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Notes from the Peterborough By-Election

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Background

Fiona Onasanya has drunk her last draught from the taxpayers’ trough and has now been removed as MP, the Peterborough seat having been declared vacant on 1 May 2019. We therefore move to the question of who will replace her.

Peterborough

The constituency covers the majority of the city of Peterborough and some rural areas to the East. I myself have visited the city but once, in 1975, and the city I saw in a few hours and 44 years ago is a very different place now. The population increased about 50% in the years 1971-1991 alone, since when it has increased again hugely. The city of 1971 had about 100,000 inhabitants but now has about 200,000 and still increasing. Even that does not tell the full story.

A few years ago, Peterborough was said to have the second-fastest population growth of any city in the UK. In 2007, the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire noted that, as recently as 2003, 95% of the teenagers in the county had been white (ie English), whereas the figure in 2007 was radically different and the population “diverse”. What is that figure now, I wonder? 50%? Probably far below that.

The true scale of the change is probably covered up. The city’s inhabitants are now 82% white (officially), but many of the white inhabitants are of recent Eastern European origin.

Peterborough constituency and by-election candidates

15 candidates are declared at close of list:

https://pcc-live.storage.googleapis.com/upload/www.peterborough.gov.uk/council/elections/ParliamentaryElectionForPeterborough-StatementOfPersonsNominated-May2019.pdf?inline=true

Conservative Party

The constituency has been a Con/Lab marginal for decades, with the two parties usually but not always within a few points of each other. The Liberal Democrats have come third in every election for decades, except in 2015 when the LibDems came fourth after UKIP (there was no UKIP candidate in 2017).

Stewart Jackson was the Conservative MP from 2005 until 2017, his vote share gradually declining from 42.1% in 2005 to 39.7% in 2015 before, ironically, peaking at 46.8% in 2017, in which year he was replaced by Labour’s Fiona Onasanya (she got 48.1%).

I have blogged previously about Fiona Onasanya, who has wisely decided not to bother standing again (Labour has another candidate, but Fiona Onasanya could, in theory, have stood as an Independent, despite her conviction and brief imprisonment).

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-fiona-onasanya-story/

The Conservative candidate for the by-election, Paul Bristow, is a local businessman who says that “I run my own public affairs and PR business centred around the medical device industry.” I dare say that Bristow, though one of the most likely to succeed candidates, will have an uphill struggle, the way things are with a Conservative Party in meltdown; I also wonder whether voters will want a “multikulti” public relations man (see Bristow’s website in the Notes, below) as their MP. We shall see.

Labour Party

The Labour candidate is Lisa Forbes. A trade union official, she was Labour candidate for Peterborough in 2015, at which election she apparently fought a fairly strong campaign, finishing second with 35.6% of the vote (the Con vote was 39.6%). For the by-election, she beat one other woman in a contest held using a women-only shortlist.

Liberal Democrats, Greens, Change UK

The LibDem candidate is Beki Sellick, about whom a local newspaper reports:

“The Liberal Democrats have selected Beki Sellick as their Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Peterborough. The engineer fought the seat in the 2017 election, finishing third with 1,597 votes. She said: “I’m an ordinary person who’s had a variety of jobs – nationalised and privatised, shop floor and management, full-time and part-time, redundant. And then I started my own business in Peterborough two years ago. I chair our residents association where we run a monthly community café.””

The LibDems (same candidate) got a vote share of only 3.3% in the General Election of 2017, which result was even below the 3.8% they scored in 2015 (cf. 2010—19.6%, and 2005— 14.5%). I cannot see the LibDems winning. They are probably fighting for fourth or fifth place.

One interesting aspect is that Change UK, the new pro-EU and pro-Israel party, is not putting up a candidate. I read somewhere that the very strongly pro-EU and anti-Brexit parties (LibDems, Greens, Change UK) were going to not stand against each other in Peterborough and elsewhere, so as not to split the Remainer vote. Well, it looks like someone forgot to tell the Greens, who are standing, their candidate being one Joseph Wells, about whom nothing much is known.

