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.
I said more difficult.
Clearly easy if like me you have lived in the same house for 20 odd years, but for example people in multi occupancy housing not so much.
If it's so easy, why the opposition to automatic voter registration ?
Why (per electoral reform society) are there 8 million people missing from electoral rolls ?
Why have a regsitration date cut off up to a month before the election, when in Australia or South Korea you can register on the day ?
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
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.
Hodges is not just a drama queen he's a clown. Can you imagine a serious journalist coming out with cant like that after lthe loss of a byelection which they almost certainly would have lost whoever the leader?
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".
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.
I think when you've overseen the worst Tory performance in history, lost your deposit and seen your Candidate and Brand trashed, a little self reflection, contrition and apology would be wise.
No
Ms Omnipotent Arrogant Know it all never wrong Badenoch surpasses even her own utterly mind blowing ego.
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.
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.
Clearly a lot of Muslims are still angry about Gaza and aren’t happy about Labours Reform chasing . This isn’t rocket science . Together with the clueless decision making in No 10 since the election it was a perfect storm to see that big swing to the Greens.
Thoughts and prayers must go out to Chris Mason who can’t fellate Reform today !
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.
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.
I think that the people who are targets of attempts to get their support using the MAGA-Christian type values, are likely to be mistaking the politicised confessional Christianity they are being presented with for the cultural Christianity with which they are familiar, which has been the mainstream thing in the UK throughout all our lifetimes.
Even when there was high Church attendance etc in eg Victorian or early 20C times, it was still largely cultural.
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.
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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
1.9% of the vote wasn't it?
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
Hodges: "there is now no prospect of [Reform] winning an election outright. They have hit their ceiling."
If the swings yesterday were repeated nationwide, they would win comfortably.
But if the pattern from both Caerphilly and Gorton is repeated nationwide, they would lose decisively
I think there are too many seats like Runcorn - English, where the Lib Dems and Greens are nowhere - that Labour and the Tories will end up losing in a straight fight with Reform.
That's the failure of the Lib Dem strategy that the Greens have imitated, of a ruthless focus on their best target areas. It can only take you so far.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
I am a Kemi defender, mostly, and I agree she needs time, but I think the more the party delivers results like it did last night and cedes the ground of opposition to Reform, the more chance there is that voters simply give up on the party*. The problem isn’t really of Badenoch’s making, but I have made the point that results like last night give Farage much more ammunition to present Reform as some kind of bulwark against a left wing coalition, as opposed to the Tories.
* I fully acknowledge that G&D is never going to be on the Tory target list.
I think Starmer looked rather broken this morning. I don't think it'll ever get to a leadership challenge, he'll resign at some point of his choosing (long before the next election).
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?
Coming next from Kemi
Why a lost deposit and historically low vote share proves that only the Tories under my leadership are a credible politicial force.
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.
Well perhaps. But (and this does not necessarily contradict your point) my view is that Labour would have still lost G&D with Burnham as the candidate, so large was the gap. And if he can't get into parliament at G&D, there aren't many places where he is going to find a by-election to suit him.
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.
I said more difficult.
Clearly easy if like me you have lived in the same house for 20 odd years, but for example people in multi occupancy housing not so much.
If it's so easy, why the opposition to automatic voter registration ?
Why (per electoral reform society) are there 8 million people missing from electoral rolls ?
Why have a regsitration date cut off up to a month before the election, when in Australia or South Korea you can register on the day ?
I am regstered as I am a sad political nerd who believes in democracy. But one reason opposition to regsitration has increased over the years is that the electoral register is harvested for details by private companies. The electoral register should be an entirely private roll, for use only by the authorities for organising elections and other council business.
Keir Starmer has just said that Labour’s failed campaign in Gorton and Denton was about fighting “the extremes of the right” in Reform and “the extremes of the left” in the Greens, and he will double down in that fight. Is the characterisation of the majority of voters in Gorton and Denton as extremists likely to be the path to redemption for Labour?
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.
Burnham's comment on the bond markets is what scares me about him. I get that he's basically campaigning within Labour but it's still a scary thing to say when we've had Truss.
I don't doubt he'll give Labour a bounce and I am willing to support him over Rayner but I am struggling to see how he's going to deliver much or indeed what he wants to deliver. He's still going to run up with the same fundamental limitations as Starmer.
Unless you think it's purely a comms and presentation issue - then maybe he can just sell the current policies better.
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.
Which bunch of squaddies would you send ?
None of them. It's none of our business which gang of criminals runs the arse crack of Eastern Europe.
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.
Divisive ?
That's an understatement.
He's to the right of Enoch Powell and predictably the mask slipped as soon as the results came in.
If your core appeal is to white nationalists, don't be too surprised that many groups will oppose you.
London and Paris say they’re ready to lead a peacekeeping mission.
Why would you take the risk of paratroopers?
You wouldn't literally airdrop them in, but they're the epitome of elite light infantry that can be rapidly deployed (by rail) while the mechanised forces follow up.
This is all academic as it's planning for a ceasefire scenario that seems very unlikely this 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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
"Vote Blue, Go Green!"
Huskies are asking when they are next going to get a hug.
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.
I think that the people who are targets of attempts to get their support using the MAGA-Christian type values, are likely to be mistaking the politicised confessional Christianity they are being presented with for the cultural Christianity with which they are familiar, which has been the mainstream thing in the UK throughout all our lifetimes.
Even when there was high Church attendance etc in eg Victorian or early 20C times, it was still largely cultural.
My view - and I concede I may be generalising from myself here - is that most Brits, though comfortable with Christianity a long way in the background (its architecture, for example, or places named after saints) find any overt reference to religion jarring. Even Tony Blair was felt to be a bit too keen to ask God for his opinion.
But I think you and I have very different perceptions of religion, and I find your perspective interesting, and I genuinely don't know which of our positions is more representative within the UK.
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.
The won by 12% - easily possible that selective bits of the campaign tipped the balance.
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.
I said more difficult.
Clearly easy if like me you have lived in the same house for 20 odd years, but for example people in multi occupancy housing not so much.
If it's so easy, why the opposition to automatic voter registration ?
