Tag Archives: General Election 2017

Diary Blog, 18 December 2019

Welcome to my diary blog, which will probably be published on a near-daily basis from today. It will contain political and social comment, mainly, but may also include music, art etc.

Anything requiring more length or structure will be put into a separate blog article.

I saw a tweet (see below), which shows how many of those on Twitter are in a relatively small echo-chamber. The tweet contains an “exit poll” taken on the recent Polling Day, and asks for which party the voter voted. The result (of over 68,000 responses): 64% Labour, 20% Conservative, LibDem 7%, 10% Other. So Labour was overvalued at about twice its real national vote-share, Conservative Party undervalued at less than half what it actually received on that day, the LibDems also undervalued at 7% instead of the real figure of 11.6%. As to “Other, 10%”, well Brexit Party got 2% in the actual election, Greens got about 3%, then there were SNP, Plaid, the various Irish parties; so “Other” may have been accurate overall, something which evidently cannot be said of the main Twitter poll.

The lady further below the tweet understands what an “echo-chamber” Twitter is:

This made me smile:

“@mojoss55/Maureen Fitzsimmons” used to follow my Twitter account. “Three degrees of separation”?

“and now for something completely different…”

Labour Party leadership

Rebecca Long-Bailey [Lab, Salford and Eccles] has been put forward as a candidate for Labour leader. She is in the Corbyn camp.

I do not know much about her at present, but what I do like is that the Jews on Twitter etc all seem to hate her. A good sign! Also, I like the fact that she is not one of the many “silver spoon” MPs (both Labour and Conservative): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Long-Bailey#Early_life_and_career

I shall do a separate blog on the Labour leadership contest once all candidates are known.

Musical interlude

Metamorphosen, by Richard Strauss, one of the great composers of the 20th Century and for two years in the 1930s the head of the Reichsmusikkammer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosen

 

Labour leadership (again)

Just took a look at Oddschecker and it appears that Rebecca Long-Bailey is favourite in the betting market. All the Jew-Zionist claque on Twitter is attacking her. Looking good…(from my perspective). I of course am not a Labour supporter, but their rank and file are at least generally better than the selfish, moneygrubbing “Conservative” ones, with their parasitic buy-to-let investments, inbuilt family life-advantages etc.

So the Jews are attacking Rebecca Long-Bailey, the usual msm drones are attacking her, the System talking-heads too. She must be one of the best candidates…

Of course, these msm talking heads (let alone the Jew element) are scarcely objective. “They” want to retake control of Labour, so that it can be “controlled opposition” again, and if it comes to it, a (((controlled))) government as well.

In fact, all this talk about “would Labour be electable under a socialist Labour leader?” (as distinct from a more “social-democratic”, or even “Con-lite”, one) tends to neglect the fact that:

  • The Labour vote collapsed from 40% to just over 32% at the General Election, true, but that was only a partial collapse. Three-quarters and more of the Labour vote held, despite the years of System and especially Jew-Zionist vilification of Labour and especially Corbyn, which campaign became almost hysterical near Polling Day. Jews, we were told, were sitting on their suitcases, waiting either to make a last despairing bid to get to Tel Aviv or awaiting the knock at the door and the train to the East. Yeah, right… Contrast that with the mostly very soft msm treatment given to Boris-idiot over 20 years. (and I should have thought that, were any of the “Jews are scared of Corbyn” stuff true, it would have encouraged more people to vote Labour!).
  • Statistical work done since the General Election shows that, had only 18-24 year old voters voted, the Conservative Party would not have a single MP anywhere in the UK. That does not necessarily mean that they will vote Labour next time, or that the next wave of 18-24s will, but it does make me think that the coming mainstream of voters will want a more radical agenda than the System preferees such as Keir Starmer or Lisa Nandy are willing to offer.
  • The next general election will not only have all those present 18-24s or most of them voting Labour (probably) but also the next wave of 18-24s (and they might be more inclined to use their vote if Labour has a radical leader).
  • The next general election will have far fewer Conservative voters, as older voters (and most Conservative voters are old) fall victim to “old age, sickness and death” (Buddha’s description of the Primal Karma of humanity).

The recent General Election win for the Conservatives is unlikely to be repeated for the above reasons. This may be partly why they are tightening up on voter registration etc. The boundaries of constituencies are being changed too.