The Green Party website says about their by-election candidate: “Candidate for Peterborough. Joseph Wells. No Candidate [sic] information at this time. Please check back.”

What a joke the Green Party is! Here we have a by-election held after a scandal. The ideal place for a small party to get some publicity and maybe save its deposit, yet on the day the nominations close, the useless creatures cannot even put out a few basic facts about the poor sap they have chosen as their doomed candidate! Not that it makes much difference: the Greens got 1.8% in Peterborough in 2017. Like the pro-Remain and pro-immigration LibDems, the Greens are unlikely to do well in an area which was over 60% Leave and where many of the English people feel (and have been) swamped by mass migration or “migration-invasion”.

The list closed at 1600 hrs. It is now 1611 as I write. At 1555, 5 minutes before closure of the list, Mark Pack, who does LibDem publicity, was tweeting this!

https://twitter.com/LibDemNewswire/status/1126500859070885888

The LibDems are as useless as the Greens and the new joke party, Change UK!

What is more significant is that Change UK have effectively chickened-out of this contest. Either that or they are just too incompetent even to register a candidate for the only by-election being held! Either way (and as I have previously blogged), they are a total waste of space.

Below, two of the wastes of space of “Change UK”:

So there it is: Change UK are too frightened or too incompetent to put up a candidate at Peterborough (voters might like to remember that at the 23 May EU election too…and at the next general election).

This means that, at the by-election, the Remain or pro-EU vote, which at best is probably no more than 40% of the electorate anyway, will be split between Greens and LibDems (and Labour). Bearing in mind that, in 2017, the combined vote for the LibDems and Greens was only 5.1%, it may be that most Remainers in Peterborough will vote Labour; neither of the two smaller parties has any real chance.

Minor candidates

UKIP is standing, thus splitting the hardcore Brexit vote, but is running at only about 3% in nationwide opinion polling. The candidate is John Whitby, a former UKIP councillor, who came last out of 5 candidates in the recent local election for Fletton and Stanground ward, Peterborough (he got 320 votes out of about 2,000):

Hard to predict UKIP’s vote share at the by-election, except that it will be below 5%. I am guessing that it will be around 2%.

The former journalist and UKIP MEP, Patrick O’Flynn, who now fights for the (post-1990) Social Democratic Party (SDP), is standing, but I would be surprised if he were to get above 1% of the vote. In a way, he was a loss to UKIP, in that he was probably one of UKIP’s more intelligent leaders, particularly on economic issues.

Why O’Flynn has chosen to ally himself with the SDP dead parrot party, God knows. Maybe because he did not want to be an Independent. He, in himself, is not a bad candidate, but the SDP is just silly: in 1992, it put up 10 candidates at the General Election. Total vote was over 35,000 or 0.1%, but individually they did not do badly at average 3,500 votes each. However, since then, their few candidates have registered not thousands, not even hundreds, of votes (at the General Election 2017, 6 SDP candidates stood, and got a total of 469 votes, about 75 votes each; in national terms, statistical zero).

Now we come to the bottom of the barrel: the Christian People’s Alliance (not to be confused with the Christian Party Alliance; yes I know…Judean Popular Front etc…) is standing a Dr. Rogers (not I think a medical doctor, but someone with a Ph.D who is a local teacher). I sometimes puzzle over why people even bother standing for silly no-account organizations like this. Still there it is. He may get 50 or 100 votes, who knows?

There are 2 Independents.

One Goldspink is standing for the faux-“nationalist” English Democrats.

There are candidates for “Common Good” and “UK European Union Party”.

There is a “Renew” candidate. There was one in the recent Newport West by-election: that candidate got nearly 4% of the vote there.

“Howling Lord Hope” of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party needs no introduction: the fat little man wearing a white or yellow suit is a veteran of dozens of elections and in fact was actually elected (unopposed) in a local council election at Ashburton, Devon, many years ago. I imagine that he will beat some of the Peterborough candidates who take themselves more seriously.