Why (per electoral reform society) are there 8 million people missing from electoral rolls ?
Why have a regsitration date cut off up to a month before the election, when in Australia or South Korea you can register on the day ?
I am regstered as I am a sad political nerd who believes in democracy. But one reason opposition to regsitration has increased over the years is that the electoral register is harvested for details by private companies. The electoral register should be an entirely private roll, for use only by the authorities for organising elections and other council business.
I have heard it said that all the mobile phone companies no longer use the credit agencies to check (in turn) the electoral role. Which has removed a motive to register.
Years back, you couldn't get a mobile phone contract if you weren't registered to vote.
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.
I think Starmer looked rather broken this morning. I don't think it'll ever get to a leadership challenge, he'll resign at some point of his choosing (long before the next election).
I think so too. But MPs will have to know and believe that to hold off until he does.
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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
"Vote Blue, Go Green!"
Not any more. Badenoch has told centrist Conservatives to piss off. The party for centrist environmentally concerned voters is the Lib Dems. Indeed there is a strong official Green Lib Dems group.
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.
I agree. An attractive left wing candidate in a left wing constituency standing against the government candidate wins. Nothing at all exceptional. Even I predicted her victory on the day she was announced as candidate.
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
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.
Yes from 1979 until 2019 Labour always did better with the UK Roman Catholic vote than they did nationally and the Tories always did better with the UK Anglican and Scottish Presbyterian vote than they did nationally.
Roman Catholic Boris was the first Conservative leader to do better with Roman Catholics than he did with the average voter in 2019
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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
"Vote Blue, Go Green!"
Not any more. Badenoch has told centrist Conservatives to piss off. The party for centrist environmentally concerned voters is the Lib Dems. Indeed there is a strong official Green Lib Dems group.
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.
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
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.
I said more difficult.
Clearly easy if like me you have lived in the same house for 20 odd years, but for example people in multi occupancy housing not so much.
If it's so easy, why the opposition to automatic voter registration ?
Why (per electoral reform society) are there 8 million people missing from electoral rolls ?
Why have a regsitration date cut off up to a month before the election, when in Australia or South Korea you can register on the day ?
To address some of there points. The electoral commision report did not say 8 million missing from the rolls, it said "across the UK, potentially as many as 8 million people are not correctly registered at their current address (the research estimated a range of around 7-8 million people not correctly registered on the local government registers in December 2022)." Thats a big difference.
Automatic voter registration is an option that depends on other registers being accurate - you would surely still need to confirm the electoral roll too.
I see no issue with a cut-off point, especially where we have such extensive postal voting (although I would strongly reduce that to genuine need, not desire).
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
I am a Kemi defender, mostly, and I agree she needs time, but I think the more the party delivers results like it did last night and cedes the ground of opposition to Reform, the more chance there is that voters simply give up on the party*. The problem isn’t really of Badenoch’s making, but I have made the point that results like last night give Farage much more ammunition to present Reform as some kind of bulwark against a left wing coalition, as opposed to the Tories.
* I fully acknowledge that G&D is never going to be on the Tory target list.
I quite like the various quotes from Kemi discussed downthread. And I think if the Conservative Party decide this result shows they need someone else they are absolutely insane. Which potential leader would have done better? I know HYUFD often suggests that James Cleverly would appeal to LD voters, but squeezing the LD vote in G&D doesn't bring more, and these things are never one way - gains are always netted off with losses.
Thinking just about Labour, I think it's not quite as awful as it seems.
1. Losing half your vote and going down to 25% in a safe Labour seat is utterly disastrous. But at the same time: 2. With the most unpopular PM in the history of the known universe, a by-election caused by the poor behaviour of the Labour MP, and a contest in which it became increasingly clear that voting Green was the surest way to defeat Reform, Labour could easily have collapsed to around 10%.
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.
Divisive ?
That's an understatement.
He's to the right of Enoch Powell and predictably the mask slipped as soon as the results came in.
If your core appeal is to white nationalists, don't be too surprised that many groups will oppose you.
I told 30% of the local electorate to f*ck off and now I'm whining they didn't vote for me.
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.
Whilst I appreciate her stance that she won the argument and the moral high ground, politics is all about getting to put that cross in that box and she isn't doing it.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
I am a Kemi defender, mostly, and I agree she needs time, but I think the more the party delivers results like it did last night and cedes the ground of opposition to Reform, the more chance there is that voters simply give up on the party*. The problem isn’t really of Badenoch’s making, but I have made the point that results like last night give Farage much more ammunition to present Reform as some kind of bulwark against a left wing coalition, as opposed to the Tories.
* I fully acknowledge that G&D is never going to be on the Tory target list.
I quite like the various quotes from Kemi discussed downthread. And I think if the Conservative Party decide this result shows they need someone else they are absolutely insane. Which potential leader would have done better? I know HYUFD often suggests that James Cleverly would appeal to LD voters, but squeezing the LD vote in G&D doesn't bring more, and these things are never one way - gains are always netted off with losses.
Labour lost their deposit and even more vote share in Chesham, Somerton and Tiverton and went on to a 400 plus seat landslide. All talk of the negatives of the Tory performance last night is irrelevant nonsense frankly
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?
Lots of focus on Gaza says yes
That a UK jury won't convict for criminal damage of an Israeli-owned arms factory is a better indication of public opinion specifically on Gaza than this by-election. There are many more factors to the Green win
Burnham's comment on the bond markets is what scares me about him. I get that he's basically campaigning within Labour but it's still a scary thing to say when we've had Truss.
I don't doubt he'll give Labour a bounce and I am willing to support him over Rayner but I am struggling to see how he's going to deliver much or indeed what he wants to deliver. He's still going to run up with the same fundamental limitations as Starmer.
Unless you think it's purely a comms and presentation issue - then maybe he can just sell the current policies better.
The bond markets comment was very clumsy and he shouldnt have said it. I think it’s pretty clear he was trying to attack the incremental/short termist tinkering approach and avoidance of substantive reform, rather than looking at the bigger picture. But it was really stupid to tie it into the bond markets in particular, knowing the issues the Tories got into with Truss.
