before the by-election showed the Greens narrowly ahead. This was decisive in making the Greens the option of choice for anti-Reform voters.
Of the four by-elections that Reform has contested this parliament (two to the Westminster parliament, one to the Senedd in Wales, one in Holyrood) Nigel Farage’s party has won just one of them — in Runcorn, very narrowly. In that race, the previous Labour incumbent had literally been convicted for assaulting one of his own constituents.
Reform keeps adding more and more divisive positions to its platform and as a result, most British voters are going to try to stop it forming a government.
Labour is governing badly and over the past 18 months it has equivocated on the issues on which people most oppose Reform. So, where there is a viable way to stop Reform that doesn’t run through voting Labour, people will often take it. True of Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly and the Greens in Gorton. I’m not saying these parties don’t have an appeal of their own to some voters: they really do.
In the course of my canvassing in a traditionally Conservative area, the two most commonly expressed voting intentions have been "Reform" and "Whoever is Most Likely to Beat Reform", with "Not Conservative or Labour" in third place. It's certainly shaping up to be an interesting election on May 7th.
Reform are already falling short of a majority based on by-election performance.
In Runcorn their swing against Labour, and relative to the winning line, was 17.4%, suggest they can go deep as their 384 target in the red wall.
In Gorton & Denton, with a stop Reform option, they achieved a 12.4% swing relative to the winning line, which would get them to 213 on their target list.
In Caerphilly moving from the GE to the Senedd election on slightly different, and slightly less favourable, boundaries in the east of the constituency they got 3.2% closer to the winning line. Even if you are generous and call it a 5% swing towards winning, that would only gain 13 seats.
So, on a small number of data points, Reform's progress even in mid-term by-elections is not screaming at anything near a majority.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
Vote for a misogynistic, islamophobic racist? That's your takeaway from this? Or just your personal view?
If the by-election was won by a large muslim vote, then the conclusion is that misogyny and islamophobia are so unpopular with socially conservative, patriarchal muslims that they'll vote for a very socially liberal Party.
My takeaway from it is the comment you replied to
I'd say the people who'd make their voting choice on anti-islam sentiment are already very anti-green, it's a significant minority but it has an upper limit, which seems to be 30%.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
Yes, fair point. It seems sectarian politics is here now, it was inevitable after mass immigration. It will only get nastier
Rob Ford et al. eviscerated this take on BlueSky recently: https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3mfrflexwd22i His thesis is that sectarian politics has been a feature of UK politics for many years. Protestant vs Catholic divides go back centuries and were a defining part of the history of this country. They still dominate in Northern Ireland, of course. Immigrant communities voting differently is decades old.
Will Cooling pointed out https://bsky.app/profile/willcooling.bsky.social/post/3mfral5dtvc25 that "every analysis of voting behaviour shows that which christian denomination you belong to (Anglican, Catholic or Non-Conformist) is a good predictor of whether you're a Tory, Labourite or LibDem. Just Islamophobia to think British Muslims invented religious voting".
Protestant vs Catholic may well go back centuries, but it’s hasn’t been a factor in voting on England in my lifetime. It has in other parts of the UK, and is thought of as a bad thing.
I think a lot of the comments overrate the interest in detailed policy that most voters have - in particular, the Greens are quite capable of stressing Gaza in seats with high Muslim populations and the environment in seats in rural England. Other parties can point out the differences of emphasis in their literature, but most people don't read any election literature or are greatly influenced by it if they do. Moreover, parties change policies much more frequently than they change their electoral make-up. People mostly vote for a general impression.
Personally I'm much more interested in detailed policy than most, and I'm concerned that the Greens haven't really faced up to the cost of their policies. Despite that I'll probably switch to them after the local elections, since they do seem to have a positive, reasonably consistent, leftish agenda, and after 54 years in Labour I'm tired of resorting to a negative programme. It's not that Labour can't switch a particular policy to being more or less left-wing, but that they (er, we!) don't seem to have any consistent philosophy any more, except winning (and spending loads more on defence, which isn't a priority for me). I'm not all that left-wing (I was never a member of the Campaign Group) but politics without an underlying philosophy doesn't appeal at all.
People can have their views on who replaces Starmer now. But the political reality is that after last night there cannot be a contest that does not include Andy Burnham. Excluding the man who on paper is the most popular candidate is simply not viable any more. If it ever was.
Wow. This one merits the hype. Terrible for Labour, disappointing but solid enough for Reform, given such a poor top-down carpetbagging choice of candidate, and truly spectacular for Polanski and the Greens. Not close at all (except for second between Labour and Reform and for nowhere between the Cons and the LDs).
Congrats to PBers who got on at a good price a few weeks ago and to those yesterday who predicted not the win (since it was odds-on by then) but the big win. I will earn no plaudits whatsoever for announcing here for the very first time that I had this as a likely scenario. So I won’t.
The fabled ‘Realignment of British Politics’ has officially arrived then. Leaving aside partisan crows and bleats and red herring talk of ‘Burnham’ this has to be the main takeout. GRN are as much a threat to LAB as RUK are to CON. We have genuine 5 party politics in England and 7 in GB. What a fascinating period. Glad to be on PB for it.
I see a particular fiendish symmetry in the (precarious) position of the old duopoly parties. The Cons have a serious national challenger to their Right (Reform) plus a specific threat to their Left in their traditional heartlands (the LDs in the affluent southern shires). Labour have a serious national challenger to their Left (Greens) plus a specific threat to their Right in their traditional heartlands (Reform in the red wall).
Between a Rock and a Hard, the both of them. I can’t speak for the Tories, that would be impertinent, but I can for Labour and I’m afraid the stock phrase ‘no easy answers’ applies. In fact it might be a case of no answers at all. Why must everything have an answer? Fwiw my view is there are two necessary (but still not necessarily sufficient) conditions for Labour to have a decent chance of largest party at the next GE. The economy picks up and stays up. SKS is replaced by a much better communicator. The second being more in their power than the first.
There is a long history of reading too much into by-election results.
1. Left wing voters will vote for the best candidate to stop Reform. Conservative voters will switch completely behind Reform, in seats the Conservatives cannot win.
Conservatives who will vote left to stop Reform should be called unicorns, they are so rare.