Brexit Party

Brexit Party has burst upon the political scene (or should that be “swamp”) and may change everything just by existing. Needless to say (to regular or frequent readers of this blog), I would never “support” a party which is not fully social-national, let alone one that has a “Friends of Israel” section already…Having said that, anything that helps to fragment the “three party” or “two party” FPTP scam, that is conventional politics in the UK, has my blessing.

Brexit Party is mushrooming and now has somewhere around 100,000 “supporters” (by any other name, members) who have, apparently, each donated between £5 and £200,000 (the average is about £30, giving Brexit Party somewhere in the region of £5 million in battle funds).

Below, Nigel Farage, the leader of Brexit Party, arriving in Newport, Wales, to a rapturous and almost ecstatic reception:

and here is a comment about both Brexit Party and Change UK rallies (well, Brexit Party’s 2,000-strong Peterborough rally and Change UK’s pathetic almost empty London meeting…)

another tweeter:

I have blogged recently about the effect of Brexit Party on UK elections from now on:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/what-now-for-general-election-2019/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/the-uk-local-elections-have-been-held-my-view/

These were the results of the 2 May 2019 local elections in Peterborough:

Brexit Party of course not standing.

The bookmakers have Brexit Party favourite to win the by-election: just odds-on, but closely followed at 11/10 by Labour. The Conservatives are on 20/1, the LibDems 50/1, Change UK 66/1 (rather ungenerous since they now seem not to be standing!), 100/1 bar. So Greens and UKIP are both 100/1. William Hill are similar but more generous. They have SDP at 125/1 and Green at 150/1.

A week ago, Labour were the favourites. That though was before Nigel Farage and Brexit Party had 2,000 people attend a rally in Peterborough for which, it seems, tickets were sold at £10 a pop. This is not British politics as we know it…most System candidates would struggle to get 200 (or, in some cases, 20) voters to turn out for a meeting where entrance is free!

Britain Elects has, a minute ago, tweeted the following polling for the EU elections:

Those figures might inform us re. the Peterborough by-election, except that Change UK is not, it seems, a factor.

The Brexit Party candidate is Mike Greene, a multi-millionaire businessman and considerable local philanthropist, who supports 40 local charities and good causes. He comes from modest origins and is a local resident who was brought up in or near the city. He was a Conservative until recently.

Conclusion and forecast

Unless something absolutely stunning happens in the next 4 weeks, this is a straight fight between Brexit Party and Labour. The Conservatives seem to be toast. In fact, now that that is plainly the case, I should expect many more Conservative voters to vote tactically for Brexit Party, in order to keep out Labour.

The Remain vote will probably gravitate to the LibDems, but the Greens will take quite a few Remain votes. Other parties can be more or less disregarded.

There is also the point that, on 23 May, halfway between now and the by-election, the EU elections are expected to be a triumph for Farage and the Brexit Party. The Conservatives are forecast to come 3rd or even 4th.

It looks as though this will be the Westminster victory that might launch the —as yet, policy-free— Brexit Party. Second place will go to Labour. Third? Either LibDems or Conservatives. Quite possibly the LibDems.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Peterborough_by-election

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

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-fiona-onasanya-story/

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

https://news.sky.com/story/former-tory-businessman-revealed-as-brexit-party-candidate-in-peterborough-by-election-11715137

https://www.paulbristow.org.uk/about-paul-bristow

https://labourlist.org/2019/02/labour-selects-lisa-forbes-to-replace-fiona-onasanya-in-peterborough/

https://my.greenparty.org.uk/candidates/106132

https://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/politics/peterborough-by-election-christian-parties-alliance-confirm-candidate-1-8921620

https://www.peterborough.gov.uk/council/elections/local-elections/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_O%27Flynn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_(UK,_1990%E2%80%93present)

https://cpaparty.net/

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Peterborough_by-election#Candidates_and_campaign

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/what-now-for-general-election-2019/

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/the-uk-local-elections-have-been-held-my-

view/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/7198329/Labours-secret-plan-to-lure-migrants.html

Update, 21 May 2019

Current betting as of today (21 May) is: Brexit Party as odds-on favourites (8/13), though challenged fairly closely by Labour on 5/4. The rest of the field is comprised of also-rans, it appears: Conservatives 20/1, LibDems 50/1, and 125/1 bar those four.

