Morning music
Full results from the Runcorn and Helsby by-election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runcorn_and_Helsby_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s
Reform UK 38.72%, Labour 38.7%, Conservatives 7.17%, Greens 7.09%. The other 11 candidates lost their deposits, the LibDem coming 5th of the 15 candidates, and with a mere 2.88%.
What is so good about the result is that, had Starmer-stein managed to hold on to Runcorn and Helsby, even with one vote, he would have been able to weasel about “hard choices“, “making the tough decisions” etc. Now, the public can be seen to have replied with a massive “NO!” to all such Blair/Brown/Cameron (etc) dissembling.
So Reform (not my party, not my kind of party, not really my ideology, but halfway there) now has 5 MPs (6, really, Rupert Lowe having been elected under the Reform banner). Under a fairer electoral system, Reform in 2024 would have had 92 MPs anyway, not 5.
5-6 MPs may seem a small bloc, but for most of the 1950s and 1960s, the old Liberal Party had the same number, before struggling into double figures for the first time since 1945, and then recovering under their new name, the Liberal Democrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)#Electoral_performance.
Now the dam has burst. The main System parties have lost all credibility. Today Reform, but tomorrow who knows?
Tweets seen
I love it when System political “grifters” and careerists lose out like that.
Bitter herbs for Starmer-stein this breakfast-time.
As blogged for many months, this is not so much a Labour government as a Labour Friends of Israel government, or misgovernment.
Farage may be a snake-oil salesman but “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform“. Once Farage and Reform have hacked the way through the jungle, real social nationalism will be able to break through. Maybe in 2033, the centenary of 1933. Just a thought…
Andrea Jenkyns
Andrea Jenkyns, former Greggs employee (etc) has been, once again, saved from stacking shelves at Lidl by electoral success. She is now the Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, a title and place-name reminiscent of the inventions of P.G. Wodehouse.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm25qjj4284o
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/local-elections-results-andrea-jenkyns-lincolnshire
I wrote an assessment of Andrea Jenkyns in 2019 (since then, with updates):
The full result: Reform (Andrea Jenkyns) 42%; Conservatives 26%; Labour 12%; Independent 8%; Greens 6%; LibDems 5%.
More thoughts about the by-election, local elections etc
The discomfiture of System drones, especially Labour ones, is both very evident and hilarious to see. Last night, I saw a section of the Sky News election coverage. One of the “experts” on their little panel was the TV talking head, now elevated to the degraded Lords as a “baroness”, Ayesha Hazarika. She obviously hates it that Reform is becoming electorally popular.
That Ayesha Hazarika person is emblematic of the times in which we live in the UK. Of Indian origin, she was a lowly civil service press officer before becoming a stand-up “comedian” (comedienne), a markedly unsuccessful one.
Despite that, her connections in the Labour Party ensured that she not only got “advisory” political work, but also slots on TV discussion panels and, eventually, the “peerage” (nominated by Starmer-stein).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayesha_Hazarika,_Baroness_Hazarika
Such peerages pay out £361 a day taxfree (when the House is sitting, i.e. 102 days per annum, plus travel costs and, in many cases, the costs of hotels or rent of flats etc in London. The £361 daily allowance is paid for up to 102 days per year, so as much as around £37,000 in a year. No fortune, but it is taxfree (so worth the same as a salary of maybe £50,000 or so), and all a “baroness” or “lord” has to do to get it is to sign in every day claimed for. It can take as little as 30 minutes, but why not stay and have an excellent and absurdly-subsidized lunch too?
A friend of mine often used to lunch with a peer of the realm (one of the real and unpaid old hereditary ones, not a life peer) in the 1980s and 1990s. She told me about the kind of luxury food and wine they had, and how low were the prices of that.
What a broken system. A low-level civil servant office bod and unsuccessful comic entertainer can get to know a few MPs, get on Newsnight or Sky News a bit, then become a member of the upper chamber of our legislature. It is absolutely ridiculous.
Turning from the Hazarika creature to more general matters, it is clear that the Westminster Bubblers simply do not understand what is driving the Reform phenomenon. They are too well-padded to feel the pain of so many people in this country.
Reform is underwhelming, really, yet look at what is happening! The voters are clutching at the Reform straw because not only are the main System parties useless, but they appear intent on stamping on British people, on their preferred way of life, on their history and on their future.
Labour especially is in the hands of secretive and hostile cabals. Starmer-stein is the obvious example: a freemason married to a Jewish woman, and who, at Easter, did not (as far as I have seen) invite any English children to Downing Street but did invite a group of Jewish children celebrating one of their religious festivals which occurred at about the same time.
Starmer-stein and his cabal have cut the small incomes of pensioners, the sick, the old, the unemployed, but have thrown money at “Ukraine” (the Jew-Zionist regime in Kiev) and at Israel (e.g. by paying for RAF surveillance flights over Gaza and other Arab territory, then giving the intelligence product to Israel for free).
I was driving in one of the most affluent parts of southern England this morning, and the road could have been in some broken-down part of the world; potholed, and poorly surfaced generally. Why? Why? I do not recall roads in England being as bad as this in the past, prior to, say, 2010. certainly not in the 1980s. “Austerity”? Poor priorities?
