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On this day a year ago

Birmingham Erdington by-election

I had completely forgotten about the by-election at Birmingham Erdington, occasioned by the unexpected death of the sitting MP, Jack Dromey [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dromey] from sudden heart failure.

Birmingham Erdington has been a fairly safe Labour seat since 1945. In every election since then, Labour has won, with the Conservative Party in second place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Erdington_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections.

Even in the 1979 General Election that swept Margaret Thatcher to power, Labour held on in the constituency by a couple of points (46% to the Conservative’s 44.5%).

Labour’s highest point was in 1945 (60.8%), but it scored 58.8% in the Tony Blair “landslide” of 1997. Labour did almost as well (58%) in 2017, at a time when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader.

Labour’s vote share in 2019 fell back to 50.3%, and in the recent by-election rose to 55.5%.

The Conservative Party peaked, scoring 68.1%, in 1931, but fell back, apparently terminally, after Labour won the seat in 1945. The lowest point was reached in 2005 (22.8%). Since then, the Conservative vote has been in the 30-40% range (38.4% in 2017, 40.1% in 2019, and 36.3% in this by-election).

The by-election attracted 12 candidates, the highest number in the history of the constituency. but apart from the two main System parties, none retained the deposit. The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition [TUSC] topped the list at 2.1%.

Interesting to see the Greens and LibDems doing badly: Greens 1.4%, their worst result in the constituency since they first stood, in 2015.

The LibDems have pegged out, at least in this constituency. In the 2010 days of Cleggmania, they scored 16.2%. By 2015, after the Con Coalition, the same LibDem candidate could only manage 2.8%. That fell back further to 2% in 2017, recovered slightly to 3.7% in 2019, but fell again, disastrously, to a mere 1% in this by-election.

There were no social-national candidates, though the pseudo-nationalist “alt-Right” set-up, Reform UK (the reincarnation of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party), achieved 1.7% (4th place).

Overall, my view is that the by-election shows a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the electorate. The turnout was pitiful, a mere 27% (nearly half of that in 2019, and less than half of the 2017 turnout). Only just over a quarter of those eligible bothered to vote.

The Labour vote-share rose slightly, the Conservatives’ fell back slightly. The real winner was apathy or, perhaps, disgusted cold-shouldering of a fake “democracy”.

Incidentally (?), demographics may account for part of the result, in that the new MP is a West Indian, a Labour councillor and former NHS nurse, aged somewhere in her early sixties, who has called for a black uprising in the UK:

“Near the end of the 2022 by election campaign, remarks made by Hamilton in 2015 were uncovered by GB News where she suggested she was torn between a democratic vote and an uprising to enable black people to get what “we really deserve in this country”.^[4] The comments led to calls from some Conservative MPs for her to be suspended by the Labour Party, who responded saying the remarks were taken out of context.^[5]” [Wikipedia].

As I have repeatedly blogged, the Labour Party core vote is now the “blacks and browns” and/or the public service workers. That is now being reflected, increasingly, in Labour Party MPs too. Look at this one, a West Indian woman who is or was an NHS nurse.

In fact, the new MP, though increasingly typical of the Labour Party, is not typical of the constituency: “The constituency is predominantly white working class and very deprived.” [Wikipedia].

I do not see this result as betokening a Labour Party revival under Jewish-lobby puppet Keir Starmer. Unimpressive.

Ukraine

As far as can be gleaned from the msm, Russia’s glacial offensive is finally starting to take control of some major locations, such as the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which supplies a quarter of the electricity in Ukraine.

Slowly, the odds are moving in Russia’s favour. Cities are starting to be taken, albeit at a terrible cost in suffering and damage; strategic targets such as power plants are being captured. Food has pretty much run out in those cities east of the Dnieper still controlled by the Kiev regime.

I had not expected the Zelensky regime to last this long. However, the taking of Kiev, which has been delayed (perhaps deliberately, so that many of its inhabitants can flee, which must help the Russian side of this conflict), will probably soon happen. When it does, Zelensky and his cabal will flee, or be captured (or killed).

If Zelensky et al flee to Lvov, it raises the question (noted by me in past weeks) of whether Putin will try to take over the western two thirds of Ukraine as well. I had assumed not, thinking that any Lvov government would be weak, economically strapped, and unable to cause Putin many problems, even if recognized by the Western allies as the “legitimate” government of the whole of Ukraine de jure, even if a puppet government based in Kiev were to rule a third, perhaps nearly a half, of Ukraine, de facto.

Now, I am not so sure. Any Lvov government headed by Zelensky or his group would now be supplied with advanced weaponry by the Western allies. There would be a long and vulnerable front splitting Ukraine. The Lvov regime forces would be more motivated than those of the Russian occupation in the east.

On those premises, Putin might eventually decide to go for broke, and try to occupy, or at least devastate, the rest of Ukraine. He may calculate that he has little to lose. After all, Russia’s reputation in the world has (via the biased reportage of the Western msm, so be it) already now been trashed, and Russia’s stock, both metaphorically and literally, could scarcely fall any lower.

Historical note

“[William] Douglas-Home was assigned to the 7th Battalion of the Buffs, which was converted to tanks as the 141st Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps. In the Normandy campaign, the 141st Regiment was assigned to I Corps (a British formation) within the First Canadian Army. In August, First Canadian Army was directed to mop up the German forces cut off and trapped in various seaside ports in Normandy and Pas de Calais. In the first week of September 1944, the Allies moved against the port of Le Havre. A German garrison under Colonel Hermann-Eberhard Wildermuth was dug in on the hill overlooking the city. Wildermuth had been ordered by Hitler to defend Fortress Le Havre to the last man, and not to surrender.