2. By-elections confirm polling, showing the overall right wing vote share is up about 10% on 2024.
3. Advance, and other right wing rivals to Reform, are trivial nuisances.
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
Are you allowed to film in polling stations - genuine question?
No! You're not even allowed to photo your own ballot paper
Hence the observers not filming the alleged activity.
And therefore the allegations are baseless if there is no evidence. It's down to he said she said.
Not baseless. If Democracy Volunteers (I don’t know who they are) is a legitimate set up then their concerns should absolutely be taken into account even if there is insufficient evidence for a prosecution
How easily the reports from Democracy Volunteers seem to have been dismissed
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
Are you allowed to film in polling stations - genuine question?
No! You're not even allowed to photo your own ballot paper
Hence the observers not filming the alleged activity.
And therefore the allegations are baseless if there is no evidence. It's down to he said she said.
Not baseless. If Democracy Volunteers (I don’t know who they are) is a legitimate set up then their concerns should absolutely be taken into account even if there is insufficient evidence for a prosecution
How easily the reports from Democracy Volunteers seem to have been dismissed
Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social It's sad to see people who had never heard of Democracy Volunteers yesterday all over social media trashing them.
They've been around for a decade & are partly funded by the (left-leaning) Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
We protest when the right trashes these groups. The left shouldn't do it either.
People can have their views on who replaces Starmer now. But the political reality is that after last night there cannot be a contest that does not include Andy Burnham. Excluding the man who on paper is the most popular candidate is simply not viable any more. If it ever was.
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
Are you allowed to film in polling stations - genuine question?
No! You're not even allowed to photo your own ballot paper
Hence the observers not filming the alleged activity.
And therefore the allegations are baseless if there is no evidence. It's down to he said she said.
Not baseless. If Democracy Volunteers (I don’t know who they are) is a legitimate set up then their concerns should absolutely be taken into account even if there is insufficient evidence for a prosecution
They’re observers authorised by the Electoral Commission, not partisan actors.
People can have their views on who replaces Starmer now. But the political reality is that after last night there cannot be a contest that does not include Andy Burnham. Excluding the man who on paper is the most popular candidate is simply not viable any more. If it ever was.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
Yes, fair point. It seems sectarian politics is here now, it was inevitable after mass immigration. It will only get nastier
Rob Ford et al. eviscerated this take on BlueSky recently: https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3mfrflexwd22i His thesis is that sectarian politics has been a feature of UK politics for many years. Protestant vs Catholic divides go back centuries and were a defining part of the history of this country. They still dominate in Northern Ireland, of course. Immigrant communities voting differently is decades old.
Will Cooling pointed out https://bsky.app/profile/willcooling.bsky.social/post/3mfral5dtvc25 that "every analysis of voting behaviour shows that which christian denomination you belong to (Anglican, Catholic or Non-Conformist) is a good predictor of whether you're a Tory, Labourite or LibDem. Just Islamophobia to think British Muslims invented religious voting".
Protestant vs Catholic may well go back centuries, but it’s hasn’t been a factor in voting on England in my lifetime. It has in other parts of the UK, and is thought of as a bad thing.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
You could equally say the same thing about the nuttiness of Reform and that voting Reform is voting for fascism. There’s a big enough market for stopping that - perhaps as the turnout shows.
A green campaign would no doubt look very different in Liverpool or Newcastle.
Yes, fair point. It seems sectarian politics is here now, it was inevitable after mass immigration. It will only get nastier
Rob Ford et al. eviscerated this take on BlueSky recently: https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3mfrflexwd22i His thesis is that sectarian politics has been a feature of UK politics for many years. Protestant vs Catholic divides go back centuries and were a defining part of the history of this country. They still dominate in Northern Ireland, of course. Immigrant communities voting differently is decades old.
Will Cooling pointed out https://bsky.app/profile/willcooling.bsky.social/post/3mfral5dtvc25 that "every analysis of voting behaviour shows that which christian denomination you belong to (Anglican, Catholic or Non-Conformist) is a good predictor of whether you're a Tory, Labourite or LibDem. Just Islamophobia to think British Muslims invented religious voting".
It's hard to believe but Liverpool was a majority Tory city until the 1960's and held 2 of the 8 seats until 1983. Voying along Catholic (roughly but not exclusively North end of the city) and Protestant (south end).
I used to walk past a Conservative club on the way to school with a massive poster of Anthony Steen on a gable wall. There was also 'Thatchers' tea room a stones throw away from Penny Lane.
T.P. O'Connor of the Irish Nationalist Party held Liverpool Scotland ( a massive working class Irish area before they were decanted to Kirkby and other places outside the city) for 4 decades until 1929
Reform certainly need to abandon this notion of forcing the Christianity of the British Empire down everyone's throat. The Sunday-afternoon-down-the-pub secularist was probably peak Nigel.
"The two-level battery was Newey's request. And we were running out of time..."
In my experience the layout on the display model looked thermally problematic. You'd want those units spread out or like a slab. Gonna stick with my guess that it's overheating so can't run at full clip
1. Left wing voters will vote for the best candidate to stop Reform. Conservative voters will switch completely behind Reform, in seats the Conservatives cannot win.
Conservatives who will vote left to stop Reform should be called unicorns, they are so rare.
2. By-elections confirm polling, showing the overall right wing vote share is up about 10% on 2024.
3. Advance, and other right wing rivals to Reform, are trivial nuisances.
There seem to be plenty of Conservative never Reformers on here. I spoke with Mum Rata the other day and, given some of the things she has said over the years, was surprised by her vehemence of never Reformer.
I didn't ask who, theoretically, she'd have voted for yesterday, or even whether she'd have turned out, but the Con never Reformers, who I think are more numerous than 1.9%, did go somewhere.
Betting post: is laying Starmer being replaced as party leader in 2026 value at 1.37?
I have zero doubt he'll be replaced before the 2029 election.
But I'm not convinced it's in anyone's interests to do it so soon. Yes May elections will be a disaster, but I still think it's easier to let him govern for a couple of years then replace him with an election in the new leader's honeymoon period, rather than becoming unpopular themselves before 2029.
When I visited the seat I was struck just how many people liked the Greens and/or Spencer. But more importantly they knew what they didn’t want to happen, which was to wake up with a Reform MP, particularly one such as Matthew Goodwin, whose public pronouncements are so far from moderate opinion and whose statements about Britishness were seen by many people I spoke to as a direct attack on them personally.
