[“A senior member of Hope Not Hate was convicted of paedophile sex offences yesterday.
Hope Not Hate is a far-left group connected to the Labour Party that attacks Labour’s political opponents by smearing them as “racist” or “far-right”. Hope Not Hate’s other senior members include Matthew Collins, who was filmed admitting to attacking women with a hammer.
The boss, Nick Lowles, is little better – at the height of the Southport riots he shared incendiary misinformation claiming that British rioters were attacking Muslim women with acid. A straight up lie that likely encouraged Muslim men to attack Brits. Even when advised by the police that he was wrong, Lowles did not delete his post. Unlike people on the right, he was never prosecuted. The Hope Not Hate paedo, Liron Woodcock-Velleman, was also in the Labour Party. He campaigned with Sir Keir Starmer and was described as an “ally” of Sadiq Khan.
Hope Not Hate receive taxpayer funding. Their staff spend long hours online using anonymous identities to try and catch any opponent of the Labour Party saying something they can smear as “bigoted”. Were taxpayers’ funds used in the course of Liron’s paedophilia? Did Hope Not Hate’s technologies and techniques facilitate his child abuse? This organisation stinks. It should have been closed down years ago due to the fact that it’s basically the attack arm of the Labour Party, using public funds to smear their critics and opponents. (And they paint their activity as just “combatting hate” when it’s blatantly politically aligned and senior members have spoken at Communist events promoting an ideology that killed and tortured millions). Of course, Hope Not Hate are lauded by the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian. But now that senior members have been outed as committing horrific crimes – misogynist hammer attacks, paedophilia – its position is untenable. They need to be shut down and investigated. What else are Hope Not Hate hiding?“]
Another member of the “Hope not Hate” cabal is Patrik “The Rat” Hermannson.
The most shocking aspect of “Hope not Hate” is that the UK taxpayer is funding many of its activities. Other donors include the billionaire Rausing family mugs (and pro-Zionists).
North Korea has launched presumably two ballistic missiles, which fell down in the Sea of Japan, Kyodo reported, citing Japanese government sources:https://t.co/bsT2UVJ3QEpic.twitter.com/aSGBmF97KX
Israel is the hub of a worldwide web of crime, exploitation, and illicit control over whole populations via corrupt executives and legislatures. First remove that central hub, then the web generally.
Defiant gigachad energy: kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in flip-flops and track suit, was taken to a Brooklyn pre-trial jail — and still wished everyone good night and a happy New Year. pic.twitter.com/DQLxrK6SbY
I support neither Maduro nor Trump. Having said that, Trump’s USA is the only power on Earth constantly looking for opportunities to increase its global control by military means. China has not yet reached that point.
China could sink 10 US carriers in 20 minutes—Hegseth
👉 The US loses against China “every time” inside the Pentagon war games, says US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. pic.twitter.com/x3oqtC2Q4z
Interesting, but always remember “to win without war— that is the supreme excellence” [Sun Tzu].
You will never hear a Chinese leader directly threaten Europe with war. No, but Europe is flooded with Chinese people. Few are agents of Chinese Intelligence. They do not have to be. This is a long term project for China. They want to take over slowly, almost by osmosis.
The same applies to Chinese influence in Russia, especially in the East of Siberia and, particularly, the former Soviet Far East. The Chinese do not threaten, do not act belligerently; they simply trade and, where permitted, move into Russian territory as business people, farmers etc.
It’s very powerful with all the people who saw this going on, and knowing my upcoming law suit, and said nothing.
Not sure what tweeter Sophie Meaden means by “law suit“. Is she being prosecuted? If so, by the State, or maybe by the malicious Jew-Zionist troublemakers of the “Campaign Against Antisemitism”? Or is she herself suing someone or some organization? I do not know.
Meanwhile, Starmer-stein’s misgovernment is moving migrant-invaders into British social housing, thus preventing British people, including poor families and even pensioners, from getting a home. Incredibly, the foreign invaders are being prioritized ahead of needy and desperate British people.
My Sunday Times piece: We face another mediocre year for growth unless consumers rein back some of their caution and appetite for saving, and increase spending significantly:
People are trying to save because the safety net of social security (renamed, significantly, in the American word “welfare”), has been radically cut back over the past 20 years. Savings are a security blanket.
In fact, the so-called “austerity” policies of David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne etc shrank the real British economy hugely from 2010-2015 and even later, and the recovery from that was ruined by the wholly unnecessary measures taken in response to the “Covid” panicdemic/scamdemic nonsense (“lockdowns” etc).
Late tweets
The public would rather have Jeremy Corbyn as Chancellor than Rachel Reeves, a poll has found
Starmer may be bad but he is also sad, in his own person a sad commentary on the political, or socio-political, pygmies that purport to rule this country. Starmer-stein, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, Lammy, and the rest. Most corrupt, most pretty stupid and uncultured under a surface veneer, and mostly members of Labour Friends of Israel.
BAN Hope not Hate. Ontop of their usual shit, Liron Woodcock-Velleman who worked as a political organiser for Hope Not Hate has pleaded guilty to child sex offences. Is anyone surprised? pic.twitter.com/TdMA1azNfD
I have not seen the Panorama programme which the msm is going mad about today (Thursday 11 July 2019). I see that the same old crowd of “usual suspects” is on Twitter banging on about about how “anti-Semitic” Labour or the Labour leadership is (my response? “If only!”). Those tweeting are 90% Jews, 10% non-Jew doormat types.
The “claque” is doing what it does best, which is to create a storm in the msm and on Twitter, all either co-ordinated or effectively co-ordinated. The aim? Ultimately, to wrest back control of Labour.
The “Zionist” element has for a long time now strongly influenced Britain’s main System parties, meaning the Conservatives, Labour and (to a lesser extent) the LibDems and, formerly, Liberal Party. That influence, seen since the 19th Century, manifest in the 1917 Balfour Declaration etc and in the covert support for Churchill and his war-with-Germany policy of the 1930s and early 1940s, became even more open when the UK and France conspired with Israel to invade and occupy the Suez Canal area in 1956. It moved from influence to control after 1989-90, when Bush snr. proclaimed the New World Order and the major Western governments became openly “ZOG” (Zionist Occupation Government).
John Major (Conservative Friends of Israel member and with a secret mistress, Edwina Currie, a Jewess) took over the Conservative Party as leader and the government as Prime Minister; Tony Blair (possibly part-Jew; very fervent Labour Friends of Israel member) replaced Major in 1997. He was surrounded by Jews both as Labour Party leader and as Prime Minister.
When, against all the odds, Labour’s leadership fell to Jeremy Corbyn, immediately a huge Jewish (Zionist) and/or Zionist-led “claque” protest erupted. Most Labour MPs were and are still “under control” to a greater or lesser extent. A few had even been been (or were later) exposed as actual agents of Israel.