I think Starmer looked rather broken this morning. I don't think it'll ever get to a leadership challenge, he'll resign at some point of his choosing (long before the next election).
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.
Full on proportional swing, no tactical voting whatever.
That it is marked with a "Just for Fun Klaxon" says it all.
Nonetheless it would see a UK politics transformed, a Reform majority with 415 MPs, the Greens the main opposition on 100 MPs, Labour down to just 38 MPs only 3 ahead of the SNP and 7 ahead of the LDs. Only 1 Tory MP would survive, Bob Blackman in Harrow East https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/2027318516823507329?s=20
Keir Starmer has just said that Labour’s failed campaign in Gorton and Denton was about fighting “the extremes of the right” in Reform and “the extremes of the left” in the Greens, and he will double down in that fight. Is the characterisation of the majority of voters in Gorton and Denton as extremists likely to be the path to redemption for Labour?
So he's observed the situation, worked out that his approach lost, and is doubling down because...he really likes losing? "See that losing approach? Let's do it some more, yeah? ONE MORE HEAVE, LADS!"
Starmer allies say this could help him, as the Green win is bad news for rightwing Labour candidate Streeting and soft left candidates aren't ready to run
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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
"Vote Blue, Go Green!"
Not any more. Badenoch has told centrist Conservatives to piss off. The party for centrist environmentally concerned voters is the Lib Dems. Indeed there is a strong official Green Lib Dems group.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
1.9% of the vote wasn't it?
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
Thinking just about Labour, I think it's not quite as awful as it seems.
1. Losing half your vote and going down to 25% in a safe Labour seat is utterly disastrous. But at the same time: 2. With the most unpopular PM in the history of the known universe, a by-election caused by the poor behaviour of the Labour MP, and a contest in which it became increasingly clear that voting Green was the surest way to defeat Reform, Labour could easily have collapsed to around 10%.
It can always be worse, but Labour have been winning here since 1935.
For sure, they only lost to another left wing party, but a by-election in a Red Wall seat would have seen them lose just as heavily to Reform. That's their problem, that they are having to fight on both their left, and right flanks.
I think the consensus on this site is that Labour should ignore voters on the right, and just focus on the left, but I think that would result in another 2019 outcome for them, albeit with a lot more Reform MP's.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
1.9% of the vote wasn't it?
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
Don’t know. They were 1000/1 to win, it doesn’t really matter. Turning the Conservative party’s fortunes around isn’t going to be a quick fix. The point stands that she has an opportunity to stand above the chaos all around her, and be quite a unifying figure.
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.
Christianity is less authoritarian than Islam - discuss.
Thinking just about Labour, I think it's not quite as awful as it seems.
1. Losing half your vote and going down to 25% in a safe Labour seat is utterly disastrous. But at the same time: 2. With the most unpopular PM in the history of the known universe, a by-election caused by the poor behaviour of the Labour MP, and a contest in which it became increasingly clear that voting Green was the surest way to defeat Reform, Labour could easily have collapsed to around 10%.
I broadly agree, but with the caveat that the percentage shares for Labour would look a lot better if the overall turnout was down on the GE, and they could point to the likelihood of their voters returning at a GE.
To have lost half their vote with the turnout about the same as at the GE means that a lot of those voters took the active step of voting elsewhere, and so it's harder to win them back.
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
The reaction to Democracy Volunteers has been revealing.
Tower Hamlets revealed the folly, a few years ago, of just treating these practises as "a cultural matter."
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.
Courting the white racist vote puts a ceiling on Reform, you're right. But what is 'very narrow', that's a key question.
I think it's around 10% of the electorate. Or let's say it's far nearer 10% than 1%. You need a proxy since people don't answer 'yes' to 'would you consider yourself to be a racist?' For me the best proxy is having a *very* favourable opinion of Donald Trump. That's been polled a few times and it always gets about the 10% mark. So there, close enough for these purposes, is your white racist vote in this country. 10% if they all came out, but they won't so let's say 7%.
Now that's not huge but it is a non-trivial part of Reform's coalition. It's maybe a quarter of it. If they lose all or most of those voters to no-show and/or to Restore (who are most certainly fishing in that pond) it leaves them with an awful lot of 'Sunday pub grumblers' to win over to fill the gap.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
I am a Kemi defender, mostly, and I agree she needs time, but I think the more the party delivers results like it did last night and cedes the ground of opposition to Reform, the more chance there is that voters simply give up on the party*. The problem isn’t really of Badenoch’s making, but I have made the point that results like last night give Farage much more ammunition to present Reform as some kind of bulwark against a left wing coalition, as opposed to the Tories.
* I fully acknowledge that G&D is never going to be on the Tory target list.
I quite like the various quotes from Kemi discussed downthread. And I think if the Conservative Party decide this result shows they need someone else they are absolutely insane. Which potential leader would have done better? I know HYUFD often suggests that James Cleverly would appeal to LD voters, but squeezing the LD vote in G&D doesn't bring more, and these things are never one way - gains are always netted off with losses.
Labour lost their deposit and even more vote share in Chesham, Somerton and Tiverton and went on to a 400 plus seat landslide. All talk of the negatives of the Tory performance last night is irrelevant nonsense frankly
A Black, Conservative, female PM who pays no mind to tokenism, refuses to hide behind identity politics and has no time for multiculturalism is the left’s worst nightmare, hence their constant dismissal of her.
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.
You mean there's no racism on the Asian side? Only white people can be racist?
Keir Starmer has just said that Labour’s failed campaign in Gorton and Denton was about fighting “the extremes of the right” in Reform and “the extremes of the left” in the Greens, and he will double down in that fight. Is the characterisation of the majority of voters in Gorton and Denton as extremists likely to be the path to redemption for Labour?
So he's observed the situation, worked out that his approach lost, and is doubling down because...he really likes losing? "See that losing approach? Let's do it some more, yeah? ONE MORE HEAVE, LADS!"
That's not quite true.
Before the election they tried to ignore the Greens and say that only they could beat Reform. Now having lost to Reform *and* the Greens they've updated their messaging to say that only they can beat Reform *and* the Greens.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
1.9% of the vote wasn't it?