Two polls published just before the by-election showed the Greens narrowly ahead. This was decisive in making the Greens the option of choice for anti-Reform voters.
Of the four by-elections that Reform has contested this parliament (two to the Westminster parliament, one to the Senedd in Wales, one in Holyrood) Nigel Farage’s party has won just one of them — in Runcorn, very narrowly. In that race, the previous Labour incumbent had literally been convicted for assaulting one of his own constituents.
Reform keeps adding more and more divisive positions to its platform and as a result, most British voters are going to try to stop it forming a government.
Labour is governing badly and over the past 18 months it has equivocated on the issues on which people most oppose Reform. So, where there is a viable way to stop Reform that doesn’t run through voting Labour, people will often take it. True of Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly and the Greens in Gorton. I’m not saying these parties don’t have an appeal of their own to some voters: they really do.
In the course of my canvassing in a traditionally Conservative area, the two most commonly expressed voting intentions have been "Reform" and "Whoever is Most Likely to Beat Reform", with "Not Conservative or Labour" in third place. It's certainly shaping up to be an interesting election on May 7th.
Reform are already falling short of a majority based on by-election performance.
In Runcorn their swing against Labour, and relative to the winning line, was 17.4%, suggest they can go deep as their 384 target in the red wall.
In Gorton & Denton, with a stop Reform option, they achieved a 12.4% swing relative to the winning line, which would get them to 213 on their target list.
In Caerphilly moving from the GE to the Senedd election on slightly different, and slightly less favourable, boundaries in the east of the constituency they got 3.2% closer to the winning line. Even if you are generous and call it a 5% swing towards winning, that would only gain 13 seats.
So, on a small number of data points, Reform's progress even in mid-term by-elections is not screaming at anything near a majority.
I think a lot of the comments overrate the interest in detailed policy that most voters have - in particular, the Greens are quite capable of stressing Gaza in seats with high Muslim populations and the environment in seats in rural England. Other parties can point out the differences of emphasis in their literature, but most people don't read any election literature or are greatly influenced by it if they do. Moreover, parties change policies much more frequently than they change their electoral make-up. People mostly vote for a general impression.
Personally I'm much more interested in detailed policy than most, and I'm concerned that the Greens haven't really faced up to the cost of their policies. Despite that I'll probably switch to them after the local elections, since they do seem to have a positive, reasonably consistent, leftish agenda, and after 54 years in Labour I'm tired of resorting to a negative programme. It's not that Labour can't switch a particular policy to being more or less left-wing, but that they (er, we!) don't seem to have any consistent philosophy any more, except winning (and spending loads more on defence, which isn't a priority for me). I'm not all that left-wing (I was never a member of the Campaign Group) but politics without an underlying philosophy doesn't appeal at all.
If Labour have lost you it really is apocalypse time for them.
I like Hannah Spencer and impressed with her attitude and can see why she won, even allowing for the large Muslim vote
She and Polanski have charisma and if I were labour I wouldn't count on beating her at the next GE, as I think she will be a very good constituency mp
Of course I reject Green policies and this was their ideal consitituency
As for reform, Goodwin failing to win is welcome but I would not extrapolate from this result that they aren't a real threat to labour
Indeed labour are under attack from the left and right and I simply do not know how they cope with it
I accept the conservative brand is damaged, but they would be idiotic to change Kemi who by general consent is performimg better and certainly above her party. Those wanting Cleverly need to answer how he could repair the brand better than Kemi
As for the Lib Dems they are in danger of being seen as much as the old two and I expect them to become marooned
Politics as we knew it is over, and everyone needs to accept we are in uncertain and in some ways a worrying new era
It is not impossible to see the SNP and Greens, Plaid and Greens forming new Scots and Welsh governments seeking independence and re-joining the EU
Reform certainly need to abandon this notion of forcing the Christianity of the British Empire down everyone's throat. The Sunday-afternoon-down-the-pub secularist was probably peak Nigel.
If Reform failing to win in their 413th target seat is making you feel good, then go ahead.
1. Left wing voters will vote for the best candidate to stop Reform. Conservative voters will switch completely behind Reform, in seats the Conservatives cannot win.
Conservatives who will vote left to stop Reform should be called unicorns, they are so rare.
2. By-elections confirm polling, showing the overall right wing vote share is up about 10% on 2024.
3. Advance, and other right wing rivals to Reform, are trivial nuisances.
There seem to be plenty of Conservative never Reformers on here. I spoke with Mum Rata the other day and, given some of the things she has said over the years, was surprised by her vehemence of never Reformer.
I didn't ask who, theoretically, she'd have voted for yesterday, or even whether she'd have turned out, but the Con never Reformers, who I think are more numerous than 1.9%, did go somewhere.
They’re like Republican never-Trumpers. They exist online, but they are a minuscule proportion of the voters.
I feel a bit sorry for Muslim voters. Their choice in this by-election was between a party open discussing mass-expulsions, another that refuses to criticise the ongoing genocide of a Muslim population, and the Greens.
I come at this from a very different political perspective, but I tend to agree. Moderate muslim voters would really have struggled. I don't think that Matt Goodwin's campaign was run particularly divisively, but I would concede he is a divisive figure.
I'd disagree with you on the Nature of Goodwin's campaign, but I think the larger question is the need to understand our Muslim vote better in the face of a politics designed to stereotype.
I have not seen any major research for several years, and maybe since Channel 4's "What British Muslim's really think" in 2016, which was quite inflammatory in its presentation.
For all the soul searching from the Right about how and why the combined progressive forces got 69% if the vote, one massive question has to be asked
Given that there is a very sizable right wing vote in that constituency, 30 to 40% potentially, how the hell did the centre right, moving right Official Government Party manage to attract barely 700 votes and 1.9 of the vote (rounded to under 2% by the BBC)
Now we're told they had an impressive candidate. They have the vast majority of the print and MSM backing them They are consistent on 18% in the Opinion Polls They claim to be the only serious Political Party in the UK
What went wrong?
What evidence after yesterday is there that this next 12 months IS extinction moment?
It was officially their worst ever result.
You would assume there are crisis meetings going on, or are they so completely and utterly comotose or arrogant, or both to the fact that literally no one lioves them, or do they just not care anymore.
The majority after all robbed the coffers during Covid with corrupt deal after corrupt deal.