Ruth Smeeth MP, a Jewess from a Jewish part-gangster family background, and formerly head of public affairs for the UK end of the Israel public relations effort called BICOM, was exposed by Wikileaks as a “confidential contact” of the U.S. Embassy in London.
Joan Ryan, not Jewish (though I have not discovered whether or not she has a part-Jewish background) was another one exposed. She was ordered, or agreed, to channel a million pounds from Israeli Government funds in order to buy or “take down” selected MPs:
Wait wait wait. Hold on. How is an Israeli official (presumably embassy worker) allowed to walk in to Labour national conference and offer £1,000,000 to topple some MP’s?
[above, Joan Ryan MP treacherously plots with Israeli intelligence and political officer Shai Masot, who is also a reserve officer in the Israeli Navy, to receive a one million pound pro-Israel, pro-Jew slush fund to corrupt Westminster politics]
Joan Ryan, facing deselection as Labour candidate after having been found out, joined the doomed pro-Israel “centrist”-label party, “Change UK” or “CHUKUP”. Ruth Smeeth stayed in the Labour Party (either because ordered to or for reasons of personal careerism and money); and both are still MPs.
* Alex Richardson, employee of Labour Friends of Israel's Joan Ryan. He and his boss fabricated antisemitism at Labour conference, privately admitting "nothing antisemitic was said": https://t.co/gmsoorfHpspic.twitter.com/re9JwoggM2
Corbyn has faced a wall of basically Jewish hatred and opposition since he became leader. Attempts to unseat him, vilify him and his family etc. At the higher levels, this is not about Corbyn’s support for Palestine, and not about “anti-Semitism”, but about the wish of highly-placed Jewish persons and organizations to control both main UK System parties, having lost control of one.
Not that the Jewish-Zionist control and/or influence over Labour has gone. Many pro-Israel and pro-Jew Labour MPs or ex-Labour MPs are still in Parliament: mentally-unstable John Woodcock, not only pro-Israel and pro-China (both “donated” to him, by the way) was one of the worst, but he is now deselected and out of Labour, having been caught out as a sex pest and nuisance, and has no chance of staying in Parliament once there is a general election. Others remain and have been, like the rest of the “claque”, active on Twitter today and yesterday:
To every jewish member brave enough to tell their story. To every staff member brave enough to tell their story. We hear you. We believe you. We stand with you in refusing to accept antisemitism. Please join @JewishLabour to show you are too.
I know some of the staffers on tonight’s Panorama. They joined the Labour Party, like me and most party members, because they hate racism as much as they hate poverty. A statement accusing them of having “political axes to grind” is deeply wrong and indefensible
Terrible to see vile abuse suffered by our Jewish comrades & the agonies of staff trying to kick racists out of our party, undermined at every turn by Leader’s office. #BBCPanorama
— Mary Creagh for Coventry East (@MaryCreagh_) July 10, 2019
Labour MP Wes Streeting says party leadership has a “full spin operation” against #bbcpanorama programme airing Wed 9pm
"This is a crisis of leadership, we're asking Jeremy Corbyn to show leadership" says MP Louise Ellman, who was featured on the #BBCPanorama documentary last night on accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour partyhttps://t.co/bXdydZE8Wspic.twitter.com/c6ga3RAFZb
I am not going to turn a blind eye to anti-Jewish racism. We can sort this mess. But we need a full, independent disciplinary system, and powers to auto-exclude prima facie cases of anti-semitism. Only then can Labour start to rebuild trust with the Jewish community. @BBCr4todaypic.twitter.com/9KWftPcIr9
All, as far as I know, members of Labour Friends of Israel…
Why are they still Labour MPs?
I should make my own position clear. I could probably best be labelled “social national”. I have never been a Labour Party member, supporter or even voter. To that extent I might be termed objective. I oppose Zionism (as well as Islamism). I look to the emergence of a real social national party and movement, to “safe zones” within the UK, and to the eventual triumph of social nationalism in the UK.
My attitude to Corbyn (blogged about several times previously) is that it was fated that he become Labour leader (e.g. nominated by exactly the minimum number of MPs required, many of whom actually opposed him and later voted against him!). I do not believe that he is a particularly good Labour leader, as such; in fact he is really not a leader at all. He is poorly-educated and has little knowledge of the world, of history (even modern history and the politics of the 20th Century, supposedly his special interest). His ex-wives say that he scarcely if ever reads a book (something that he has in common with Boris-Idiot, “our” new or soon-to-be Prime Minister), and is certainly no intellectual.
I like the fact that Labour is now less under the Jewish-Zionist heel than it was, though I note that Corbyn and (worse) McDonnell feel the need to pay occasional lip-service to the “holocaust” mythus and fakery. Strange pathology: the Zionists are trying to kill them, yet they go along with such nonsense, which is the biggest weapon the Zionists have, bigger even than their nuclear arsenal! Pretty stupid.
Likewise, Corbyn and much of Corbyn-Labour will talk endlessly about economic exploitation by Jews in Israel-Palestine, but say that to mention the similar exploitation by Jews in the UK, France or elsewhere is “anti-Semitic”. How inconsistent. How silly.
This latest “anti-Semitism” noise (for that is all it is) in the msm and in social media will only destroy Corbyn and his advisers if he and they allow that to happen. I blogged before about this: if you give “them” an inch, they take a mile (or should that be “pound”?…).
Labour’s biggest problem is not “anti-Semitism” (in fact, doubling down on what little there is might get the Labour Party more votes), and is not even the plain treachery of many of its own MPs (starting near the top with Tom Watson, a complete doormat for the Jewish-Zionist element), but is structural in terms of constituencies and demographics: the fact that Labour votes are increasingly concentrated in relatively few constituencies; the fact that Labour’s core vote is now not the (vanishing) English “working classes”, which are not now voting Labour very much (the Scottish equivalent having already decamped), but the “blacks and browns” etc, along with, speaking generally, those who live one way or another off State funds (public service workers, the unemployed, the disabled): see https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/07/09/the-day-that-the-labour-party-committed-suicide/
It may be that, when a real social national party emerges, a good part of the present rank and file Labour Party will be ready to support it, if not brainwashed by the whole “holocaust” mythus propaganda. To that extent, these contrived storms in a Westminster teacup could be useful in awakening people to the menace of alien control and the need for true social nationalism.