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
Don’t know. They were 1000/1 to win, it doesn’t really matter. Turning the Conservative party’s fortunes around isn’t going to be a quick fix. The point stands that she has an opportunity to stand above the chaos all around her, and be quite a unifying figure.
Labour had a lower vote share, from a higher starting point, in a by in the last parliament. The idea last night was any sort of comment on the Tories in a no hope seat with 3 parties vying to win is for the birds. And mendacious spinners of bull
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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
"Vote Blue, Go Green!"
Not any more. Badenoch has told centrist Conservatives to piss off. The party for centrist environmentally concerned voters is the Lib Dems. Indeed there is a strong official Green Lib Dems group.
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.
Courting the white racist vote puts a ceiling on Reform, you're right. But what is 'very narrow', that's a key question.
I think it's around 10% of the electorate. Or let's say it's far nearer 10% than 1%. You need a proxy since people don't answer 'yes' to 'would you consider yourself to be a racist?' For me the best proxy is having a *very* favourable opinion of Donald Trump. That's been polled a few times and it always gets about the 10% mark. So there, close enough for these purposes, is your white racist vote in this country. 10% if they all came out, but they won't so let's say 7%.
Now that's not huge but it is a non-trivial part of Reform's coalition. It's maybe a quarter of it. If they lose all or most of those voters to no-show and/or to Restore (who are most certainly fishing in that pond) it leaves them with an awful lot of 'Sunday pub grumblers' to win over to fill the gap.
The only time people have been asked to vote on something that was a direct proxy for racism (i.e. preferential immigration for Europeans), it was rejected, but it did get as much as 48% support.
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
The reaction to Democracy Volunteers has been revealing.
Tower Hamlets revealed the folly, a few years ago, of just treating these practises as "a cultural matter."
Thinking just about Labour, I think it's not quite as awful as it seems.
1. Losing half your vote and going down to 25% in a safe Labour seat is utterly disastrous. But at the same time: 2. With the most unpopular PM in the history of the known universe, a by-election caused by the poor behaviour of the Labour MP, and a contest in which it became increasingly clear that voting Green was the surest way to defeat Reform, Labour could easily have collapsed to around 10%.
I broadly agree, but with the caveat that the percentage shares for Labour would look a lot better if the overall turnout was down on the GE, and they could point to the likelihood of their voters returning at a GE.
To have lost half their vote with the turnout about the same as at the GE means that a lot of those voters took the active step of voting elsewhere, and so it's harder to win them back.
Electors never like bogus by-elections it always suppresses turnout. And there was a feeling this was a spurious by-election made for some madcap reason to put someone into parliament who chose not to stand less than two years ago. The fact he didn't stand is by the point.
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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
"Vote Blue, Go Green!"
Not any more. Badenoch has told centrist Conservatives to piss off. The party for centrist environmentally concerned voters is the Lib Dems. Indeed there is a strong official Green Lib Dems group.
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
Curiously, early Dave enjoyed considerable success with that very ruse. It was only when he ventured into the horror show of Tory EU politics that everything exploded.
"Vote Blue, Go Green!"
Not any more. Badenoch has told centrist Conservatives to piss off. The party for centrist environmentally concerned voters is the Lib Dems. Indeed there is a strong official Green Lib Dems group.
An horrific case from ICE / Police in NY that is going to take a hell of a lot of untangling.
Briefly, an elderly refugee Shah Alam in the USA legally (from the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar - there are some refugees from that in the closest Mosque to me, in Mansfield), who is functionally blind and not an English speaker, was walking using a curtain rod as a walking stick.
He ended up in private property. Police were called. Then he was stunned (I assume Tased), tackled and handcuffed, and arrested by Police for not doing what they shouted when they told him to drop the rods, and biting 2 officers in the struggle. This is Feb 2025. He was then held in custody for a year.
It was settled as a minor charge, and he was to be released this Feb on bond (complicated reasons why not done before). Then he was collected by Border Control, who later determined he was a refugee and could not be detained.
So he was released by Border Control at a closed coffee shop (allegedly he requested to be released there) at mid-evening in sub-zero temperatures.
His body was found in the snow 4 miles away, days later.
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.
Courting the white racist vote puts a ceiling on Reform, you're right. But what is 'very narrow', that's a key question.
I think it's around 10% of the electorate. Or let's say it's far nearer 10% than 1%. You need a proxy since people don't answer 'yes' to 'would you consider yourself to be a racist?' For me the best proxy is having a *very* favourable opinion of Donald Trump. That's been polled a few times and it always gets about the 10% mark. So there, close enough for these purposes, is your white racist vote in this country. 10% if they all came out, but they won't so let's say 7%.
Now that's not huge but it is a non-trivial part of Reform's coalition. It's maybe a quarter of it. If they lose all or most of those voters to no-show and/or to Restore (who are most certainly fishing in that pond) it leaves them with an awful lot of 'Sunday pub grumblers' to win over to fill the gap.
The only time people have been asked to vote on something that was a direct proxy for racism (i.e. preferential immigration for Europeans), it was rejected, but it did get as much as 48% support.
Burnham's comment on the bond markets is what scares me about him. I get that he's basically campaigning within Labour but it's still a scary thing to say when we've had Truss.
I don't doubt he'll give Labour a bounce and I am willing to support him over Rayner but I am struggling to see how he's going to deliver much or indeed what he wants to deliver. He's still going to run up with the same fundamental limitations as Starmer.
Unless you think it's purely a comms and presentation issue - then maybe he can just sell the current policies better.
The bond markets comment was very clumsy and he shouldnt have said it. I think it’s pretty clear he was trying to attack the incremental/short termist tinkering approach and avoidance of substantive reform, rather than looking at the bigger picture. But it was really stupid to tie it into the bond markets in particular, knowing the issues the Tories got into with Truss.
It comes from the belief that spending should not be constrained by anything other than social requirements.
See the articles in the Guardian, in the run up to the Greek Crisis, that claimed it was immoral and undemocratic that Greece couldn’t borrow as much as it liked at the same interest rate as Germany.
To this has been added the American culture war stuff with regard to wealth. We don’t have the hyper billionaires in the U.K. - but the talking point la from the hard-left seem to assume so.