The reason the left got 69% is because this is a very left-wing constituency to begin with, and you must know that.
When I visited the seat I was struck just how many people liked the Greens and/or Spencer. But more importantly they knew what they didn’t want to happen, which was to wake up with a Reform MP, particularly one such as Matthew Goodwin, whose public pronouncements are so far from moderate opinion and whose statements about Britishness were seen by many people I spoke to as a direct attack on them personally.
Two polls published just before the by-election showed the Greens narrowly ahead. This was decisive in making the Greens the option of choice for anti-Reform voters.
Of the four by-elections that Reform has contested this parliament (two to the Westminster parliament, one to the Senedd in Wales, one in Holyrood) Nigel Farage’s party has won just one of them — in Runcorn, very narrowly. In that race, the previous Labour incumbent had literally been convicted for assaulting one of his own constituents.
Reform keeps adding more and more divisive positions to its platform and as a result, most British voters are going to try to stop it forming a government.
Labour is governing badly and over the past 18 months it has equivocated on the issues on which people most oppose Reform. So, where there is a viable way to stop Reform that doesn’t run through voting Labour, people will often take it. True of Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly and the Greens in Gorton. I’m not saying these parties don’t have an appeal of their own to some voters: they really do.
In the course of my canvassing in a traditionally Conservative area, the two most commonly expressed voting intentions have been "Reform" and "Whoever is Most Likely to Beat Reform", with "Not Conservative or Labour" in third place. It's certainly shaping up to be an interesting election on May 7th.
Reform are already falling short of a majority based on by-election performance.
In Runcorn their swing against Labour, and relative to the winning line, was 17.4%, suggest they can go deep as their 384 target in the red wall.
In Gorton & Denton, with a stop Reform option, they achieved a 12.4% swing relative to the winning line, which would get them to 213 on their target list.
In Caerphilly moving from the GE to the Senedd election on slightly different, and slightly less favourable, boundaries in the east of the constituency they got 3.2% closer to the winning line. Even if you are generous and call it a 5% swing towards winning, that would only gain 13 seats.
So, on a small number of data points, Reform's progress even in mid-term by-elections is not screaming at anything near a majority.
Betting post: is laying Starmer being replaced as party leader in 2026 value at 1.37?
I have zero doubt he'll be replaced before the 2029 election.
But I'm not convinced it's in anyone's interests to do it so soon. Yes May elections will be a disaster, but I still think it's easier to let him govern for a couple of years then replace him with an election in the new leader's honeymoon period, rather than becoming unpopular themselves before 2029.
I'd agree
Its still a long time away from the next election. and Labour is split between those wanting Corbynism without Corbyn, socially conservative "blue labour" and the managerial pragmatists.
The best chance of Labour MP's saving their individual seats is replacing him probably in 2028 and calling a sharpish election.
1. Left wing voters will vote for the best candidate to stop Reform. Conservative voters will switch completely behind Reform, in seats the Conservatives cannot win.
Conservatives who will vote left to stop Reform should be called unicorns, they are so rare.
2. By-elections confirm polling, showing the overall right wing vote share is up about 10% on 2024.
3. Advance, and other right wing rivals to Reform, are trivial nuisances.
There seem to be plenty of Conservative never Reformers on here. I spoke with Mum Rata the other day and, given some of the things she has said over the years, was surprised by her vehemence of never Reformer.
I didn't ask who, theoretically, she'd have voted for yesterday, or even whether she'd have turned out, but the Con never Reformers, who I think are more numerous than 1.9%, did go somewhere.
Green vs Reform would be difficult.
There would many who end up feeling like LibDems must have prior to 2010.
Reform certainly need to abandon this notion of forcing the Christianity of the British Empire down everyone's throat. The Sunday-afternoon-down-the-pub secularist was probably peak Nigel.
When a core part of the coalition you're seeking to build is white racists it shouldn't come as a massive surprise that you get a great big two fingers from Muslim voters. You can't have your cake and eat it.
For all the soul searching from the Right about how and why the combined progressive forces got 69% if the vote, one massive question has to be asked
Given that there is a very sizable right wing vote in that constituency, 30 to 40% potentially, how the hell did the centre right, moving right Official Government Party manage to attract barely 700 votes and 1.9 of the vote (rounded to under 2% by the BBC)
Now we're told they had an impressive candidate. They have the vast majority of the print and MSM backing them They are consistent on 18% in the Opinion Polls They claim to be the only serious Political Party in the UK
What went wrong?
What evidence after yesterday is there that this next 12 months IS extinction moment?
It was officially their worst ever result.
You would assume there are crisis meetings going on, or are they so completely and utterly comotose or arrogant, or both to the fact that literally no one lioves them, or do they just not care anymore.
The majority after all robbed the coffers during Covid with corrupt deal after corrupt deal.
The reason the left got 69% is because this is a very left-wing constituency to begin with, and you must know that.
You have to go back to the 1970’s, to find a right wing voters of 30-40% here.
Betting post: is laying Starmer being replaced as party leader in 2026 value at 1.37?
I have zero doubt he'll be replaced before the 2029 election.
But I'm not convinced it's in anyone's interests to do it so soon. Yes May elections will be a disaster, but I still think it's easier to let him govern for a couple of years then replace him with an election in the new leader's honeymoon period, rather than becoming unpopular themselves before 2029.
I'd agree
Its still a long time away from the next election. and Labour is split between those wanting Corbynism without Corbyn, socially conservative "blue labour" and the managerial pragmatists.
The best chance of Labour MP's saving their individual seats is replacing him probably in 2028 and calling a sharpish election.
By the time Labour get round to replacing Starmer, they may be looking for an equivalent of Benoît Hamon to lead then to a sub 10% result in the next General Election.
Reform will use the nuttiness of the Greens as a reason to vote for them to stop it. I think last nights by election result will help Farage and Co in the long run. People can see that voting Green is voting for Islam, and there’s a big enough market for stopping that
Vote for a misogynistic, islamophobic racist? That's your takeaway from this? Or just your personal view?
If the by-election was won by a large muslim vote, then the conclusion is that misogyny and islamophobia are so unpopular with socially conservative, patriarchal muslims that they'll vote for a very socially liberal Party.
While there is a significant Muslim community solidarity vote, it is pretty unlikely to have gone entirely Green, with a significant percentage going Labour. For fairly obvious reasons few would have voted Reform.