Notes
LFI parliamentary officer Michael Rubin, admitted LFI receives funds from Israeli Embassy: “We do work really, really closely together". He said, a lot of work is “behind the scenes" & “publicly we try to keep the LFI as a separate identity to the Embassy"https://t.co/XSU0WFyXLGpic.twitter.com/1XxziYhcQ7
— Fanxxxxtastic-Trada (@Fanxxxxtastic) July 16, 2019
Update, 15 October 2019
Below, “@Rattus2384”, a long-term Jew Zionist online stalker and troll, does what he does best: sadistically smirking over the difficulties caused by Jews to those who are not (((their))) doormats. “Rattus” is Stephen Applebaum (presumably the name started off as “Apfelbaum” —apple tree— a century or so ago). Applebaum (who also tweets as “@grubstreetsteve”), is a one-time scribbler and soi-disant film critic who has more recently been described as a “house husband”. He is an active member of Zionist groups such as the malicious fake “charity” called the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” or “CAA”.
Well, here we are, a year on. The Jews did manage to retake control of what is left of the Labour Party. Corbyn stepped down after the 2019 General Election debacle, which saw the Conservative Party achieve a Commons majority of 80.
That Commons majority was achieved by default. The Conservative Party share of the vote scarcely increased vis a vis 2017 (an increase of one point), and relatively few 2017 Labour voters switched to the Conservative Party (though some did, in formerly solid Labour constituencies) but far more simply walked, i.e. abstained. The graphic below explains where the voters went in 2019:
In short, the Conservatives did not win, not on their own merits, but Labour did lose. The result speaks for itself: a Conservative majority of 80 in the Commons.
The Labour Party is now led by Keir Starmer, former Director of Public Prosecutions, probably a freemason, certainly a member of Labour Friends of Israel. His wife is a Jewish lawyer, his children are being brought up as Jewish.
Starmer has appointed other Labour Friends of Israel members as members of the Shadow Cabinet. Rachel Reeves and others.
As for the Jewish lobby MPs mentioned in my original blog post, many are now no longer MPs: Tom Watson, Ruth Smeeth, Anna Turley, Joan Ryan (now 65-y-o), Mary Creagh, John Woodcock— all gone.
Sadly, almost all, as far as I can discover, have been (((found))) new and lucrative positions:
Tom Watson is now head of “UK Music“, a trade body formerly headed by Michael Dugher, another Zionist-lobby pro-Israel doormat ex-MP.
Anna Turley became head of the Co-operative Party (in effect, a Labour offshoot) in 2019. A sinecure. She also “won” £75,000 libel damages from the trade union, Unite, in December 2019.
Mary Creagh likewise has found a well-paid niche as head of “Living Streets“, a charity funded largely by government monies (her salary is £100,000+).
John Woodcock, exposed as a pathetic sex pest and nut, has become a government-paid snoop, focussing on the so-called “far-Right”.
Update, 13 January 2025
Well, the world has turned a few times. Of those mentioned above, John Woodcock was made “Lord Walney” by “Conservative” PM “Boris” Johnson and, until recently, was making money snooping on “the far right”; now dismissed.
Ruth Smeeth, the part-Jew Israeli and US paid agent exposed by Wikileaks, has also now been “elevated” and, ludicrously, sits in the Lords as “Baroness” Anderson. She is now married to a very unpleasant Labour MP called Gareth Snell.
Anna Turley lost her seat, but managed to blag a few lucrative posts until she got back into the old MP racket in 2024, and is now Minister without Portfolio in the doomed Starmer-stein Labour Friends of Israel (mis-) government.
Stella Creasy remained an MP.
Mary Creagh lost her seat in 2019, but got back into Parliament in 2024, and is now a Starmer-stein minister.
As for “Rattus”/”@grubstreetsteve”, aka Stephen Applebaum or Apfelbaum, his relentless sadistic and malicious Twitter trolling came to an end in early 2023, when he “went up the chimney”. Some of his last few tweets attacked me and this blog. Bye-bye blackbird…
Well, I got it wrong vis a vis the headline result. I thought that the Brexit Party would win and indeed enjoy a near-walkover. In the event, Brexit Party had to accept a close 2nd place. As the Americans are supposed to say, “close but no cigar”.
The result of the Peterborough by-election
The result was:
Labour 10,484 votes, a vote share of 31% (down from 48% in 2017);
Brexit Party 9,801 (29%);
Conservative Party 7,243 (21%, down from 46% in 2017);
LibDems 4,159;
Green 1,035;
UKIP 400.
All others, nine in number, received fewer than 200 votes each, most below 100.
In retrospect, my own prediction was badly misled by the betting (which even on the day showed Brexit Party as very heavily odds-on) and by the large and impressive meetings Farage held in the city (one with 2,000 in the auditorium).
I was right about the Conservatives coming third and the LibDems in fourth etc. Still, irritating to have misread the main contest, close as it was. No cigar for me, either.
Why did Brexit Party lose at Peterborough?
In my previous blogging on the specific subject of this by-election, and on other topics, I have made the point that the UK now has cities (including London) where the white population (let alone the British white population) is less than 50%. Peterborough still has, supposedly, about 80% white population, but at least 10% are from other parts of Europe. The white British part of the population is below 70% of the whole, possibly as low as 60%.
There is also the point that the city and constituency are not delineated the same; part of the city is not within the constituency.
When a city has more than a token non-white presence, a nationalist party of any kind will struggle to win elections there, and that applies even if (as is the case with Brexit Party) the party is not social-national, has no racial or ethnic principles or policies, and even if (as with Brexit Party) some of its actual candidates are black or brown.
It is not only that, in general, the “blacks and browns” will not vote for even a mildly (and notionally) “patriotic” party such as Brexit Party (let alone a social-national party) because they fear that party. The point is that the vast majority of ethnic minority voters have little or no real connection with Britain, its society, its history, its culture etc. They are, in a word, alien to Britain. Look at how even those adhering to the far-longer-standing Jewish community are always “threatening” (“promising”?) to flee from the UK if their demands are not met. They are not really rooted here; the roots of the “blacks and browns” are shallower yet.
Thus, in Peterborough, one can surmise that few blacks, Muslims etc voted Brexit Party. Why should they? Why would they? Brexit Party is hardly the British National Party. It offers no implied threat to the minorities, but it is broadly conservative-nationalist in ethos, and that is enough for the ethnic minorities to vote elsewhere, mainly for Labour.
I have been blogging and tweeting for several years about how the UK part of the “Great Replacement” (of whites by non-whites) means that elections become a no-win situation in much of the UK. That was true, for example, in the Stoke-on-Trent Central constituency in 2017. In the by-election of that year, Gareth Snell, a spotty unpleasant Twitter troll, was the Labour candidate. Paul Nuttall stood for UKIP. Snell beat Nuttall, Labour beat UKIP, by only 2,620 votes. The Pakistani Muslim community locally, numbering over 6,000, almost all (always) vote Labour, a cohesion enforced by dodgy postal ballots and “community” exhortations (eg in local mosques) to vote Labour. Local Muslims 6,000+, Labour majority 2,620…
In other words, without those 6,000 or more Muslims (and others), Nuttall and UKIP would have won Stoke-on-Trent Central easily. As it was, UKIP faded and, at the General Election of 2017, Labour won again, against the Conservatives in 2nd place. Labour won by 3,897 votes. Point made, I think.