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Looking at the above, the smart move for Labour, counter-intuitively, might indeed be to have a (younger and) very radical leader. Corbynism without Corbyn. After all, someone such as Rebecca Long-Bailey has no baggage from the 1970s, 1980s and generally; and the Jews can hardly play the “we are all so scared” card again and with a woman aged only 40-something (she is 40 at present).

By the way, Salford and Eccles was previously represented by disgraced expenses cheat fraudster, Blair-Brown acolyte and Labour Friends of Israel drone, Hazel Blears:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_Blears#Expenses_scandal

I do not know whether Yvette Cooper will try to become Labour leader. She would be disastrous: pro-Jew, pro-Israel, with a history of formulating and getting passed poorly-drafted legislation, often very repressive legislation too.

Yvette Cooper is a virtue-signalling “refugees welcome” hypocrite and idiot who, with her equally bad-news husband, Ed Balls, pretended that they would be offering their home(s) to migrant invaders, while urging others to do the same (which they never did, of course; cf. Lily Allen). Perhaps she did not understand that most British people do not have several houses. She and Ed Balls made mucho money out of the British taxpayers when they were both MPs. They now have several properties, none occupied by “refugees”.

The family, which includes their three kids, live in a £650,000 terrace house in Hackney, East London. They also own a £900,000 North London house and a property worth £230,000 in Castleford, West Yorkshire. (The Sun & Daily Mail)https://www.spearswms.com/ed-balls-net-worth/

To cap it all, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper may have been lucky to avoid prosecution for fraud:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvette_Cooper#Allegations_over_expenses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Balls#Allegations_over_allowances

Interesting parallel

EU “freedom”

Wars and rumours of wars

Large-scale wars do not start without warning. There are always rumblings from the telluric depths first, sometimes for years.

It would be madness for the UK to fight Russia. Russia may not be the old Soviet Union, but it can still put up to 4 million men (and women) in the field, if need be. That’s including reserve forces. 900,000+ are active; many of those are front-line forces.

Britain’s forces total just over 200,000, of which only a small fraction (perhaps 40,000) are both active (non-reserve) and front-line.

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

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

Similar proportions in respect of naval, air, strategic rocket forces etc.

The fact is that, if the UK gets involved in a war with Russia, the UK will be devastated. Glasgow (which is near the Faslane base), London, the major ports etc. There would not be much left. That may be true of some Russian target areas too, but the old Soviet Union was 92x the (geographic) size of the UK, and even the present Russian Federation is about 70x the size.

Before you cut, measure seven times…

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

Jesu Christi!

Just when you thought that Diane Abbott could not do more to destroy Labour with most present UK voters, the stupid monkey comes up with this!

I am convinced that the mere existence of Diane Abbott, at least as Shadow Home Secretary, lost the Labour Party a million votes at the recent General Election.

Can Labour Win A 2019 General Election?

Introduction

Two days ago, I wrote a blog piece entitled “Can The Conservatives Win A General Election (or are they doomed)?

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/07/28/can-the-conservatives-win-a-general-election-or-are-they-doomed/

My conclusion was that the Conservatives are unlikely to “win” a general election in the sense of achieving a House of Commons majority, but that it is not unlikely that the Conservative Party might, after a general election in late 2019 or early 2020, still be the largest party, i.e. the party with the largest number of MPs.

Until recently, I thought that Labour would probably be the largest party in the Commons after a 2019/2020 general election; now I am unsure. I still think that Labour might beat the Conservatives in terms of numbers of MPs, but the chances must now be close to 50-50.

I now want to lay out my thoughts about Labour’s chances

Just as the Conservative Party has been running out of rank and file members and also (good) ideas for several decades, the Labour Party, though in recent years, under Corbyn, increasing its membership and activist support base, has at the same time been —-what would be the correct term?–laagering or hunkering-down or being concentrated in ever-fewer loyal constituencies. The membership of the Conservatives is still getting older on average (the majority now being over 51, and almost 50% being 65+ years old), whereas the Labour membership is more evenly-aged and far greater in numbers. The Conservatives can muster, at least on paper, about 160,000, whereas Labour has over 500,000 members or registered supporters. All the same, Labour now has 247 MPs, while the Conservative Party has 311.