This was not a Muslim vs Reform election, it was won over a number of issues over different communities. Gen Z and Millennial white women are the strongest polling group for the Greens. What did Goodwin offer them but taxes for not child bearing and a ban on working from home?
If Reform want to appeal to enough voters to win an election they need to expand beyond racism and Christian Nationalism cut and pasted from Alabama.
Goodwin's whinging comes across as pathetic. Did he expect Muslims to vote for a party that demonises them? The only thing that would have happened if more people had stayed with Labour is his party would have been pushed to third place.
I am a bit suspicious of these "family voting" allegations. If they were not drawn to the attention of the polling station staff (who meticululously apply the rules in my experience) then how are these allegations to be investigated or substantiated?
Apparently they were reporting to polling station staff, at the time. And were observed reporting them by members of the media.
I understand from Manchester Concil that no reports were made to polling staff nor police.
Someone said on Today that they believed they couldn’t report it as can only observe but not intervene. Not sure if this is true but I’m sure that whatever people already feel/believe will find the answer/excuse they want and nothing will happen further.
If they failed to report it to the authorities, and obviously didn't film or record it then how on earth do they expect it to be investigated?
Are you allowed to film in polling stations - genuine question?
No! You're not even allowed to photo your own ballot paper
Hence the observers not filming the alleged activity.
And therefore the allegations are baseless if there is no evidence. It's down to he said she said.
Not baseless. If Democracy Volunteers (I don’t know who they are) is a legitimate set up then their concerns should absolutely be taken into account even if there is insufficient evidence for a prosecution
How easily the reports from Democracy Volunteers seem to have been dismissed
Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social It's sad to see people who had never heard of Democracy Volunteers yesterday all over social media trashing them.
They've been around for a decade & are partly funded by the (left-leaning) Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
We protest when the right trashes these groups. The left shouldn't do it either.
Reform certainly need to abandon this notion of forcing the Christianity of the British Empire down everyone's throat. The Sunday-afternoon-down-the-pub secularist was probably peak Nigel.
They still want to be in the Green Dragon in Shenfield in 1968 .
Here are some pertinent by-election observations from the front-line, from Lizzie Dearden (a rising journo who was prominent on the Ilford Recorder back in my day and who has gone on to bigger and better stuff):
Potentially overplayed: Gaza; in the many conversations I had yesterday, even with people who identified themselves as Muslims, no one mentioned Gaza or Israel.
Potentially underplayed: Andrew Gwynne; as well as the dim public response to its national policies, Labour’s chances were hurt by the a scandal over WhatsApp messages where the former local Labour MP had mocked local voters.
Potentially overplayed: Anti-Reform tactical voting; no-one I spoke to said they were personally voting tactically, although several people thought it was happening. I saw Labour campaigners distributing these leaflets and they seem to have gone down badly. People didn't like being told what to do.
Potentially underplayed: Positive politics; everyone I spoke to who was voting Reform gave reasons as concerns and fears of various kinds, mainly over immigration and general state of the country. The Green voters generally said they were inspired by what the party was standing for and its vision.
Potentially underplayed: Campaign energy; the Greens were everywhere yesterday. They were on road junctions in the rain (my photo), they were door knocking, they were the only party that stopped me in the street.
Potentially overplayed: Labour's troubles; quite a lot of people I spoke to yesterday strongly suggested they could go back to voting Labour, and several believed Andy Burnham would have won the seat. Many said Keir Starmer should go and the party needed to change policies, but there is a route back.
Potentially underplayed: Personality politics; taking a step back from party politics, the 3 frontrunners were a charismatic local plumber with 4 greyhounds on the campaign trail, a southern ex-academic and a councillor who works in Arup's Stakeholder Engagement and Communications service
@Steven_Swinford This is the official Labour line this morning. Labour is comparing the Greens to Galloway and his failure to build on his own electoral successes
Labour source: “The Greens can win a by-election, but they cannot win a general election.
“George Galloway - who backed the Greens in this by-election - won seats mid-term, only to lose them again. And he certainly never became PM.
“The Green Party’s policies, including legalising all drugs and withdrawing from NATO, are not a serious programme for government."
The odd thing about this strategy is that Labour spent the entire by-election trying to pretend that the Greens didn't exist
Starmer said repeatedly that Labour was in a 'straight fight' with Reform UK. The Greens were excised from bar charts on leaflets. It attempted to present a genuine three-horse raise as a binary. The whole strategy looks surreal
As well as being not much cop at governing, it's also surprising just how bad this Starmer led government is at politics. I'm increasingly of the belief that Labour didn't win the general election, but simply benefitted from the Tories losing it on a grand scale. The trouble is now that the Tories are out of office and no longer taking the flack, Labours lack of ability, planning, ambition, leadership, and communication is really obvious to even the sort of person who "doesn't do politics". Labour need a miracle to turn this around, and we had all better hope they find one, as we face a government of Reform or the Greens, which I am certain will be every bit as disasterous as MAGA-GOP in the US is.
Had Labour been any good at politics the Tories would have been reduced to single-figure numbers of MPs at GE2024.
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
In general, I’d say that almost any Labour seat which starts with a right wing vote of 35%+, from 2024, is likely going to Reform, in a by election. Under 35%, and it’s likely to be held, or won by another left wing party.
Betting post: is laying Starmer being replaced as party leader in 2026 value at 1.37?
I have zero doubt he'll be replaced before the 2029 election.
But I'm not convinced it's in anyone's interests to do it so soon. Yes May elections will be a disaster, but I still think it's easier to let him govern for a couple of years then replace him with an election in the new leader's honeymoon period, rather than becoming unpopular themselves before 2029.
In general, I’d say that almost any Labour seat which starts with a right wing vote of 35%+, from 2024, is likely going to Reform, in a by election. Under 35%, and it’s likely to be held, or won by another left wing party.
In general, I’d say that almost any Labour seat which starts with a right wing vote of 35%+, from 2024, is likely going to Reform, in a by election. Under 35%, and it’s likely to be held, or won by another left wing party.
When I visited the seat I was struck just how many people liked the Greens and/or Spencer. But more importantly they knew what they didn’t want to happen, which was to wake up with a Reform MP, particularly one such as Matthew Goodwin, whose public pronouncements are so far from moderate opinion and whose statements about Britishness were seen by many people I spoke to as a direct attack on them personally.