Now look at Peterborough. The postal votes were very high (who knows who really fills in the forms?) but even leaving that aside, we see that Brexit Party lost to Labour by 683, in a constituency where the non-European ethnic minorities number perhaps as many as 20,000. “It was the w**s wot won it!”, to paraphrase the famous Sun headline of 1992.
Non-white ethnic minority population in the constituency—10,000-20,000. Votes for Labour in the by-election—10,484
In fact, Labour only won Peterborough by 607 votes at the 2017 General Election, thus propelling useless African ex-“solicitor” Fiona Onasanya into Parliament.
The Future
Labour is, as I have often noted before, now the party, in terms of core vote, of the ethnic minorities (excluding Jews), of the metropolitan “socially liberal” types, of public service workers or officials. The real hard core is mainly the blacks and browns, and the public service people. Labour struggles to win votes wider than that core. Labour won Peterborough in the by-election on a vote-share of only 31%.
Brexit Party has suffered a bad blow. Had it won at Peterborough, its momentum would have carried on. Now, its future seems unclear. It may continue and may yet win seats, but Peterborough was a very good chance despite the ethnic minority vote, and Brexit Party fluffed it.
The LibDems almost quadrupled their 2017 3.3% vote to about 12%, but are still well behind the 2010 days of “Cleggmania”, in which they scored nearly 20% at Peterborough. My opinion? There will be no LibDem revival, at least not on a big scale. Most voters are getting angry. “Centrism” is not the flavour of the times.
The Conservatives were the big losers, as in the EU elections. They achieved what might be regarded as, had it been elsewhere, a respectable 3rd place on a vote-share of 21%, 7,243 votes, only 3,000 or so behind the Labour victor; but Peterborough has mainly been a Conservative seat since 1945. It had a Conservative MP as recently as 2 years ago.
If this result were to be replicated nationwide, there would be little left of the Conservative bloc in the House of Commons. Seats would fall either to Brexit Party, or to Labour (or in a few cases, to LibDems).
Final words
Strategically, a Brexit Party win would have been my preference, in that, down the line, it would expedite the break-up of the “LibLabCon” “three main parties” scam. Having said that, the Conservatives were rightly cast down, while at least the Labour MP elected seems to be to some extent against the Jewish Zionists (though pretty invertebrate when “challenged” on that).
Below, illustrating my point that Labour’s core vote is now “the blacks and browns”
Brilliant canvassing sessions in Peterborough for our fantastic @UKLabour candidate @LisaForbes_ with colleagues from Peterborough and our extended #LabourFamily
In 2008, Labour activist Tariq Mahmood was jailed for trying to rig an election in Peterborough with postal votes. Here he is last night wearing a Labour rosette at the Peterborough by-election count, and he's been photographed with their candidate @LisaForbes_. Very disturbing!
Labour did not do well at the EU elections: 3rd-placed with 2,347,255 votes, a 13.7% vote share, and 10 MEPs (down from 20). Labour only got two-thirds as many votes as the LibDems, and far less than half as many votes as Brexit Party attracted.
Remain whiners are saying that that happened because Labour did not proclaim itself as anti-Brexit and/or pro a second EU referendum. That is a doubtful proposition, in that it seems that more Labour voters voted Leave than Remain in 2016. What probably is correct is in saying that Labour’s message was mixed, or that Labour and Corbyn were “fence-sitting” re. Brexit (true, but what else can he do?). Parties that had a clear Brexit message (Brexit Party, LibDems, Greens) did better than those with mixed messages (Conservative and Labour). In the Russian proverb, “if you chase two hares, you won’t catch one”.
True, Change UK and UKIP had clear messages either way on Brexit and both failed miserably, but in the case of UKIP, Brexit Party simply took its votes and was seen as the bandwagon on which to jump; Change UK was just seen as a joke (there was something of that in UKIP too, it having joined with the “alt-Right” wastes of space “Sargon of Akkad” Carl Benjamin, “Prison Planet” Paul Watson and “Count Dankula” Mark Meechan).
Labour did not come in 1st place in any of the EU constituencies and, in the 5 constituencies where it came 2nd, was far behind Brexit Party (and typically with less than half of the votes of Brexit Party), with the sole exception of London, where Labour came 2nd to the LibDems (23.9% vote, LibDems on 27.2%).
Labour’s campaign was weak, and the Jewish-Zionist element was, as always, still there, sniping from cover at Corbyn and his (as far as I can see) very limited if even existent “anti-Semitism”.
Labour’s best argument in respect of Westminster elections has been, for the past 9 years, that it is not the Conservative Party. That trend has continued and strengthened under Corbyn. Is that enough?
True, Labour has policies designed to appeal to the middle-of-the-road voter (public ownership of some utilities, rail lines etc, a fairer deal for tenants, promises of more money for NHS etc).
On the other hand, if a voter wants to really give the Conservatives a kick, particularly in usually-Conservative-voting areas or in marginal Con-LibDem (Westminster) constituencies, that angry former Labour voter or floating voter might well do better to vote Brexit Party rather than Labour, because in strongly Conservative areas, Labour has no chance anyway in most years, whereas the LibDems are often the second party in such areas. Such a voter could (obviously) just vote LibDem straight off. Many voters, though, if there is a 3-way Con-LibDem-Brexit Party split (realistically), may want to vote Brexit Party rather than LibDem in the hope that a BP candidate can come through the middle to win, or because the LibDems enabled the 2010-2015 “coalition” government.
As to the impact of Brexit Party on Labour seats in the North and Midlands, I should assess it as potentially very damaging, but difficult to quantify. It is not just that Corbyn is said to be unpopular. It is also a question of Labour’s failure to stand up for (real) British people, for white neighbourhoods and communities. Labour failed to stem mass immigration and in fact encouraged it (of course, we now know from a whistleblower that Labour Jews such as Barbara Roche, and Phil Woolas, deliberately imported millions of non-European immigrants in order to destroy our race and culture).
There is also the connected fact that Labour never even admitted the nature and extent of the sexual exploitation of young girls by Pakistani gangs across the country, and particularly Northern England. In fact, Labour covered up the crimes, assisted by Common Purpose organization members in the police and in local councils.
The Labour voters who voted Green in the EU elections (held under proportional voting) will mostly return in a Westminster election (held under FPTP voting) because in the Westminster election, a Green vote is a wasted vote, without doubt.