It is a truth universally acknowledged…that it is better to win 2 constituencies barely than it is to win 1 constituency by a huge majority. That in a nutshell is the problem faced by both major System parties but particularly Labour:

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party now has the 10 of safest seats [sic] in the UK, according to a new House of Commons analysis of marginal constituencies…The briefing adds that the number of very safe seats – those won by a margin of over 50 per cent – increased by 21 in 2015 to 37 in June’s election. Labour have all of the top 28.” [The Independent]

Piling up votes in safe seats does nothing, or very little, for a political party under the British “First Past The Post” [FPTP] electoral system. Labour is piling up empty votes. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Labour is now, to a large extent “the party of the blacks and browns” and other ethnic minorities (except Jews). The tendency of the ethnic minorities to huddle in concentrations, whether for historical, economic, cultural or other reasons, has resulted in concentrations of the Labour vote in areas already historically Labour-voting.

Another aspect to the above is the flight of white English people out of areas becoming “diverse” (in reality, changing from white non-diverse to non-white non-diverse), thus concentrating in those “ghetto” constituencies (or particular wards within constituencies) the “ethnic” vote.

Coming to Brexit, Corbyn has managed to sit on the fence so far. More Labour voters voted Remain than voted Leave, but more Labour constituencies voted Leave than voted Remain, another proof of the concentration of the Labour vote.

In one sense, Corbyn’s fence-sitting means that Labour can in theory appeal to both Leave and Remain voters; in practice, it may make Corbyn and so Labour seem undecided and indeed the victim of events, rather than the setter of the agenda.

Beyond all that, though, Labour has a policy message which might appeal to many, if it can be heard: nationalization or more regulation of public utilities and rail transport, curtailment of the excesses in the private-rental housing sector, an end to the demonization, bullying and even quiet killing by neglect of the disabled, sick, unemployed etc.

Even if Labour is the party of “blacks and browns”, that voter bloc, when combined with the votes of public service workers and those dependent on State benefits, must in theory add up to a vote of something like 30%.

Many commentators have said that, after a period of fragmentation, voters are returning to the main two parties. They say that because, in 2017, the main two parties got 89.1% of the popular vote (Conservative Party 48.8%, Labour Party 40.3%). This consolidation, however, was the result of specific factors which no longer apply.

In 2017, the LibDem popular vote slumped further from its post-Con Coalition collapse in 2015: from 7.9% in 2015 to 7.4% in 2017. Likewise, UKIP, having attained 12.6% in 2015, fell back to 1.8% (UKIP contested only 378 seats). In other words, Con and Lab were really the only two games in town in 2017.

The situation today is very different. The LibDems can appeal on several fronts: to Remainers, because the Liberal Democrat Party is the only unalloyed Remain party of any importance; to those who dislike both main System parties; to the “socially liberal” in London and the South of England (mainly). The LibDems are therefore in theory able to draw from the dissatisfied of both Labour and Conservative. It is important to understand that this is not a “LibDem surge”, more a negative vote against the two main System parties and Brexit Party, though also a vote for a clearly pro-EU party, the only one left [in England].

Then we have Brexit Party. Its mere existence, even on 10% or 15% of the nationwide popular vote, means that the Conservative Party can almost certainly not get a Commons majority. If Brexit Party stands (as promised) in 650 seats and gets an average 20%, then Conservative MPs will die like flies as their seats are taken by the LibDems, by Labour and, in a few cases, by Brexit Party itself.

Labour is fighting against the Jewish-Zionist contrived “antisemitism” protest or faked “storm”. That is not too interesting to the general public, but may support a wider narrative about “Corbyn the extremist”, someone supposedly not patriotic, a supporter of radical and in some cases very unpopular causes in the past. There again, there is the public scepticism about whether Corbyn can do the job of Prime Minister. However, it might be said in response that if Boris-idiot can do it, why can Corbyn not do it? That does rather beg the question, though…

Looking at the electoral picture in the round, I think that Labour will be able to mobilize its core vote of maybe 25%, maybe beyond that to 30%. The Conservative vote is tied to Brexit Party. If BP stands in 650 seats and if BP can get 15%, then I cannot see the Conservative Party getting more than about 30%. The LibDems will siphon off quite a few Remainer votes from both Lab and Con; overall that LibDem vote might amount to 15% or even 20%. “Socially-liberal” Jo Swinson is very pro-capitalist and her party might be an option for pro-EU former Conservative voters as well as some pro-EU and anti-Corbyn Labour ones.