Two polls published just before the by-election showed the Greens narrowly ahead. This was decisive in making the Greens the option of choice for anti-Reform voters.
Of the four by-elections that Reform has contested this parliament (two to the Westminster parliament, one to the Senedd in Wales, one in Holyrood) Nigel Farage’s party has won just one of them — in Runcorn, very narrowly. In that race, the previous Labour incumbent had literally been convicted for assaulting one of his own constituents.
Reform keeps adding more and more divisive positions to its platform and as a result, most British voters are going to try to stop it forming a government.
Labour is governing badly and over the past 18 months it has equivocated on the issues on which people most oppose Reform. So, where there is a viable way to stop Reform that doesn’t run through voting Labour, people will often take it. True of Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly and the Greens in Gorton. I’m not saying these parties don’t have an appeal of their own to some voters: they really do.
In the course of my canvassing in a traditionally Conservative area, the two most commonly expressed voting intentions have been "Reform" and "Whoever is Most Likely to Beat Reform", with "Not Conservative or Labour" in third place. It's certainly shaping up to be an interesting election on May 7th.
Reform are already falling short of a majority based on by-election performance.
In Runcorn their swing against Labour, and relative to the winning line, was 17.4%, suggest they can go deep as their 384 target in the red wall.
In Gorton & Denton, with a stop Reform option, they achieved a 12.4% swing relative to the winning line, which would get them to 213 on their target list.
In Caerphilly moving from the GE to the Senedd election on slightly different, and slightly less favourable, boundaries in the east of the constituency they got 3.2% closer to the winning line. Even if you are generous and call it a 5% swing towards winning, that would only gain 13 seats.
So, on a small number of data points, Reform's progress even in mid-term by-elections is not screaming at anything near a majority.
For all the soul searching from the Right about how and why the combined progressive forces got 69% if the vote, one massive question has to be asked
Given that there is a very sizable right wing vote in that constituency, 30 to 40% potentially, how the hell did the centre right, moving right Official Government Party manage to attract barely 700 votes and 1.9 of the vote (rounded to under 2% by the BBC)
Now we're told they had an impressive candidate. They have the vast majority of the print and MSM backing them They are consistent on 18% in the Opinion Polls They claim to be the only serious Political Party in the UK
What went wrong?
What evidence after yesterday is there that this next 12 months IS extinction moment?
It was officially their worst ever result.
You would assume there are crisis meetings going on, or are they so completely and utterly comotose or arrogant, or both to the fact that literally no one lioves them, or do they just not care anymore.
The majority after all robbed the coffers during Covid with corrupt deal after corrupt deal.
The reason the left got 69% is because this is a very left-wing constituency to begin with, and you must know that.
It just has to be all about the tories rather than labour who are in real trouble
Those Labour MPs rushing out their new strategy proposals need to just stop. There's no point even beginning to map a new strategy for Labour until Starmer has gone. He's such a distorting prism. Everyone, everywhere hates him. It may not be fair, but it's the political reality.
If they replace Starmer without a strategy they will end up in the same doom loop.
So they have to work out what the new strategy needs to be, and then choose the person best-placed to implement it.
Edit: Like, I don't think this is an amazing piece of insight on my part. Why is Hodges so superficial and unable to see it? It's supposed to be his job.
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
Wow. That's actually quite good from Kemi. Did she write it? Thumping Labour while also not giving Reform any satisfaction. If she can continue on that line, with a bit of fleshing out, she may just have found a political sweet spot.
Reform certainly need to abandon this notion of forcing the Christianity of the British Empire down everyone's throat. The Sunday-afternoon-down-the-pub secularist was probably peak Nigel.
When a core part of the coalition you're seeking to build is white racists it shouldn't come as a massive surprise that you get a great big two fingers from Muslim voters. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Well yes but I agree with Stark Dawning that Refrorm were more widely appealing when they were the Sunday-afternoon-down-the-pub-secularist party. White racists or those favouring American style conservative Christianity are a very narrow section of the electorate to go after. The only reasons I can see for doing so are either a) they have mistaken Britain for America, or b) they are personally keen on this stuff. And from what little I know of the individuals in charge, b seems unlikely. I inow I've developed this theme before, but I'm baffled by Reform's tactics. They appear to have missed the open goal - the Sunday afternoon diwn the pub grumblers, who, nevertheless, are no sort of zealots - of whom there are many - and are instead going for a weird coalition of furious Christians, white racists and Thatcherite free marketeers.
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
London and Paris say they’re ready to lead a peacekeeping mission.
Why would you take the risk of paratroopers?
They won't be parachuting in. Is it not just that they are the best trained for rapid deployment in a variety of conditions ?
What? Special training to sit in the back of an A400M? They can't just deploy the Para Reg, there is a whole comms and logisitics apparatus that has to go with them as part of 16 Air Assault.
The whole thing sounds fantastically stupid, real July 1914 stuff.
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
The Greens ran a sectarian campaign? Did they?
They ran adverts in Urdu showing Starmer being friendly with Modi.
"The two-level battery was Newey's request. And we were running out of time..."
In my experience the layout on the display model looked thermally problematic. You'd want those units spread out or like a slab. Gonna stick with my guess that it's overheating so can't run at full clip
There's already rumours of a potential change if the first few races are rubbish. This would reduce the power from electric and increase engine power, which could be very helpful for Aston Martin.
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
Wow. That's actually quite good from Kemi. Did she write it? Thumping Labour while also not giving Reform any satisfaction. If she can continue on that line, with a bit of fleshing out, she may just have found a political sweet spot.
She should receive a lot of credit for that and especially drawing a line with Reform
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
Ouch..
Kemi in performing seal mode.
I was hoping she might get beyond that.
"If you stir up grievance politics" - is she on one of the drugs she does not want to decriminalise? Bobajob says hello.
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
The Greens ran a sectarian campaign? Did they?
They ran adverts in Urdu showing Starmer being friendly with Modi.
They also overwhelmingly talked about cost of living, housing and employment. You need to explain how a sectarian campaign aimed at 20% of the population won more than 40% of the votes.
Those Labour MPs rushing out their new strategy proposals need to just stop. There's no point even beginning to map a new strategy for Labour until Starmer has gone. He's such a distorting prism. Everyone, everywhere hates him. It may not be fair, but it's the political reality.