Update, 23 May 2019

There has been movement in the betting market for the by-election: Brexit Party hardening and now at 8/15; Labour less firm and out to 7/4; Conservatives at 9/1 (from 20/1 only two days ago); LibDems sliding to 70/1; 125/1 bar those four.

https://www.betfair.com/sport/politics

Update, 24 May 2019

Just saw the clip below from BBC News. It exemplifies the BBC way of doing bias in political coverage. The whole clip lasts well over 2 minutes (2:16), out of which Mike Greene, the candidate for Brexit Party, was given 5 or 6 seconds! Brexit Party is way ahead in the betting and polling for the by-election, but the BBC chose to present the three System party candidates as the “serious” ones, each of whom got a number of short slots within the clip. Even the lady standing for the LibDems got two or three slots, despite the fact that the LibDems have no chance, are 70/1 to win, and when the same lady stood in Peterborough for the LibDems at the 2017 General Election, she only got 3.3% of votes cast!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-cambridgeshire-48356295/peterborough-by-election-candidates-debate

I am not a “supporter” of Brexit Party, as such, but the BBC’s bias against it is really showing now.

Update, 26 May 2019

By-election betting now shows Brexit Party hardening to 2/5, and now strong odds-on favourite; Labour slightly out at 15/8; Conservatives, who went from 20/1 to 9/1, are now again sliding and are at 12/1; LibDems in from 70/1 to 50/1; still 125/1 bar those four.

Update, 27 May 2019

After the stellar victory of Brexit Party in the EU elections, the odds on Brexit Party smashing the Peterborough by-election have hardened again, now to 4/11. Labour’s dispiriting results in the EU elections have lengthened its odds to 5/2. The Conservatives’ odds have slid back to 16/1, whereas the LibDems’ odds, also at 16/1, are hugely shorter now (they were 50/1 only yesterday!); 125/1 bar those four.

As my blog, written 9 May, said, this is a contest between Brexit Party and Labour, but now the LibDems are complicating the issue. If all anti-Brexit voters gathered behind one candidate, the Brexit Party could not win. The question arises: which one party and candidate? The Remain-oriented side is split, and there are other issues. It may well be that many Con voters and others will switch to LibDem for the by-election, but many Labour voters will recall the LibDems’ dreadful and dishonest support for the Con Coalition 2010-2015. My prediction is that the Brexit Party is going to win this by a goodly margin in the end.

Update, 29 May 2019

The betting continues to firm for Brexit Party. Now 1/5 odds-on (from 4/11). Labour has weakened to 4/1 (from 5/2). The LibDems are still at 16/1, but the Conservatives are still sliding, now at 20/1 again (from 16/1). As far as the bookmakers are concerned, it’s all over.

As my initial blog post speculated, Conservative voters are now flocking to Brexit Party, either out of conviction or because it is the best way to deny Labour the prize. It may be that, after the Fiona Onasanya fiasco, Labour is badly damaged. The candidate for Labour seems to be not very intelligent, which hardly helps (though I understand that she is at least anti-Zionist. On can rarely have everything.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/27/nigel-farage-sets-his-sights-on-party-winning-peterborough-byelection

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/29/peterborough-byelection-labour-and-tories-fear-brexit-party-surge

Update, 30 May 2019

Latest betting: Brexit Party still strong odds-on favourite at 1/5, Labour still 4/1 (both unchanged from yesterday), but LibDems and Cons have now both slid to 25/1. 125/1 bar those four.

Update, 31 May 2019

Brexit Party still at 1/5, Labour still at 4/1. LibDems have recovered to 12/1 after opinion polling suggesting that, nationwide, the LibDems are now, suddenly, the most popular party in England and Wales! Conservatives are available at 25/1 for the by-election. 125/1 bar those four.