The big store of wealth in the U.K. is pension funds. Housing represents unrealisable “wealth”
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
The reaction to Democracy Volunteers has been revealing.
Tower Hamlets revealed the folly, a few years ago, of just treating these practises as "a cultural matter."
The daft thing about these attacks on DV is that if you read their reports they continually highlight the suppression of the ethnic vote due to the ID changes and also the fact that ethnic minority candidates are far more likely to suffer physical and verbal abuse. Most of their recommendations are designed to improve ethnic minority involvement rather than suppress it. Exactly the opposite of what kenough is claiming.
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
I thought the dismissive response of the retuning officer was also disappointing, and essentially dismissive.
The council, whose returning officer oversaw the election, said polling station staff were trained to look for undue influence on voters, and "no such issues" had been reported...
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.
You mean there's no racism on the Asian side? Only white people can be racist?
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
I am a Kemi defender, mostly, and I agree she needs time, but I think the more the party delivers results like it did last night and cedes the ground of opposition to Reform, the more chance there is that voters simply give up on the party*. The problem isn’t really of Badenoch’s making, but I have made the point that results like last night give Farage much more ammunition to present Reform as some kind of bulwark against a left wing coalition, as opposed to the Tories.
* I fully acknowledge that G&D is never going to be on the Tory target list.
I quite like the various quotes from Kemi discussed downthread. And I think if the Conservative Party decide this result shows they need someone else they are absolutely insane. Which potential leader would have done better? I know HYUFD often suggests that James Cleverly would appeal to LD voters, but squeezing the LD vote in G&D doesn't bring more, and these things are never one way - gains are always netted off with losses.
Labour lost their deposit and even more vote share in Chesham, Somerton and Tiverton and went on to a 400 plus seat landslide. All talk of the negatives of the Tory performance last night is irrelevant nonsense frankly
A Black, Conservative, female PM who pays no mind to tokenism, refuses to hide behind identity politics and has no time for multiculturalism is the left’s worst nightmare, hence their constant dismissal of her.
Hardly.
And I don't think she is PM, but rather LOTR, albeit on borrowed time.
Having got shot of Jenrick and Braverman, she then spurned the One Nation Tories.
So she seems to be aiming at a 10% strategy. There are a whole load of things she is against, but what actually is she for?
There are no obvious alternatives to supplant her so she probably gets to keep the job a bit longer, but what is her strategy? She is polling worse than the worst Tory election result in 2 centuries? How does she reverse that?
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
I thought the dismissive response of the retuning officer was also disappointing, and essentially dismissive.
The council, whose returning officer oversaw the election, said polling station staff were trained to look for undue influence on voters, and "no such issues" had been reported...
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
1.9% of the vote wasn't it?
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
Don’t know. They were 1000/1 to win, it doesn’t really matter. Turning the Conservative party’s fortunes around isn’t going to be a quick fix. The point stands that she has an opportunity to stand above the chaos all around her, and be quite a unifying figure.
Labour had a lower vote share, from a higher starting point, in a by in the last parliament. The idea last night was any sort of comment on the Tories in a no hope seat with 3 parties vying to win is for the birds. And mendacious spinners of bull
I'm quite sure the Conservative vote share would hold up a lot better if a by-election were in, say, Hendon, or Welwyn Hatfield. There, the Conservatives can point to the fact that they are the best placed party on the right, to beat Labour.
But, I would say the lesson here is that where the Conservatives have no hope, the vast majority of their voters will go Reform.
An horrific case from ICE / Police in NY that is going to take a hell of a lot of untangling.
Briefly, an elderly refugee Shah Alam in the USA legally (from the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar - there are some refugees from that in the closest Mosque to me, in Mansfield), who is functionally blind and not an English speaker, was walking using a curtain rod as a walking stick.
He ended up in private property. Police were called. Then he was stunned (I assume Tased), tackled and handcuffed, and arrested by Police for not doing what they shouted when they told him to drop the rods, and biting 2 officers in the struggle. This is Feb 2025. He was then held in custody for a year.
It was settled as a minor charge, and he was to be released this Feb on bond (complicated reasons why not done before). Then he was collected by Border Control, who later determined he was a refugee and could not be detained.
So he was released by Border Control at a closed coffee shop (allegedly he requested to be released there) at mid-evening in sub-zero temperatures.
His body was found in the snow 4 miles away, days later.
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.
May, and the next GE, looks like a set of elections with too many shapes. Reform v Not Reform; and insurgent party v Lab/Con are only two.
The list of bouts is growing but stands roughly at:
Reform v Not Reform Govt v Not Govt Right v Left Establishment v Insurgent overlapping with: Failed Powers of Lab/Con v Everyone else including LD and Fairly Sensible v Populist and, extra to Scotland and Wales Nationalist v Current UK
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.
Other parties got nothing, so the Con-never-Reformers can only have gone Green, Labour, Reform UK or not voting.
An horrific case from ICE / Police in NY that is going to take a hell of a lot of untangling.
Briefly, an elderly refugee Shah Alam in the USA legally (from the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar - there are some refugees from that in the closest Mosque to me, in Mansfield), who is functionally blind and not an English speaker, was walking using a curtain rod as a walking stick.
He ended up in private property. Police were called. Then he was stunned (I assume Tased), tackled and handcuffed, and arrested by Police for not doing what they shouted when they told him to drop the rods, and biting 2 officers in the struggle. This is Feb 2025. He was then held in custody for a year.
It was settled as a minor charge, and he was to be released this Feb on bond (complicated reasons why not done before). Then he was collected by Border Control, who later determined he was a refugee and could not be detained.
So he was released by Border Control at a closed coffee shop (allegedly he requested to be released there) at mid-evening in sub-zero temperatures.
His body was found in the snow 4 miles away, days later.
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
I thought the dismissive response of the retuning officer was also disappointing, and essentially dismissive.
The council, whose returning officer oversaw the election, said polling station staff were trained to look for undue influence on voters, and "no such issues" had been reported...
I don't think that dismissive, merely a statement of fact.
Is it usual for DV to send a press release out as soon as polls close rather than report their findings to the Electoral Commission and the administrating council?
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?