If Brexit Party can take away 10% or more of what would otherwise be the Conservative vote, the Conservative Party is badly damaged (as when UKIP got 12% in 2015). If Brexit Party can get an overall 20%, the Conservative Party is toast except in a few very safe seats. Labour voters should therefore (whatever they think of Farage and his party) vote Brexit Party and not Labour, unless Labour is in a very strong position to win in any particular seat.
Labour has a good chance of forming a minority government or even a (small?) majority one if a general election is held soon, meaning in 2019, maybe 2020. The Conservatives are despised, divided, and weakened both internally and by the upstart Brexit Party. I blogged recently about how the Conservatives might try to limp on to 2022, when the reduction in MP numbers to 600 and accompanying boundary changes will cost Labour as many as 30 MPs. Much depends also on whether Brexit Party is a flash in the pan or a growing menace to the Conservatives.
I wrote the following after the Stoke-on-Trent by-election of 2017:
“Labour has been declining for years. Corbyn is both symptom and cause. The disappearance of the industrial proletariat has swept away the bedrock underneath Labour, replacing it by the sand of the “precariat”. Labour imported millions of immigrants, who are now breeding. The social landscape becomes volatile. The political landscape too.”
The tweet below, from the Peterborough by-election, illustrates my often-posted belief that the Labour core vote is now largely composed of the “blacks and browns”:
Brilliant canvassing sessions in Peterborough for our fantastic @UKLabour candidate @LisaForbes_ with colleagues from Peterborough and our extended #LabourFamily
In other words, Labour is now the party of the blacks and browns.
Yes, l too heard that admission by a reporter that the Labour Party R pinning their hopes on the mu*lim vote to win the Peterborough by-election! As suspected, it appears that the Labour Party now only represent the metropolitan elites & the mu*lim vote, no longer working class!
— WarriorQueen 🇬🇧 🇺🇲 #MAGA2024 (@WarriorqueenThe) June 6, 2019
Update, 21 September 2019
…from the Independent, “reporting” on beach patrols at Dover; all too typical of the sort of persons now prominent in “Labour” and what is left of the trade unions:
“Riccardo La Torre, firefighter and Eastern Region Secretary of the Fire Brigade Union, branded the coast patrol “despicable” and said: “These have-a-go, racist vigilantes have no place in any kind of enforcement or emergency activities and will only serve to make conditions and tensions worse.”
So “Riccardo La Torre” (que?), a regional secretary of the Fire Brigade Union, thinks that migrant invaders from Africa and the Middle East are “working class people”, who are “trying to get to safety”?!
Safety from, er, France? There you have in a nutshell, the craziness that is much of “Labour” now. Alien migrant-invaders are “working class people”, who should be allowed to occupy the UK at will (and be subsidized too)! Note the fag-end “Marxism”, trying to shoehorn the facts into some 1980s polytechnic back-of-postcard Marxism-Leninism.
The by-elections in Stoke Central and Copeland have been held. The public relations people for Labour (UKIP seems to have no public relations section) are still trying to spin positives out of the Stoke result and even the Copeland defeat. The time has come to look to the future based on what can be taken from these by-elections.
I blogged before the poll that, if UKIP failed to win Stoke Central, that that would surely be the end or at least beginning of the end for it as a serious contender. I have also blogged and tweeted for 18 months my view that UKIP peaked in 2014. I have no reason to change those views now.
As a candidate, Paul Nuttall was fairly poor, not resilient, not intelligent, not really passionate enough politically. The UKIP organization or administration of the campaign also seemed poor. Overall, as in the past, UKIP seemed to be afraid to really set the campaign alight. The law being what it now is, UKIP could hardly have copied the successful 1960s Smethwick Conservative by-election candidate whose posters said “if you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour”, but UKIP seemed to want to bypass the race/culture question entirely. There was no bite to the UKIP campaign.
The Labour candidate at Stoke Central, Gareth Snell, might fairly be described as “a poorly-educated and spotty Twitter troll, living mainly if not entirely off his allowances and expenses as a local council leader, who seems never to have had a non-political job (except a trade union one of some kind)”. In some respects he was a worse candidate than Paul Nuttall.
One has to bear in mind the heavily-industrial, heavily-Labour-voting history of Stoke-on-Trent. Labour has always had a built-in advantage there. The Conservative candidate, Jack Brereton, though looking like a schoolboy, did well to come a close third to Labour and UKIP, though in fact the Conservative vote increased by only a modest 1.8 points over the 2015 result.
Apathy or hostile apathy was the real winner in Stoke Central. 62% of the electorate did not vote. No party energized them to come out to vote for it.
As to Copeland, the main point that leaps out, apart from the obvious Labour car crash, is the poor performance of UKIP.
Future View
UKIP
UKIP surely must be finished now. It started in 1993 and in the nearly 24 years since then has failed to win a single Westminster seat, save for that of former Conservative MP Douglas Carswell, who is really just a Brexit Conservative and “free market” globalist.
UKIP would have been in a far better position had it won even a couple of seats at the 2015 General Election, but, in the irritating phrase, “we are where we are”. Theresa May’s Brexit policy has “shot UKIP’s fox” on the EU.
That leaves immigration, race and culture. UKIP now seems to have many spokesmen who are not of European race, so UKIP is not even offering the UK a white persona, a white country, if you like.
The conclusion is clear: UKIP is pointless, hopeless and must go.
Labour
Labour has been declining for years. Corbyn is both symptom and cause. The disappearance of the industrial proletariat has swept away the bedrock underneath Labour, replacing it by the sand of the “precariat”. Labour imported millions of immigrants, who are now breeding. The social landscape becomes volatile. The political landscape too.
The elimination of “socialism” from Labour led to focus-group rudderlessness, surely personified by Tony Blair, who has no principles, no real ideology, just careerism, self-seeking and politically-correct non-thinking. Labour became a party made in Blair’s image. It has no real ideology any more, not even social-democracy.
By 2020, the House of Commons will consist of 600 MPs, reduced from the current 650. Labour is currently at about 25% in the opinion polls and it is likely that, in 2020, Labour will have between 100 and 200 MPs in the House. Labour cannot now form even a coalition or minority government. It will slowly crumble.
The Future Beyond 2020
A new social nationalist party must be formed. It must be ideologically clear, administratively disciplined, capable of gaining trust and credibility. When a crisis comes, that small party may be able to seize control, as has happened before in history.
Update, 23 April 2019
I am updating because there has been much water under the bridge in the past 2 years and 2 months. Labour did fail to become the largest party in the Commons at the 2017 General Election, held a few months after the above was written. However, the Conservatives lost ground. Labour has trailed in the opinion polls since I wrote the above blog post, but just recently has managed to come back, not really on its own merit but because the Conservatives under Theresa May have had a complete car crash in several respects, especially Brexit. Labour has been sitting on the fence, not exactly a “cunning plan” but effective enough…
As for the planned reduction of MP numbers to 600 (from 650), that will not now occur.