People are getting very fed up, indeed angry, at the way things are going. Reform UK is just the first step. People will go much further if the country continues to be so broken, and even more invaded by migrant-invaders (“legal” and “illegal”).
At present, there is no indication that the direction of travel of the UK is anywhere but straight down.
More tweets seen
That list is only the start.
The German “security and intelligence” bods should take a look at what happened to many of the Hungarian communist secret police in 1956, during the Hungarian Uprising. It was brutal…
Actually, the UK’s MI5 and police snoopers should also read up on that. History sometimes bites people like that on the ****.
Votes and elections will probably not be allowed to change the System (across Europe, certainly the EU and the UK). However, the discontent will find other outlets in the end. God help the System politicians and msm talking heads then…
Raus!
Historical note
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb62.htm
More tweets seen
Reform already shows worrying signs of infiltration and occupation.
Using Electoral Calculus, that might mean a Commons with about 376 Reform MPs (an absolute majority of 50, and a yet larger working majority), 113 Labour MPs, 71 LibDems (proving yet again that they are the “cockroach” survivors despite having really nothing at all to offer), 45 SNP, 12 Cons, and 5 Greens.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/userpoll.html
That would be the end for, as Disraeli put it, “the great Conservative Party, that destroys everything“.
I do not think that it would be much different even were Carpetbagger Kemi to be sent back to Nigeria (along with, hopefully, the 300,000 others who live here).
Labour is also looking at a well-deserved wipeout.
I notice that “Tel Aviv Keith” Starmer-stein is now tweeting about “national security” and “defence”, at the same time as literally thousands of immigrants, tens of thousands, pour in every single day, mostly “legally”. As for the illegal, “small boat”, invaders, about a thousand are landing every day.
Starmer-stein wants to impose “woke” tyranny along with (((the usual))) concealed dictatorship in this country. He has to be opposed by any necessary means.
Scamdemic/panicdemic loony news
“Three young boys who were allegedly locked inside their home for four years by their Covid-obsessed parents began hyperventilating and threw themselves onto the lawn to stroke the grass after being rescued by police, it has emerged.
Police found the boys, between the ages of eight and ten, in a house in the northern city of Oviedo, Spain on Wednesday. The children had apparently been kept in the residence since 2021.
It is understood the family closed off to the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, forbidding the children from going outside, and making them sleep in caged beds.”
[Daily Mail]
Merely a rather extreme version of the general looniness that swept across much of Europe and elsewhere in 2020-2022 (and which was imposed by sinister self-styled “elite” political monsters such as, to name just one, Jacinda Arden in New Zealand).
I still see the odd facemask loony even today, usually some old woman in a supermarket who has probably been wearing the same bit of dirty cloth for 4 or 5 years now.
Late tweets
[“DRAX – The “renewable” wood-burning power station is the biggest single source of carbon emissions in the UK. Has made record £1.1billion profit because we gave them nearly £1 BILLION in subsidies 6.5 million tonnes of wood pellets burned each year & mainly come from Drax’s 17 pellet plants in the US and Canada. It is also a massive supporter of LABOUR and increased ‘Green policies’ because it means more subsidies. Shh … it’s only 300 million trees.“]
A disgrace.
Russia would supply the UK with oil and gas, possibly even at cost, were the UK government(s) to drop the stupid anti-Russia hate campaign and appurtenant policies, and leave NATO.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Many leftists on Twitter who loath Starmer, claimed they were voting Green, but that doesn’t seem to be reflected in the stats.
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I was shocked to find out the pathetic margin by which Reform won the elections. As I ignore the political make-up of that constituency, I must ask: A) Was it a Labour stronghold? B) Is it possible that someone may have tried to fix the election? The figures are unbelievable, only 6 votes of difference!
I am asking this because almost everyone said it was going to be an easy victory for Reform. Perhaps Labour imitated the American Democrats and managed to get a lot of dead people to vote for them. 😁😁😁
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Claudius:
No mystery. The constituency in question, Runcorn and Helsby, though with boundary changes over the years, had been a Labour stronghold,under the name Weaver Vale:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaver_Vale_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s
Weaver Vale had a Con Party MP only during 2010-2015.
Everyone was not predicting an easy Reform win. I was, but the msm “experts” mostly thought Labour would hold the seat, albeit narrowly. You may have been misled by over-enthusiastic Reform supporters online.
Labour won Runcorn and Helsby easily only last year, with 52.9% of the whole vote. Reform was in second place but with only 18%. In numbers of votes, the Labour majority last year was 14,696.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runcorn_and_Helsby_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s
As you can see, this win was a huge achievement for Reform; the swing was huge.
The constituency is about 95% white (English and maybe Irish). I did blog a few times about the contest in the past weeks.
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Thank you very much for your reply. Yes, I think I was misled by the optimistic forecasts of Goodwin. Now I understand what you mean by this result being “a huge achievement”
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Claudius:
In the glacial English political context, what has happened (not just Runcorn and Helsby but also with the local council elections here) is a near earthquake.