Lots of focus on Gaza says yes
That a UK jury won't convict for criminal damage of an Israeli-owned arms factory is a better indication of public opinion specifically on Gaza than this by-election. There are many more factors to the Green win
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.
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?
Lots of focus on Gaza says yes
That a UK jury won't convict for criminal damage of an Israeli-owned arms factory is a better indication of public opinion specifically on Gaza than this by-election. There are many more factors to the Green win
There is going to be a retrial
An appeal by the government, not a retrial I think.
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.
Courting the white racist vote puts a ceiling on Reform, you're right. But what is 'very narrow', that's a key question.
I think it's around 10% of the electorate. Or let's say it's far nearer 10% than 1%. You need a proxy since people don't answer 'yes' to 'would you consider yourself to be a racist?' For me the best proxy is having a *very* favourable opinion of Donald Trump. That's been polled a few times and it always gets about the 10% mark. So there, close enough for these purposes, is your white racist vote in this country. 10% if they all came out, but they won't so let's say 7%.
Now that's not huge but it is a non-trivial part of Reform's coalition. It's maybe a quarter of it. If they lose all or most of those voters to no-show and/or to Restore (who are most certainly fishing in that pond) it leaves them with an awful lot of 'Sunday pub grumblers' to win over to fill the gap.
The only time people have been asked to vote on something that was a direct proxy for racism (i.e. preferential immigration for Europeans), it was rejected, but it did get as much as 48% support.
Um, technically it's the other way around.
The first EU referendum in the 1970's had racism as an unacknowledged input: white Christian people were disconcerted by the influx of non-white people from the West Indies and Africa and voted for haven in a club of very white, very Christian countries
The second EU referendum in the 2010s also had racism as an unacknowledged input: people in the UK descended from Indo/Pakistanis resented the influx of white Catholic people from Eastern European countries and voted for an immigration system that prioritised Indo/Pakistanis over white Catholics.
People are not nice and motives for voting are often mixed.
An horrific case from ICE / Police in NY that is going to take a hell of a lot of untangling.
Briefly, an elderly refugee Shah Alam in the USA legally (from the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar - there are some refugees from that in the closest Mosque to me, in Mansfield), who is functionally blind and not an English speaker, was walking using a curtain rod as a walking stick.
He ended up in private property. Police were called. Then he was stunned (I assume Tased), tackled and handcuffed, and arrested by Police for not doing what they shouted when they told him to drop the rods, and biting 2 officers in the struggle. This is Feb 2025. He was then held in custody for a year.
It was settled as a minor charge, and he was to be released this Feb on bond (complicated reasons why not done before). Then he was collected by Border Control, who later determined he was a refugee and could not be detained.
So he was released by Border Control at a closed coffee shop (allegedly he requested to be released there) at mid-evening in sub-zero temperatures.
His body was found in the snow 4 miles away, days later.
I really don't know what to make of it. I suspect it will be "we did what our systems say so this is not our problem".
Sounds like homicide to me.
The release of detainees, late at night, in freezing conditions, away from refuge, and without notifying family is happening regularly enough to appear deliberate policy. Usually they are rescued by volunteers.
Something like this happeninghas been predicted for a while.
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.
The media nowadays struggle to see anything much beyond personalities.
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.
I think when you've overseen the worst Tory performance in history, lost your deposit and seen your Candidate and Brand trashed, a little self reflection, contrition and apology would be wise.
No
Ms Omnipotent Arrogant Know it all never wrong Badenoch surpasses even her own utterly mind blowing ego.
Indeed, and it was such fertile territory for the Tories too.
An horrific case from ICE / Police in NY that is going to take a hell of a lot of untangling.
Briefly, an elderly refugee Shah Alam in the USA legally (from the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar - there are some refugees from that in the closest Mosque to me, in Mansfield), who is functionally blind and not an English speaker, was walking using a curtain rod as a walking stick.
He ended up in private property. Police were called. Then he was stunned (I assume Tased), tackled and handcuffed, and arrested by Police for not doing what they shouted when they told him to drop the rods, and biting 2 officers in the struggle. This is Feb 2025. He was then held in custody for a year.
It was settled as a minor charge, and he was to be released this Feb on bond (complicated reasons why not done before). Then he was collected by Border Control, who later determined he was a refugee and could not be detained.
So he was released by Border Control at a closed coffee shop (allegedly he requested to be released there) at mid-evening in sub-zero temperatures.
His body was found in the snow 4 miles away, days later.
Thinking just about Labour, I think it's not quite as awful as it seems.
1. Losing half your vote and going down to 25% in a safe Labour seat is utterly disastrous. But at the same time: 2. With the most unpopular PM in the history of the known universe, a by-election caused by the poor behaviour of the Labour MP, and a contest in which it became increasingly clear that voting Green was the surest way to defeat Reform, Labour could easily have collapsed to around 10%.
It can always be worse, but Labour have been winning here since 1935.
For sure, they only lost to another left wing party, but a by-election in a Red Wall seat would have seen them lose just as heavily to Reform. That's their problem, that they are having to fight on both their left, and right flanks.
I think the consensus on this site is that Labour should ignore voters on the right, and just focus on the left, but I think that would result in another 2019 outcome for them, albeit with a lot more Reform MP's.
In the context of this new fragmented multiparty politics a 2019 seat outcome (203) might be none too shabby.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
1.9% of the vote wasn't it?
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
Don’t know. They were 1000/1 to win, it doesn’t really matter. Turning the Conservative party’s fortunes around isn’t going to be a quick fix. The point stands that she has an opportunity to stand above the chaos all around her, and be quite a unifying figure.
Labour had a lower vote share, from a higher starting point, in a by in the last parliament. The idea last night was any sort of comment on the Tories in a no hope seat with 3 parties vying to win is for the birds. And mendacious spinners of bull
I'm quite sure the Conservative vote share would hold up a lot better if a by-election were in, say, Hendon, or Welwyn Hatfield. There, the Conservatives can point to the fact that they are the best placed party on the right, to beat Labour.
But, I would say the lesson here is that where the Conservatives have no hope, the vast majority of their voters will go Reform.