Update, 6 December 2020
I just noticed that my prediction of Labour MP-strength in the House of Commons (100-200 by 2020) was right: the Labour Party now has 200 MPs (201, if presently-suspended Jeremy Corbyn is included).
At date of writing, and despite the appalling incompetence of the Boris Johnson government, Labour under Jewish lobby puppet Keir Starmer is still trailing a few points behind the Conservative Party.
The Reform candidate came second, with 24.2%. The Conservative vote slumped to 17.6%.
It is not unlikely that Reform will triumph next time, looking at the present opinion polling nationwide.
Incidentally, Snell is now married to half-Jewish former MP Ruth Smeeth, the Labour Friends of Israel member and alleged agent for both Israel and USA, who now sits in the degraded House of Lords as “Baroness Anderson”, having been “ennobled” by Conservative Friends of Israel former PM, “Boris”-idiot. What price “democracy”?
in which I predicted a very close race. In the latter post I suggested that UKIP and Paul Nuttall could finally crack it and defeat Labour in a former Labour heartland. That post was written on 26 January, since which date Paul Nuttall and UKIP have run one of the least impressive campaigns seen for a long time. Labour is now (21 February) 8/13 odds-on favourite, with UKIP out at 9/4, having been at one point 10/11 favourite.
The latest polling seems to suggest, however, that UKIP and Labour are neck-and-neck in the affections of the voters:
As the Stoke Sentinel report says, turnout will therefore be key. UKIP voters tend to be older, tend to vote, tend to be more motivated politically than Labour voters now are. Those factors favour UKIP strongly. Against that, the NHS is a major issue, which favours Labour (especially because Nuttall seems to have flirted with market forces in the NHS, albeit some years ago). Immigration, race, and culture is probably a combined major issue under the surface, something which is often obscured in polling by reason of the pervasive political correctness.
All weather forecasts are showing that Polling Day, Thursday 23 February 2017, will be a cold, wet and windy day across the country, featuring “Storm Doris”. That will depress voting numbers in Stoke Central, which is already one of the least-voting constituencies in the UK (in 2015, the turnout was 49%).
On the face of it, Paul Nuttall seems a poor candidate and UKIP a bit of a joke. However, it was revealed during the campaign that the Labour candidate, Gareth Snell, is a spotty and rather unpleasant Twitter troll, who posted, only a few years ago, some juvenile-level insults about women. He also grievously insulted EU Referendum Leave voters, in one of the most Brexit-friendly parts of the UK.
In addition, Gareth Snell seems not to have had a job outside local Labour and connected union politics, living off his council allowances and expenses.
One has to ask whether Stoke Central voters want to be represented by such an unpleasant person. We shall see.
Prediction
It may be foolish to predict anything now that the race seems so close, but I am still inclined to think that UKIP might crack it despite everything that has happened. In the end, if Labour wins, Stoke Central gets another and particularly useless Labour MP, whereas if UKIP wins, Stoke Central really is on the map.
The main indicators still look good for UKIP:
turnout
voter motivation
voter age profile
as against which Labour has on its side
traditional Labour voting pattern
Muslim voters [6%+].
Conclusion
This looks bad for Labour. Either Labour loses to UKIP or Labour scrapes a pathetic fingertips win. If the former, Labour will go into a tailspin and its MPs will be lining up to find new jobs after 2020; if Labour “only just” wins, then Labour’s decline continues anyway.
As for UKIP, only a win will do. A win keeps the UKIP train clattering along its rusty rails. If UKIP loses here, then that is derailment or the end of the line, whichever metaphor might be preferred.
Update, 14 July 2025
Well, in the end, Gareth Snell won the by-election for Labour with 37.1% of the vote. UKIP’s Paul Nuttall got 24.7%, and the Con Party candidate, Jack Brereton (who was later elected MP for another seat, Stoke on Trent South, 2017-2024), got 24.3%.
Snell was re-elected at the 2017 General Election, but was unseated at the 2019 General Election by the Conservative candidate, Jo Gideon, who however stood down before the 2024 General Election (she was then 71: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Gideon). Snell was then returned as MP at the 2024 General Election.
Paul Nuttall eventually resigned from UKIP, which became more or less dormant after that, or co-incident with that. Nuttall thereafter faded from political life until (surprisingly) he made a comeback, having been appointed Deputy Chairman of Reform UK in early July 2025. He therefore is (again, surprisingly), not necessarily washed-up, politically. He is still only 48. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nuttall#UKIP_Leadership.
So there it is. At time of writing, Snell is still the MP, though it is an open question as to what will happen at the next general election. Reform UK may clinch it.
Arguably oddly, in May 2025 Snell married Ruth Smeeth, now also “Baroness Anderson” and a Labour peer (as well as Israeli agent and former informant for the U.S. Embassy in London). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Smeeth.
Some months ago I blogged about what I saw as the emerging political vacuum in England and Wales. My overall view now is the same but more so.
The 2015 General Election would have broken the mould of British politics had it been carried out under conditions other than the absurd First Past The Post system, more suited to the UK of the 1920s than that of the early 21st Century. The distribution of votes in Southern England illustrates this well enough, where the Conservative Party got about half the votes but won about 95% of the Westminster seats (a similar ration to that of the SNP in Scotland).
The UKIP insurgents famously won nearly 4 million votes UK-wide (mostly in England), some 12% of the vote, yet won no seat except that of Douglas Carswell, who is really a Conservative and was previously elected as one.
It can be asserted as simple fact that, in almost any given English seat, most of the voters do not get the MP or party that they want and for which they voted. Moreover, even the typical 30%-50% received by the winning candidate often reflects more the candidates that most voters did not want: voters vote tactically in the absence of a true choice being available.
FPTP has distorted British politics, giving the incumbent party in any given seat a great advantage and –far more– giving the main System parties as a whole a like electoral advantage and an anchor against sliding into ruination. All the same, when the forces become unstoppable, that slide does happen. It happened to the Liberal Party during and after the 1920s (replaced by Labour) and it happened to Scottish Labour after 2010. This illustrates it well:
Founded in 1934, the SNP often scored less than 1% of the vote in Scotland and had to wait until 1970 to get a single MP elected. Even in 2010, the SNP only got 19.9% of the Scottish vote and 6 MPs (out of 59). Then the tipping-point was reached and in 2015, its vote swelled to 50% and suddenly the SNP had (a typically-disproportionate FPTP result) 56 MPs (out of 59). Labour in Scotland was ruined and now (2017) is only the third party in the polls there (after the Conservatives!) and has only about 15% voter support.