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Yes, it was Labour’s 49th safest seat last year with a Labour vote share of over 50%. Apparently, only 15% of all MPs have more supporters in their seats ie a vote share of 50% plus than the vote share of their opponents. The vast majority of them are Labour MPs. Only one Tory MP in Harrow East got 50% or more.
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The Labour vote in the seat in 2024 may have comprised a small personal vote for the previous MP. For a Labour man, he came across as quite a jovial and pretty normal person before his violent altercation so, in reality, the ‘true’ Labour share might have been 50% rather than 52.9%.
Still, Reform UK achieved an impressive victory even if it was by an historically small margin of just 6 votes. Having a 17% plus swing to win Labour’s 49th safest seat is not to sniffed at.
https://www.electionpolling.uk/battleground/defence/labour
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John:
The Guardian did some doorstepping etc at Runcorn. They found that the thuggish and drunken behaviour of the former MP was *not* the reason why people were rejecting Labour. The real or main reason was Labour’s policies and actions since July 2024, and also widespread extreme dislike of “Starmer-stein”. People quite rightly see Labour now as “Con-lite”, though it could be argued that Starmer-stein and his allies, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall etc, are far more extreme anti-welfare statists than are most “Conservative” MPs (though maybe not Kemi Badenoch, who is just as unpopular…)..
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I did wonder if Labour would try and fix the result seeing as Halton Council has NEVER had a different party in control since it was created in 1974 (even my own pretty staunchly Tory area of Brentwood in Essex has had a change of control to the Liberal Democrats in all time).
However, this constituency is mainly British so postal vote fraud ect is not as likely as in some Labour areas. Postal voting should be restricted to the groups it was originally intended for. We really do not want habitual Labour and fake Conservative voters to decide the country’s political destiny whilst eating pizza and drinking beers watching Liverpool v Chelsea on the sofa.
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Claudius, the seat is very near Liverpool and before Thursday took its political inspiration from that city. Liverpool has large numbers of unthinking Labour voters who, to be brutally frank, think politics is rather like football whereby if you come from that city you vote Red ie Labour if you like Liverpool FC (the football club’s colour is Red) or Blue ie Tory if you prefer Everton FC (Everton uses the colour blue).
Put simply, too many voters in these places just stick to voting Labour or Tory in the manner of football supporters being loyal to ‘their’ clubs. They are creatures of habit in this way. Hopefully, this is beginning to change and Thursday’s result in Runcorn was a sign of that change.
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It is no accident that Liverpool contains the safest Labour seats of all. I can understand why your average Liverpudlian has no wish to vote fake Conservative what with all the insults the city has endured over the years from the likes of Boris ‘The Buffoon/Clown’ Johnson but I am bemused as to why Labour is still very strong in the city. Labour really has not done much for the city and its economic policies under people like Starmer are little different from the more ludicrous economic globalist libertarian ones of Thatcher.
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This could be peak Reform unless Farage and company work out some decent political philosophy to provide a framework for its policies. In particular, Reform must not go weak on its immigration policy
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John:
Yes. Reform is, of course, not much similar to me in ideology, it being pro-Jewish/Israel lobby, not willing to do whatever it takes to really make Britain a proper ethnostate, and too pro “free market” (though that may be changing).
Reform must not align itself with the rapidly-disintegrating “Conservative” Party. That would kill its distinctiveness and appeal stone-dead.
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Free market fundamentalism has had its day. Reheated Thatcherism (in that sense) has only a limited political appeal.
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John:
Yes. As a Russian contact said to me of Soviet socialism, as I pointed to the Stalin-era ceiling-paintings above (in the lobby of the old Ukraina Hotel in Moscow) in 1993, “that is an experiment that we do not wish to repeat“!…
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Its stance on immigration has clearly been the factor most responsible for its rise so no weakening of it will work and, if anything, it should get tougher.
Farage should not be tempted to have a more libertarian globalist economic stance. Most people in many Western countries are pragmatic about the economy and just want to see policies that work for the broad mass of the population ie they are centrist or even slightly left of centre on economic policy.
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It would be rather unwise to do that to the AfD. If the AfD were banned, the German voters might well turn to the even further to the ‘Right’ parties ie Die Heimat (The Homeland) which was formerly called the NPD or even Der Dritte Weg (The Third Path/Way).
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I was watching the German news coverage on YouTube about the AfD situation yesterday and lo and behold footage of Reform UK’s win in Runcorn and Helsby was also shown under the title of ‘the rise of Right-wing populism’ in Europe!🤣🤣🤣🤣😃😃😃
It seems as if the dreaded ‘Right-wing populists’ and ‘Trumpist’ imitators of Guardian readers’ nightmares are popping-up everywhere these days!🤣🤣🤣 Guardian readers are lauding Mark Carney’s recent ‘win’ in Canada whilst forgetting the fact he only ‘won’ by a MINORITY. Canada’s Trump, Pierre Poilievre, will be back soon and lead his Conservative Party to victory when Canada next goes to the polls which could be soon.
It is time Guardian journalists and readers woke-up and realised that open borders, anti-national, globalist values are slowly dying and the post WW2 world is being reshaped.
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