I agree. Which will make a national share of 20% more efficient and lead to some cracking Ref Con fights
They say you can never go home again, but if I think of my hometown of Bristol – and my adopted hometown of Brighton and Hove – the similarities are striking.
The rise of the Green Party has much to do with this. When I was growing up in the beautiful, but quiet, West Country city in the 1960s and 1970s, I couldn’t wait to escape to somewhere buzzier.
Well, they say be careful what you wish for. Now the two cities share ‘progressive’ politics of the most regressive kind; that distinctive Veruca-Salt-joins-the-Stasi brand which is obsessed with the evil of Israel and the transcendent wonder of ‘trans.’
A few overblown things in the post-by-election commentary:
- “Greens on the March”. Yes they done well but this was perfect context and timing for them, combined with an efficient anti-Reform squeeze - Tories buried: no, they just got squeezed in a Reform-Green fight, because it’s a by-election and that’s what happens - Lib Dems nowhere: the least surprising result of the night, they were never going to be anywhere in this constituency - Labour in dire straits: it wasn’t actually that bad or humiliating a defeat by modern by-election standards. Not great, but fairly par - Reform have peaked and should be worried: this by-election doesn’t really point to that. It wasn’t particularly fertile territory.
So on reflection, pretty much all the reactions have been overblown.
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.
As a black woman with Conservative views, who has described herself as a first generation immigrant, she has already got the political sweet spot, the Tories need to continue to be patient with her. She is perfectly placed to be the non divisive option at the next GE. Badenoch’s ratings are on the up, and that should drag the Conservatives with them.
1.9% of the vote wasn't it?
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
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.
Bollocks. The independent monitoring is just that. If you bothered to look at the links you would see that this group targeted about a third of the constituencies across the UK at the last election at multiple polling stations in each constituency. They were looking at all aspects of the electoral process with the aim maintaining standards and of improving it where necessary. They do not 'target' Asian or any other minority constituencies and cover a wide range of issues with the explicit aim of trying to increase rather than suppress voter engagement. They are regulated by the Electoral Commission and regularly submit reports to Parliament.
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
I thought the dismissive response of the retuning officer was also disappointing, and essentially dismissive.
The council, whose returning officer oversaw the election, said polling station staff were trained to look for undue influence on voters, and "no such issues" had been reported...
I don't think that dismissive, merely a statement of fact.
Is it usual for DV to send a press release out as soon as polls close rather than report their findings to the Electoral Commission and the administrating council?
I would have been more clear - the dismissive bit was on R4 this morning.
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?
Lots of focus on Gaza says yes
That a UK jury won't convict for criminal damage of an Israeli-owned arms factory is a better indication of public opinion specifically on Gaza than this by-election. There are many more factors to the Green win
There is going to be a retrial
An appeal by the government, not a retrial I think.
Different thing. Government appealing the decision about banning Palestine Action, A retrial about the assault during the raid on the factory.
Comments
Clearly easy if like me you have lived in the same house for 20 odd years, but for example people in multi occupancy housing not so much.
If it's so easy, why the opposition to automatic voter registration ?
Why (per electoral reform society) are there 8 million people missing from electoral rolls ?
Why have a regsitration date cut off up to a month before the election, when in Australia or South Korea you can register on the day ?
No
Ms Omnipotent Arrogant Know it all never wrong Badenoch surpasses even her own utterly mind blowing ego.
Thoughts and prayers must go out to Chris Mason who can’t fellate Reform today !
1.9%
Even when there was high Church attendance etc in eg Victorian or early 20C times, it was still largely cultural.
Has there been a lower Tory vote share ever in a byelection?
That's the failure of the Lib Dem strategy that the Greens have imitated, of a ruthless focus on their best target areas. It can only take you so far.
* I fully acknowledge that G&D is never going to be on the Tory target list.
Why a lost deposit and historically low vote share proves that only the Tories under my leadership are a credible politicial force.
Cue mass ramping
Keir Starmer has just said that Labour’s failed campaign in Gorton and Denton was about fighting “the extremes of the right” in Reform and “the extremes of the left” in the Greens, and he will double down in that fight. Is the characterisation of the majority of voters in Gorton and Denton as extremists likely to be the path to redemption for Labour?
I don't doubt he'll give Labour a bounce and I am willing to support him over Rayner but I am struggling to see how he's going to deliver much or indeed what he wants to deliver. He's still going to run up with the same fundamental limitations as Starmer.
Unless you think it's purely a comms and presentation issue - then maybe he can just sell the current policies better.
That's an understatement.
He's to the right of Enoch Powell and predictably the mask slipped as soon as the results came in.
If your core appeal is to white nationalists, don't be too surprised that many groups will oppose you.
This is all academic as it's planning for a ceasefire scenario that seems very unlikely this year.
But I think you and I have very different perceptions of religion, and I find your perspective interesting, and I genuinely don't know which of our positions is more representative within the UK.
Years back, you couldn't get a mobile phone contract if you weren't registered to vote.
Certainly you don't need it with GiffGaff.
https://www.greenlibdems.org.uk/about-us
Why is everyone turning into Dan Hodges?
@lizziedearden.bsky.social
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
https://bsky.app/profile/lizziedearden.bsky.social/post/3mftj2vddnk2l
Roman Catholic Boris was the first Conservative leader to do better with Roman Catholics than he did with the average voter in 2019
[*referring of course to finishing behind the Tories in G & D]
Front page news, all.
Automatic voter registration is an option that depends on other registers being accurate - you would surely still need to confirm the electoral roll too.
I see no issue with a cut-off point, especially where we have such extensive postal voting (although I would strongly reduce that to genuine need, not desire).
Classic shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.
1. Losing half your vote and going down to 25% in a safe Labour seat is utterly disastrous. But at the same time:
2. With the most unpopular PM in the history of the known universe, a by-election caused by the poor behaviour of the Labour MP, and a contest in which it became increasingly clear that voting Green was the surest way to defeat Reform, Labour could easily have collapsed to around 10%.
All talk of the negatives of the Tory performance last night is irrelevant nonsense frankly
There are many more factors to the Green win
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/2027318516823507329?s=20
She's set the bar
For sure, they only lost to another left wing party, but a by-election in a Red Wall seat would have seen them lose just as heavily to Reform. That's their problem, that they are having to fight on both their left, and right flanks.