The upshot seems to be that any 2019 or early 2020 general election might produce a Commons with Labour as largest party but as many as 60 MPs short of a majority; alternatively, a Conservative bloc far larger than that of Labour but still about 10 short of a majority. In other words, about where things are now.

My conclusion is that Labour might “win” in the sense of becoming the largest party in the Commons, but cannot at present get a majority.

Notes

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-safe-seat-marginal-constituencies-house-of-commons-jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may-a7886571.html

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

Update, 21 September 2019

This, below, is all too typical of the sort of person 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.”

“These groups claim to be the voice of the working class, but now they want to act as an arm of the authorities by patrolling beaches to apprehend struggling working-class people desperately trying to get to safety.” [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/far-right-britain-first-beach-patrols-calais-dover-anti-migrant-a9113471.html]

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, trying to get to 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.

Update, 23 September 2019

This creature might well be Home Secretary under a Labour government…

https://twitter.com/PaulWal96323461/status/1175921860481036289?s=20

The Day The Labour Party Committed Suicide

Introduction and background

Today, the Labour Party committed suicide. It decided both that it is going to back a “second Referendum” or “people’s vote”, and that it will be supporting Remain in that vote. In other words, the 2016 EU Referendum result will be dishonoured and quite possibly overturned if Labour has its way.

I have been predicting this System move for a long time; in fact, my first opinion published after the EU Referendum itself was that the Remain side, which is basically the System’s preferred side, would try every method to overturn the Referendum result. After all, the EU has “form” in this regard, making numerous countries re-take referenda which came up with the “wrong” result, even refusing to deal with governments which contained the “wrong” type of elected politician (in Portugal and Austria etc in the past).

The idea (held by most Remain whiners) that the EU is some kind of “democratic” and “liberal” entity is completely naive. The EU was set up by or under the influence of the sinister Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Coudenhove-Kalergi

and it forms part of the world conspiracy-domination matrix that also includes the USA-centred “New World Order” or NWO.

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http://www.westernspring.co.uk/the-coudenhove-kalergi-plan-the-genocide-of-the-peoples-of-europe/

Part of that is the so-called “Great Replacement”, effectively the replacement of the white Northern European peoples by those of other race (blacks and browns etc) and those, in the future, of mixed-race, the outcome of mass immigration into Europe.

My view, published numerous times in these blog pages, has been that the System in the UK and EU would delay Brexit, try to keep Britain in the EU by means of various strategems, or if necessary, to give the UK a “deal” which would effectively be “Brexit In Name Only” (BRINO). Ideally, remaining or BRINO would then be falsely validated by a “second Referendum” under such name as “People’s Vote” or “confirmatory” referendum. So it seems to be happening. I did wonder how long Corbyn himself could sit on the fence.

The possibly deliberate mishandling of the post-2016 Brexit process by the Conservative Party government has now led to the position in which the pro-Remain majority in the House of Commons is determined that the UK will not leave the EU on a “no-deal” (WTO) basis.

I despise Boris Johnson as a politician: he is a charlatan and mountebank, to use old terms, and I have very little faith that he will honour his “pledge” to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October 2019 “if necessary”. However, it is possible that, to save his own skin, if he cannot persuade the Commons to accept a “deal” similar to that the EU offered Theresa May, that Boris Johnson will either cave in to the demand for a second referendum or will appeal over the heads of the parties to the electorate, and hold a general election in an effort to strengthen his hand. A gambler’s gamble.

Alternatively, Johnson may be sidelined quite soon by a no-confidence vote, which will either mean a general election or even his replacement without general election by someone else, presumably Jeremy Hunt. The British Constitution is so vague, relying as it does on a few sentences in Bagehot etc, that that would not, stricto sensu, be unconstitutional.