If they replace Starmer without a strategy they will end up in the same doom loop.
So they have to work out what the new strategy needs to be, and then choose the person best-placed to implement it.
Edit: Like, I don't think this is an amazing piece of insight on my part. Why is Hodges so superficial and unable to see it? It's supposed to be his job.
Most people look for a magic pill. Burnham is that magic pill.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leqNyKrcK44
I think we will see demographically fairly similar areas, but where the LibDems are campaigning hard, they'll go LibDem, and where the Greens are campaigning hard, they'll go Green, but if Labour are historically unpopular, there will be Labour seats falling where no-one expected them to fall, which could go any way. IYSWIM.
Sorting out the utility companies is low hanging fruit, for instance, which would be universally welcomed. Being bolder on planning and housing policy. Leaning into the green transition and actually looking to persuade working people of the benefits rather than presenting it as globalist diktat. A clear statement of intent regarding future relations with the EU (get off the fence). Visibly looking for a cross-European solution on migration and the ECHR. Looking at targeted deregulation so they can get more done. A fresh offer on student loans and post-18 qualifications.
And yes I think that probably does need to be under new leadership because Starmer and Reeves aren’t imaginative enough to be bold on any of that. Or at least can’t sell it.
This is less about left v right and more about acknowledging the broad concerns of the electorate and actually trying to respond to doing something about it. There is still a place for Labour in the race for the next GE and they can still win that race, but to do so they need to shift up 3 or 4 gears from where they are now, and actually start governing rather than managing.
Never once in my lifetime of voting have I witnessed a 'crush' in a polling station, unless one man and his dog count as a crush.
Oh hang on they are too busy trying to do real work.
Hadn't thought about that for 35 years until your comment.
Will Cooling pointed out https://bsky.app/profile/willcooling.bsky.social/post/3mfral5dtvc25 that "every analysis of voting behaviour shows that which christian denomination you belong to (Anglican, Catholic or Non-Conformist) is a good predictor of whether you're a Tory, Labourite or LibDem. Just Islamophobia to think British Muslims invented religious voting".
https://x.com/angelarayner/status/2027314976063377494
Also Angela: blocks replies.
They were paying $40k, they’re now paying $10k.
As for the Greens, their coalition of supporters is even more fractious than Reform's - Islamic militants, sandal wearers and single issue cranks. They have no knowledge of, or even interest in, whole areas of domestic policy, starting with economics, and their immigration and identity policies are about as realistic as Starmer appointing Mandelson and thinking he'd stay out of trouble.
So overall I don't think that, besides giving the government a bloody nose, we can read anything about the national picture into this result, as is true for 95% of by-elections.
Other than that the government is catastrophically unpopular, but we knew that anyway.
"No more than a 15% chance" becomes "now no prospect of".
I wonder how this will affect the U.K. given we have large diasporas of both communities ?
https://x.com/marcherreborn/status/2027276418485215433?s=61
Given that there is a very sizable right wing vote in that constituency, 30 to 40% potentially, how the hell did the centre right, moving right Official Government Party manage to attract barely 700 votes and 1.9 of the vote (rounded to under 2% by the BBC)
Now we're told they had an impressive candidate.
They have the vast majority of the print and MSM backing them
They are consistent on 18% in the Opinion Polls
They claim to be the only serious Political Party in the UK
What went wrong?
What evidence after yesterday is there that this next 12 months IS extinction moment?
It was officially their worst ever result.
You would assume there are crisis meetings going on, or are they so completely and utterly comotose or arrogant, or both to the fact that literally no one lioves them, or do they just not care anymore.
The majority after all robbed the coffers during Covid with corrupt deal after corrupt deal.
In Runcorn their swing against Labour, and relative to the winning line, was 17.4%, suggest they can go deep as their 384 target in the red wall.
In Gorton & Denton, with a stop Reform option, they achieved a 12.4% swing relative to the winning line, which would get them to 213 on their target list.
In Caerphilly moving from the GE to the Senedd election on slightly different, and slightly less favourable, boundaries in the east of the constituency they got 3.2% closer to the winning line. Even if you are generous and call it a 5% swing towards winning, that would only gain 13 seats.
So, on a small number of data points, Reform's progress even in mid-term by-elections is not screaming at anything near a majority.
“Rob Ford eviscerated this take on BlueSky” 🤣
Personally I'm much more interested in detailed policy than most, and I'm concerned that the Greens haven't really faced up to the cost of their policies. Despite that I'll probably switch to them after the local elections, since they do seem to have a positive, reasonably consistent, leftish agenda, and after 54 years in Labour I'm tired of resorting to a negative programme. It's not that Labour can't switch a particular policy to being more or less left-wing, but that they (er, we!) don't seem to have any consistent philosophy any more, except winning (and spending loads more on defence, which isn't a priority for me). I'm not all that left-wing (I was never a member of the Campaign Group) but politics without an underlying philosophy doesn't appeal at all.
People can have their views on who replaces Starmer now. But the political reality is that after last night there cannot be a contest that does not include Andy Burnham. Excluding the man who on paper is the most popular candidate is simply not viable any more. If it ever was.
Three further points.
1. Left wing voters will vote for the best candidate to stop Reform. Conservative voters will switch completely behind Reform, in seats the Conservatives cannot win.
Conservatives who will vote left to stop Reform should be called unicorns, they are so rare.
2. By-elections confirm polling, showing the overall right wing vote share is up about 10% on 2024.
3. Advance, and other right wing rivals to Reform, are trivial nuisances.
Robert Saunders
@robertsaunders.bsky.social
It's sad to see people who had never heard of Democracy Volunteers yesterday all over social media trashing them.
They've been around for a decade & are partly funded by the (left-leaning) Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
We protest when the right trashes these groups. The left shouldn't do it either.
https://bsky.app/profile/robertsaunders.bsky.social/post/3mftgauyrnc2v
Jim Pickard
@pickardje.bsky.social
interesting that new Green MP Hannah Spencer talks almost entirely about public services, cost of living, NHS, the grind of making ends meet....
and hardly ever mentions ecological/environmental issues....
this is the pivot that scares Labour the most
https://bsky.app/profile/pickardje.bsky.social/post/3mftisprufs2t
Voying along Catholic (roughly but not exclusively North end of the city) and Protestant (south end).