I think the consensus on this site is that Labour should ignore voters on the right, and just focus on the left, but I think that would result in another 2019 outcome for them, albeit with a lot more Reform MP's.
To have lost half their vote with the turnout about the same as at the GE means that a lot of those voters took the active step of voting elsewhere, and so it's harder to win them back.
Tower Hamlets revealed the folly, a few years ago, of just treating these practises as "a cultural matter."
I think it's around 10% of the electorate. Or let's say it's far nearer 10% than 1%. You need a proxy since people don't answer 'yes' to 'would you consider yourself to be a racist?' For me the best proxy is having a *very* favourable opinion of Donald Trump. That's been polled a few times and it always gets about the 10% mark. So there, close enough for these purposes, is your white racist vote in this country. 10% if they all came out, but they won't so let's say 7%.
Now that's not huge but it is a non-trivial part of Reform's coalition. It's maybe a quarter of it. If they lose all or most of those voters to no-show and/or to Restore (who are most certainly fishing in that pond) it leaves them with an awful lot of 'Sunday pub grumblers' to win over to fill the gap.
Before the election they tried to ignore the Greens and say that only they could beat Reform. Now having lost to Reform *and* the Greens they've updated their messaging to say that only they can beat Reform *and* the Greens.
Briefly, an elderly refugee Shah Alam in the USA legally (from the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar - there are some refugees from that in the closest Mosque to me, in Mansfield), who is functionally blind and not an English speaker, was walking using a curtain rod as a walking stick.
He ended up in private property. Police were called. Then he was stunned (I assume Tased), tackled and handcuffed, and arrested by Police for not doing what they shouted when they told him to drop the rods, and biting 2 officers in the struggle. This is Feb 2025. He was then held in custody for a year.
It was settled as a minor charge, and he was to be released this Feb on bond (complicated reasons why not done before). Then he was collected by Border Control, who later determined he was a refugee and could not be detained.
So he was released by Border Control at a closed coffee shop (allegedly he requested to be released there) at mid-evening in sub-zero temperatures.
His body was found in the snow 4 miles away, days later.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/27/us/shah-alam-death-new-york-border-patrol-wwk-hnk
I really don't know what to make of it. I suspect it will be "we did what our systems say so this is not our problem".
See the articles in the Guardian, in the run up to the Greek Crisis, that claimed it was immoral and undemocratic that Greece couldn’t borrow as much as it liked at the same interest rate as Germany.
To this has been added the American culture war stuff with regard to wealth. We don’t have the hyper billionaires in the U.K. - but the talking point la from the hard-left seem to assume so.
The big store of wealth in the U.K. is pension funds. Housing represents unrealisable “wealth”
The council, whose returning officer oversaw the election, said polling station staff were trained to look for undue influence on voters, and "no such issues" had been reported...
And I don't think she is PM, but rather LOTR, albeit on borrowed time.
Having got shot of Jenrick and Braverman, she then spurned the One Nation Tories.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/28/centrist-ideas-no-longer-wanted-in-conservative-party-says-kemi-badenoch?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
So she seems to be aiming at a 10% strategy. There are a whole load of things she is against, but what actually is she for?
There are no obvious alternatives to supplant her so she probably gets to keep the job a bit longer, but what is her strategy? She is polling worse than the worst Tory election result in 2 centuries? How does she reverse that?
But, I would say the lesson here is that where the Conservatives have no hope, the vast majority of their voters will go Reform.
The list of bouts is growing but stands roughly at:
Reform v Not Reform
Govt v Not Govt
Right v Left
Establishment v Insurgent
overlapping with:
Failed Powers of Lab/Con v Everyone else including LD
and
Fairly Sensible v Populist
and, extra to Scotland and Wales
Nationalist v Current UK
Is it usual for DV to send a press release out as soon as polls close rather than report their findings to the Electoral Commission and the administrating council?
Didn’t realised you’re based in the constituency.
- The first EU referendum in the 1970's had racism as an unacknowledged input: white Christian people were disconcerted by the influx of non-white people from the West Indies and Africa and voted for haven in a club of very white, very Christian countries
- The second EU referendum in the 2010s also had racism as an unacknowledged input: people in the UK descended from Indo/Pakistanis resented the influx of white Catholic people from Eastern European countries and voted for an immigration system that prioritised Indo/Pakistanis over white Catholics.
People are not nice and motives for voting are often mixed.The release of detainees, late at night, in freezing conditions, away from refuge, and without notifying family is happening regularly enough to appear deliberate policy.
Usually they are rescued by volunteers.
Something like this happeninghas been predicted for a while.
The Tories are clearly the real losers
I’d like to think that if something even vaguely like that happened in the UK, that criminal charges against the officials involved would follow.
Given its ICE in the US - there’s probably a gofundme for the wankers who committed the crime.
https://spectator.com/article/do-gortons-green-voters-know-what-theyve-done/
They say you can never go home again, but if I think of my hometown of Bristol – and my adopted hometown of Brighton and Hove – the similarities are striking.
The rise of the Green Party has much to do with this. When I was growing up in the beautiful, but quiet, West Country city in the 1960s and 1970s, I couldn’t wait to escape to somewhere buzzier.
Well, they say be careful what you wish for. Now the two cities share ‘progressive’ politics of the most regressive kind; that distinctive Veruca-Salt-joins-the-Stasi brand which is obsessed with the evil of Israel and the transcendent wonder of ‘trans.’
- “Greens on the March”. Yes they done well but this was perfect context and timing for them, combined with an efficient anti-Reform squeeze
- Tories buried: no, they just got squeezed in a Reform-Green fight, because it’s a by-election and that’s what happens
- Lib Dems nowhere: the least surprising result of the night, they were never going to be anywhere in this constituency
- Labour in dire straits: it wasn’t actually that bad or humiliating a defeat by modern by-election standards. Not great, but fairly par
- Reform have peaked and should be worried: this by-election doesn’t really point to that. It wasn’t particularly fertile territory.
So on reflection, pretty much all the reactions have been overblown.