Labour in a general election

Labour received nearly 13 million votes at the 2017 General Election, 40% of the votes cast. In terms of percentage, that was Labour’s best since Tony Blair in both 2001 and 1997, and before that, Harold Wilson in 1970 (Labour scored over 40% in every general election from 1945 to 1970).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)#UK_General_Elections

When it comes to House of Commons seats, however, it is a different story. In 2017, Corbyn-Labour won 262 seats with its 40% vote, not much better than the 258 seats won by Gordon Brown’s Labour in 2010, when the Labour vote-share was only 29.1%. In 2001, Tony Blair-Labour won 413 seats on a vote-share of 40.7%.

I think that something more is going on here than just the “glorious uncertainty” and illogicality of the UK First Past The Post and eccentric boundaries electoral system. It is clear that the Labour vote is becoming ever-more concentrated in fewer and fewer constituencies.

Harold Wilson in 1974 (twice), James Callaghan in 1979, and Neil Kinnock in 1987 and 1992, all scored well below 40% in general elections, yet ended up with more seats, considerably more, than Labour won in 2017.

As stated above, it is believed that, out of Labour’s nearly 13M voters in 2017, perhaps 3.5M, though perhaps as high as 4M, had voted Leave in 2016. In other words, about or around 70% of Labour voters voted Remain.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48039984

However, about 61% of Labour constituencies voted Leave.

https://fullfact.org/europe/did-majority-conservative-and-labour-constituencies-vote-leave-eu-referendum/

The inference is plain: not only are most Labour voters generally clustered in a relatively small number of constituencies, but the number of 2017 majority Labour-voting constituencies that also had a majority for Remain is even smaller, somewhere around 100.

Labour as a party has been growing distant from its roots, from its core vote, for decades. The industrial proletariat is virtually non-existent, replaced by the “precariat”, economically insecure, politically both apathetic and volatile. The trade unions, though often still linked to Labour, are likewise almost without importance now, all but powerless to help employed persons much, and focussed on “diversity”, “equality”, anti-racism” etc and on ever-more convoluted codes of conduct, politically-correct nonsense, and on support for mass immigration.

As I have commented previously, the Labour “core vote” is now not really the English and Welsh (or Scottish) “working classes”, but the post-1945 immigrants and their offspring and, after them, the public service workers generally, as well as most of the unemployed and/or disabled persons reliant on State benefits.

There are many many seats in the North of England particularly which were rock-solid Labour but which are now less-solid Labour, or are marginal. These are areas which voted Leave, where the English majority (in some cases now, minority) are sick of mass immigration, of cultural decay, of crime and lawlessness, of the patronizing callousness of the self-regarding and self-described “elite” in the msm and Westminster and in the City of London.

A recent opinion poll put Labour on only 18%. Critics said that that was an “outlier” and (perfectly true) that another poll the same week put Labour on 25%. My feeling and view is that Labour will struggle to get even 30% in any general election, i.e. where Labour was in 2017. The big question is where that 30% will be.

Labour’s new unambiguous Remain stance will alienate anyone who regards Brexit (not just Brexit, but the bundle of issues around Brexit) as important. That could be a third of 2015/2017 Labour voters, and particularly in the more marginal seats.

Fortunately for Labour, it looks as though Brexit Party will cripple the Conservative vote nationally. However, Labour too is on thin ice. There is every chance that the new Remain policy will rob Labour of the formerly solid seats in the North.

The Conservatives will fight the next general election against three enemies, but Labour will also be fighting against at least two (Brexit Party being one) in formerly safe seats.

Labour may gain votes in its new core areas, among the blacks, browns, public service people and millennials of London and elsewhere, but at the cost of traditional Labour areas of the North etc. They will not vote Conservative, but might vote Brexit Party out of pure anger. Beware.

If Labour’s new voters are fickle or volatile (as I think that many are), Labour will have lost formerly solid support in exchange for what could be fair-weather votes, leaving Labour, somewhere down the line, with next to nothing.

At present, I still think that Labour might be the largest party after a general election, if held this year or next (the Conservatives are all but on their knees) but I have the feeling that, looking at the medium term (from 2022), Labour has just committed suicide.

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.”

“These groups claim to be the voice of the working class, but now they want to act as an arm of the authorities by patrolling beaches to apprehend struggling working-class people desperately trying to get to safety.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/far-right-britain-first-beach-patrols-calais-dover-anti-migrant-a9113471.html]

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.