Moving to Labour overall, we see that this is a party that has been living “off its hump” for a long time. It even managed to jettison almost every remnant of “socialism” in its policies and yet win elections under Tony Blair (via appealing to otherwise Conservative or Liberal Democrat voters in the South and Midlands). Labour, in effect, “sold its patrimony for a mess of pottage”. When one asks oneself “what does Labour stand for?”, nothing coherent comes to mind: a confusion of old history, trade unions, strike banners, post-1945 nationalization, 1960s-1970s managerial technocracy, that old humbug Michael Foot in his donkey jacket at the Cenotaph, then, from the mid-1990s, the mirage of Blairism (New World Order pro-Americanism meets the Israel Lobby meets managerial “socialism” meets Common Purpose careerism).
It is often said that Labour is now split into Corbynists and Blairites. Another fault line (closely following the first) might be said to be the pro-Israel lobby bloc and the generally anti-Zionist bloc (though most in both still feel the need to pay lip-service to the “holocaust” narrative and its faked history, non-existent “gas chambers”, the now-derided “six million” etc).
In fact, Labour is now not even two parties but three:
the remnant of the old trade union-oriented Labour Party, based around traditional and unthinkingly Labour communities, mostly in the North;
the Blairite-Brownite pro-Israel bloc, consisting largely of MPs and their staffs, together with careerists in other parts of the country. These are those who want “to win elections” by promising pie in the sky: socialism to socialists, aspiration to the voters of the suburbs, “diversity” to the ethnic minorities and the rainbow loonies, profits and low taxes to the Jewish Zionist potential donors;
the Corbyn camp, which relates to a partly-imaginary Labour history from the 1930s through to the 1980s: “no pasaran!” Communist (and some syndicalist) propaganda from the Spanish Civil War; an airbrushed “anti-Nazi” and “anti-fascist” Second World War narrative; the conflicts of the 1970s such as that in Chile or those in parts of Central America; the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s (seen mainly through a London lens though). This is largely a bloc based around London, around the half-mad pseudo-socialist local council enclaves that became notorious in the 1980s: Islington, Camden, Haringey, Lambeth. It is the dominant bloc now and is supported by at least half of the ordinary Labour Party members and supporters.
Naturally, there is overlap here and there within that tripartite split. However, what has fallen away is not only consensus among the Labour members and activists, but more, the voters. Most Labour voters now are in that first group and are only voting Labour out of traditional allegiance. When you look at, say, Stoke Central, where the by-election is about to take place, you see that voting Labour, not in 1945 but in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015 has not given the people anything. Unemployment high, immigration high, large numbers of ethnic minority voters (Labour’s most reliable pawns now); little hope. Why would people in Stoke Central vote Labour? The answer seems to be that they see little choice (those that will actually vote, being probably a minority of those eligible).
In Stoke Central, the only alternative to Labour is UKIP, which is not the sort of social-national party likely to rise to power. In fact, UKIP is not social-nationalist at all, though some of its supporters are. The fact that UKIP is even being entertained (and may yet win the Stoke Central seat) is mainly a sign of Labour’s decline and not UKIP’s strength.
The industrial proletariat has gone, almost entirely. The trade unions are just a feeble bureaucratic, rainbow-coalition, “anti-racist”, Common Purpose-contaminated joke. The people who are suffering under fake “austerity” (the effect of #NWO/#ZOG globalism) and who belong to the burgeoning “precariat” (unemployed, underemployed, disabled, 50+, zero-hours-exploited, minimum-wage-exploited) are not now Labour voters but non-voters, sometime UKIP voters, potential social-nationalist voters. The Labour MPs are now mainly careerists, pro-Israel drones and “what’s-in-it-for-me?” bastards. Stoke Central MP Tristram Hunt abandoned his seat and constituents because, as he said, “the offer [from the Victoria and Albert Museum] was too good to refuse.” £250,000 a year. That was his price.
When a social nationalist movement of the new type emerges, as it must, it will start to scoop up the poor, or poor and angry and frustrated, masses. Labour will then disappear. Already it seems likely that Labour will only get between 100-200 seats in the 2020 Parliament, whether numbers are reduced from 650 to 600 or not. Labour policies– pro mass immigration, “welcoming” “refugees” (not of course to the MPs’ homes and neighbourhoods but to those of the former Labour voters), pro the EU octopus etc, simply have no appeal to those left behind by a conspiratorial globalism and multiculturalism.
As yet, a suitable party does not exist. When it does exist, Labour, already weakened, will fall to dust.
In the bigger picture, of course, the Cons under Boris-idiot won in 2017, and won bigger in 2019, only to lose to Starmer-Labour in 2024, since which time Reform UK has arisen to prominence and, indeed, dominance. We now await events.
Now that the main candidates are declared, I am ready to expand on that and to predict the result as best one can a month before polling.
The Stoke Central constituency has existed since 1950 and the Labour Party has won every election since then. Until Tristram Hunt appeared in 2010, the Labour vote varied between 48% and 68%. Hunt’s votes have been 38.8% (2010) and 39.3% (2015). Stoke Central has moved from being a Labour safe seat to one which can be regarded as marginal:
The Labour vote in 2015 was about 12,000, that of both UKIP and Conservatives about 7,000. The Liberal Democrats, until 2015 the second party, crashed to fifth place (behind an Independent) with 1,296 votes. In fact, the LibDem vote in 2010 was 7,000, the same as the UKIP vote in 2015, perhaps a sign that the “protest vote” bloc at Stoke Central is around 7,000 or so. Arguende. The LibDem candidate for the by-election is Zulfiqar Ali, a consultant cardiologist, who lost his deposit (vote share 4.2%) in the 2015 General Election.
Tristram Hunt, the outgoing-going-gone Labour Party MP, was never very popular in his own constituency, though London TV studios loved him. He made no bones about despising the leader of his own party, tried and failed to formulate policy of his own and was surprisingly bad (for someone of his background and education) at arguing his points when (as so often) being interviewed.
Hunt stepped down as MP in order to take a job as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. MP pay is about £74,000 (plus generous expenses); the V&A Director presently gets a package worth £230,000. Hunt may be getting more. No wonder that he said that “the V&A offer was too good to refuse.” So much for political conviction, vocation and, indeed, loyalty (whether to party or constituents). Stoke Central is well rid of him.
The Labour candidate in the by-election is Gareth Snell, a still fairly young former leader of the Borough Council of Newcastle-under-Lyme (3-4 miles from Stoke-on-Trent). His selection indicates that Labour are going to play on local roots and try to pretend that God is in His Heaven and Jeremy Corbyn far away, Corbyn being (arguably?) an electoral liability (seen as a credible future Prime Minister by only 16% in a recent poll).