I used to walk past a Conservative club on the way to school with a massive poster of Anthony Steen on a gable wall.
There was also 'Thatchers' tea room a stones throw away from Penny Lane.
T.P. O'Connor of the Irish Nationalist Party held Liverpool Scotland ( a massive working class Irish area before they were decanted to Kirkby and other places outside the city) for 4 decades until 1929
https://x.com/SpannersReady/status/2027314174267670994
Head of Honda F1:
"The two-level battery was Newey's request. And we were running out of time..."
In my experience the layout on the display model looked thermally problematic. You'd want those units spread out or like a slab. Gonna stick with my guess that it's overheating so can't run at full clip
I didn't ask who, theoretically, she'd have voted for yesterday, or even whether she'd have turned out, but the Con never Reformers, who I think are more numerous than 1.9%, did go somewhere.
I have zero doubt he'll be replaced before the 2029 election.
But I'm not convinced it's in anyone's interests to do it so soon. Yes May elections will be a disaster, but I still think it's easier to let him govern for a couple of years then replace him with an election in the new leader's honeymoon period, rather than becoming unpopular themselves before 2029.
https://x.com/electionmapsuk/status/2027318516823507329?s=61
I like Hannah Spencer and impressed with her attitude and can see why she won, even allowing for the large Muslim vote
She and Polanski have charisma and if I were labour I wouldn't count on beating her at the next GE, as I think she will be a very good constituency mp
Of course I reject Green policies and this was their ideal consitituency
As for reform, Goodwin failing to win is welcome but I would not extrapolate from this result that they aren't a real threat to labour
Indeed labour are under attack from the left and right and I simply do not know how they cope with it
I accept the conservative brand is damaged, but they would be idiotic to change Kemi who by general consent is performimg better and certainly above her party. Those wanting Cleverly need to answer how he could repair the brand better than Kemi
As for the Lib Dems they are in danger of being seen as much as the old two and I expect them to become marooned
Politics as we knew it is over, and everyone needs to accept we are in uncertain and in some ways a worrying new era
It is not impossible to see the SNP and Greens, Plaid and Greens forming new Scots and Welsh governments seeking independence and re-joining the EU
I have not seen any major research for several years, and maybe since Channel 4's "What British Muslim's really think" in 2016, which was quite inflammatory in its presentation.
That it is marked with a "Just for Fun Klaxon" says it all.
Its still a long time away from the next election. and Labour is split between those wanting Corbynism without Corbyn, socially conservative "blue labour" and the managerial pragmatists.
The best chance of Labour MP's saving their individual seats is replacing him probably in 2028 and calling a sharpish election.
There would many who end up feeling like LibDems must have prior to 2010.
This was not a Muslim vs Reform election, it was won over a number of issues over different communities. Gen Z and Millennial white women are the strongest polling group for the Greens. What did Goodwin offer them but taxes for not child bearing and a ban on working from home?
If Reform want to appeal to enough voters to win an election they need to expand beyond racism and Christian Nationalism cut and pasted from Alabama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg
Is it not just that they are the best trained for rapid deployment in a variety of conditions ?
Potentially overplayed: Gaza; in the many conversations I had yesterday, even with people who identified themselves as Muslims, no one mentioned Gaza or Israel.
Potentially underplayed: Andrew Gwynne; as well as the dim public response to its national policies, Labour’s chances were hurt by the a scandal over WhatsApp messages where the former local Labour MP had mocked local voters.
Potentially overplayed: Anti-Reform tactical voting; no-one I spoke to said they were personally voting tactically, although several people thought it was happening. I saw Labour campaigners distributing these leaflets and they seem to have gone down badly. People didn't like being told what to do.
Potentially underplayed: Positive politics; everyone I spoke to who was voting Reform gave reasons as concerns and fears of various kinds, mainly over immigration and general state of the country. The Green voters generally said they were inspired by what the party was standing for and its vision.
Potentially underplayed: Campaign energy; the Greens were everywhere yesterday. They were on road junctions in the rain (my photo), they were door knocking, they were the only party that stopped me in the street.
Potentially overplayed: Labour's troubles; quite a lot of people I spoke to yesterday strongly suggested they could go back to voting Labour, and several believed Andy Burnham would have won the seat. Many said Keir Starmer should go and the party needed to change policies, but there is a route back.
Potentially underplayed: Personality politics; taking a step back from party politics, the 3 frontrunners were a charismatic local plumber with 4 greyhounds on the campaign trail, a southern ex-academic and a councillor who works in Arup's Stakeholder Engagement and Communications service
https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2027338096526643553
Labour created the monster of harvesting Muslim community bloc votes and yesterday that monster came back to bite them. As I've said many times before, we are a multiracial country, not a multicultural country.
If you stir up grievance politics between groups based on religion or race, as Labour have done for decades, as Reform are seeking to do, and as the Greens have done successfully in this by-election, you are pitting neighbours against each other and you start to unravel the culture of tolerance that makes Britain great.
Our country is not broken, but this by-election showed that Labour, Reform and the Greens are trying very hard to break it. Labour trying to buy people off with more and more benefits spending. Reform telling people you can't be British if you aren't white. The Greens running a nasty, sectarian campaign while simultaneously wanting to legalise crack-cocaine.
So they have to work out what the new strategy needs to be, and then choose the person best-placed to implement it.
Edit: Like, I don't think this is an amazing piece of insight on my part. Why is Hodges so superficial and unable to see it? It's supposed to be his job.
I inow I've developed this theme before, but I'm baffled by Reform's tactics. They appear to have missed the open goal - the Sunday afternoon diwn the pub grumblers, who, nevertheless, are no sort of zealots - of whom there are many - and are instead going for a weird coalition of furious Christians, white racists and Thatcherite free marketeers.
REF: 28.7% (+14.7)
LAB: 25.4% (-25.3)
CON: 1.9% (-6.0)
LDEM: 1.8% (-2.1)
Hmm.
Did they?
The whole thing sounds fantastically stupid, real July 1914 stuff.
Kemi in performing seal mode.
I was hoping she might get beyond that.
"If you stir up grievance politics" - is she on one of the drugs she does not want to decriminalise? Bobajob says hello.
You need to explain how a sectarian campaign aimed at 20% of the population won more than 40% of the votes.