When the Allied forces invested the city in advance of the planned aerial bombardment and subsequent assault, Wildermuth asked the British commander if the French civilians could be evacuated from the city, but that request was refused. Lieutenant (acting Captain) Douglas-Home was near Le Havre, awaiting the completion of the aerial bombardment. He was to serve as a liaison officer in Operation Astonia, the Allied attack on Le Havre. On the second day after the aerial bombardment had started, he learned of the German request to evacuate the civilians and the Allied refusal. The consequences of the bombardment were apparent to the waiting Allied forces and Douglas-Home refused to participate in the attack. He gave two reasons:

The unconditional surrender policy, which he thought compelled the enemy to fight to the end.
The refusal of civilian evacuation was morally unacceptable to him.
which created a moral obligation for Douglas-Home and he declined to participate...

The aerial bombardment of Le Havre lasted four nights, killed over 2,000 French civilians, 19 German soldiers and levelled the city. The Germans surrendered after two-days’ fighting and I Corps moved on to Boulogne, which was also subjected to a heavy aerial bombardment. At that time Douglas-Home, who had been placed under supervision (he did not consider himself at that time to have been “arrested”) wrote to the Maidenhead Advertiser and the publication of his letter in the newspaper prompted his formal arrest and detention.

Douglas-Home was charged at a Field General Court Martial held on 4 October 1944 that, when on active service, he disobeyed a lawful command given by his superior officer (contrary to Section 9 (2) of the Army Act 1881). He conducted his own defence. Regrettably neither the Field Court Martial nor Douglas-Home had a copy of the new edition of the Manual of Military Law, which had been prepared and published in April 1944 but not distributed to the troops in Normandy. Prior to April 1944 a British soldier accused of refusing to obey an order had no defence available that the order was illegal. Even had that been brought to the Court-Martial’s attention, the grounds of objection by Douglas-Home for refusing to obey Colonel Waddell’s order were rejected as he had to admit that the order, to act as a liaison officer, was not illegal. His argument, that he was being required to take part in an event which was morally indefensible, fell on deaf ears. He was convicted, and sentenced to be cashiered and to serve one year’s imprisonment with hard labour. The proceedings lasted two hours”.”

[Wikipedia]

Douglas-Home, later a playwright, was also the younger brother of the British Prime Minister of the early 1960s, Alec Douglas-Home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Douglas_Home.

So, there we have it. British invaders killed 2,000 French civilians in Le Havre (and another 3,000 in Caen, and many elsewhere). That is without even counting the perhaps 800,000 German civilians killed in 1939-45 by Allied bombing alone.

As for the Americans, both in WW2 and up to the present time, we need not even go there…

The Russian invaders of Ukraine, if sinners, are not the only sinners.

Tweets seen

Ecce the quality of the American top leadership (and the general level of the American public)…

More tweets seen

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Yet another “death from suspected heart attack” of someone not old, and in apparent good health. There seems to be an absolute epidemic (?) of such deaths. I wonder whether this cricketer, like most of those reported on, was “vaccinated”, “boosted” etc? Odds-on he was.

Strange…I do not recall Brown saying anything like that when NATO bombed Belgrade, or attacked a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa…

Looks like he has a nice house for himself and his weird wife. Pity that he impoverished so many British people.

Nick Griffin seems to suffer from the same ideological confusion, if that is indeed why he seems to be singing the same song.

The city in question has been called “Kiev” for centuries. Not “Kyiv” or, as the BBC and Sky now seem to think is correct, “Keeev“.

I am rather outside the exact debate, on the personal level, having not eaten meat since the age of 21 or so (1978), though I still occasionally had chicken, quail etc until about 2005, as well as products such as foie gras.

A debate which should engage all those still buying and eating meat.

Leaving partisan politics aside, one has to respect those who sacrifice their time, effort, and sometimes lives, to help animals, particularly those suffering because of wars or conflicts in the human sphere.

As previously blogged, Russia has to control the Black Sea littoral. That must put the focus on Odessa. In fact, about 25%-30% of the population there is Russian, though I daresay that they will be keeping their heads down.

At the same time, the most important Russian objective, psychologically, must be Kiev, even if the Zelensky regime flees to Lvov.

Hitler’s biggest mistake or failure on the Eastern Front in the Second World War was to try to take Moscow, Leningrad, and the Ukraine, simultaneously, in 1941. The better idea would have been first of all to decapitate the Soviet regime by an all-out drive on Moscow.

In 1941, the German advance came within a relatively few miles of Moscow. In fact, the point of furthest advance, at Khimki, is now Moscow outer suburbia.

I recall, on my first visit there, in 1993, being astonished at passing the “tank trap” memorial now there, en route from the old Sheremetyevo airport into Moscow, and seeing how close it was to the city. I think that my driver arrived at or near the Kremlin only about 20 minutes after we passed that memorial.

Moscow in 1941 was in a state of panic for days, as the Germans advanced. High-ranking officials fled with their families. Many have said that, had the Germans been able to land even a modest parachute force in those days, the Soviet regime would have crumbled. It was never to be.

The Russians must take Kiev while the preponderance of military force is on their side. They will then be able to link up with forces near Dnipro (former Dnepropetrovsk) along the river Dnieper. If they can do that, then all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper will fall.

Gavin Williamson

Williamson has been knighted. Strange.

My Deadhead MPs blog piece about Williamson (now updated):

Late tweets

Russia? Siberia? And they say the English are eccentric!

Late music