The Conservatives have not been even the second party at Stoke Central since 2001. This by-election is one which will be decided between Labour and UKIP. The recent Theresa May Brexit speech may well have shot UKIP’s fox overall, but at Stoke Central no-one is expecting a Conservative win or even a Conservative second. The Conservative candidate is Jack Brereton, 25, who was elected at age 19 to Stoke-on-Trent City Council.
Since the 2001 General Election, the second and third-placed candidates at Stoke-on-Trent Central have received very similar numbers of votes (behind victorious Labour).
UKIP, joker in the pack. Paul Nuttall, a Northerner who was recently elected leader of UKIP, is the candidate. He must have a chance despite his partly-“libertarian” views (of which Labour is making the most, of course, claiming that Nuttall believes in NHS privatization). UKIP has a steep climb in the by-election, but it is possible. This is a by-election. The result will not affect who governs the UK. People can protest with their votes. Labour is now seen as the pro-mass immigration party and the pro-EU party. Stoke Central voted nearly 70% for Leave in the EU Referendum.
If turnout is low, if the 2015 Labour vote halves to about 6,000, if the 2015 UKIP vote mostly holds up at 7,000 or not much less, then UKIP can win. If.
It is not credible to imagine a win for the Conservatives or LibDems and they will vie for most votes not going to Labour or UKIP, but this is very much a Labour/UKIP contest. If enough people (eg 2015 Conservative voters) vote tactically for UKIP, UKIP has a good chance. On the other hand, many 2015 LibDem or Green voters may also vote tactically for Labour.
In 2015, an Independent got over 2,000 votes. Will those votes go to UKIP, now that that candidate has not renewed his candidature? Open question.
Unemployment is high, immigration is high and having had Labour MPs for 66 years has not prevented either in recent times. There is strong cultural resistance in the seat to the Conservative Party. UKIP is the insurgent here.
Prediction
The bookmakers still have Labour as odds-on to win the by-election and it would be tempting to call it as a Labour-UKIP-Conservative 1-2-3, but I am going to be bold and say that Paul Nuttall and UKIP can crack this. The seat must be one of the best chances UKIP has had or will have: anti-EU, pro-Leave, anti-mass immigration, disenchanted with the System parties and very much a “left-behind” area. Also, Tristram Hunt abandoning the seat for a quarter-of-a-million-pound job must sit badly in an area which is one of the poorest in England. In addition, Nuttall has the cachet, such as it is, of being his party’s leader.
In sum, I see the 1234 as: 1.UKIP; 2.Labour; 3.Conservative; 4.LibDem.
Effect
If the result is as I have predicted, it will push even more anti-Corbyn Labour MPs to jump ship and it will weaken Labour even further in the North (it being of little importance now in Scotland or most of the South of England). If Labour hangs on to win, then everything depends on the majority obtained but it might well be just a slower car crash.
Update, 30 May 2019
I blogged twice more about that Stoke on Trent by-election:
I shall blog in more detail about the upcoming by-election at Stoke-on-Trent Central when the runners and riders are fixed. This is merely an advance viewing of the contest based on the background.
Tristram Hunt, the Labour Party MP, was never very popular in his own constituency, though London TV studios loved him. He made no bones about despising the leader of his own party, tried and failed to formulate policy of his own and was surprisingly bad (for someone of his background and education) at arguing his points when (as so often) being interviewed on TV.
Hunt stepped down as MP in order to take a job as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. MP pay is £74,000 (plus generous expenses); the V&A Director presently gets a package worth £230,000. Hunt may be getting more. No wonder he said that “the V&A offer was too good to refuse.” So much for political conviction, vocation and, indeed, loyalty (whether to party or constituents). Stoke Central is well rid of him.
The Stoke Central constituency has existed since 1950 and the Labour Party has won every election since then. Until Hunt appeared in 2010, the Labour vote varied between 48% and 68%. Hunt’s votes have been 38.8% (2010) and 39.3% (2015). Stoke Central has moved from being a Labour safe seat to one which can be regarded as marginal:
The Labour vote in 2015 was about 12,000, that of both UKIP and Conservatives about 7,000. The LibDems, until 2015 the second party, crashed to fifth place (behind an Independent) with 1,296 votes. In fact, the LibDem vote in 2010 was 7,000, the same as the UKIP 2015 vote, perhaps a sign that the “protest vote” bloc at Stoke Central is around 7,000 or so. Arguende.
The Conservatives have not even been the second party at Stoke Central since 2001. This by-election is one which will be decided between Labour and UKIP. The recent Theresa May Brexit speech may well have shot UKIP’s fox overall, but at Stoke Central no-one is expecting a Conservative win or even a Conservative second.
Can UKIP win? The answer, even at this stage, must be a qualified “yes”. Much will depend on its candidate and that of Labour. If Paul Nuttall, a Northerner, stands, he must have a chance despite his partly-“libertarian” views. UKIP has a steep climb but it is possible. This is a by-election. The result will not affect who governs. People can protest with their votes. Labour is now seen as the pro-mass immigration party, the pro-EU party (to an extent). Stoke Central voted about 65% for Leave in the EU Referendum.
If turnout is low, if the 2015 Labour vote halves to about 6,000, if the 2015 UKIP vote mostly holds up at 7,000 or not much less, then UKIP can win. If.
It is not credible to imagine a win for the Conservatives or LibDems and they will vie for most votes not going to Labour or UKIP, but this is a Labour/UKIP contest. If enough people vote tactically for UKIP, UKIP has a good chance. On the other hand, 2015 LibDem or Green voters may also vote tactically for Labour.
Unemployment is high, immigration is high and having had Labour MPs for 66 years has not prevented either.
Labour must still be odds-on to win Stoke Central at this point, but UKIP has a serious chance.
Update, 27 November 2020
Looking at this post nearly 4 years on, I have to say that my prediction was accurate. The Labour Party won convincingly at the 2017 by-election, with 37.1% of votes cast. UKIP came in second with 24.7%, narrowly ahead of the Conservative Party on 24.3%. LibDems 4th-placed, with 9.8% of the vote.
The Conservative Party candidate, Jack Brereton, did not stand again at Stoke Central but was adopted by the Conservatives at Stoke South, where he was elected at the 2017 General Election and re-elected in 2019.
The 2017 General Election saw the Labour Party MP, Gareth Snell, a seemingly rather unpleasant individual, re-elected with a greatly-increased vote-share (51.5%). However, the 2019 General Election saw Snell lose to Jo Gideon of the Conservative Party in a close result (45.4% to 43.3%).
As for the one-time MP, Tristram Hunt, he is at time of writing still Director of the V&A, still getting that hugely-generous salary and expenses, and has, no doubt, long ago forgotten the people of “his” once-Labour constituency at Stoke-on-Trent…
Ian Robert Millard 