Meanwhile, the newspapers converge on Peterborough to seek opinions…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7092845/Peterborough-voted-replace-disgraced-MP-favourites-parties-vocal-Brexit.html

“A disillusioned Tory, his message is clear that the Lib Dems ‘may sneak in here’. He says Peterborough is ‘an absolute dump’ with poverty rife. People are so poor they think twice about buying even a multi-pack of crisps.” [Daily Mail]

“Back in Lincoln Road, at a cafe bar, I talk to Janet Tobolik, who is 65 and half Polish. A devout Eurosceptic, she says only one party cares about Peterborough’s problems. She is voting UKIP. ‘There is rubbish on the streets. This is my country and you suddenly find a settee in the middle of the road. Peterborough is a slum. They drop everything these immigrants.’” [Daily Mail]

“Down the street, a 73-year-old man who called himself Mr Dhillon, said: ‘I have lived here since 1967. I always supported Labour. But they and the Tories have done no good for Peterborough. I think we should leave the EU and then we can start again.’”

“Yes, as it stands, it is Farage who is on a roll. He is hoping to bury his opponents in Peterborough, just like Catherine of Aragon, and the odds are hugely on his Brexit Party’s side. Next Thursday we’ll discover if the people of this city will change the future of British politics.” [Daily Mail]

Update, 2 June 2019

The betting market has moved as far as Labour and the LibDems are concerned. Brexit Party is still strong odds-on favourite at 1/5, but Labour is now closer at 10/3 and the LibDems , who were 12/1 yesterday and 70/1 only a week ago, now move to 9/1. The Conservatives are still on 25/1; and 125/1 bar those four.

As I commented earlier elsewhere, the battle for second place at Peterborough is intensifying. The Brexit Party seems unchallenged now for 1st place. The only way for Brexit Party to lose would be if those opposed to Farage all clustered round one other party standing. That is obviously not happening. Labour is fighting hard for the seat, but the LibDems are “playing a blinder” bearing in mind that they only got 3.3% in 2017 and 3,8% in 2015. Even at the height of 2010 Cleggmania, they only managed (just under) 20%.

The Conservatives are toast and have no chance. Labour is battling not to be toast. A 2nd place at Peterborough would keep Labour in the game nationally. If Labour drops to 3rd at Peterborough, heads may roll.

Brexit Party tweets cleverly: their tweet (below) is in fact correct, but from the purely electoral point of view helps Brexit Party, because Labour is still the main enemy of Brexit Party in this Peterborough by-election. Tactically, Brexit Party very much knows how to run a campaign.

Update, 3 June 2019

Three days before polling day.

The Guardian reports from Peterborough [link below]. Well worth reading.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/02/peterborough-prepares-for-byelection-that-could-see-first-brexit-party-mp

“…many Peterborians feel life is getting worse; nothing catastrophic, but a noticeable unravelling. Stagnation of living standards and diminishing prospects, as much as Brexit and migration, are likely to shape how they vote.”

“…people also sense deeper changes to the social fabric, caused in part by the march of buy-to-let property investors, the retreat of the state from providing housing for the working class and ever-shrinking funding for maintaining the fabric of neighbourhoods. With Brexit dominating the byelection, there is little room to debate much of that.”

The BBC has also posted a not very illuminating analysis:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-48300812

As for the betting market, Brexit Party is now even more firmly odds-on, prohibitively priced at 1/6. Labour has gone out again, returning to 4/1. The LibDems are now also further out at 10/1, while the Conservatives have all but given up the ghost at 33/1 (out from 25/1).

The LibDems were always going to be on the back foot in Leave-friendly Peterborough (in the 2016 Referendum, 61% voted Leave, on a high turnout of over 72%), but their apparent lack of success is a warning light about taking their 2019 EU elections performance and more recent opinion polling too seriously (particularly now that it seems that pollsters have been deliberately suppressing Brexit Party in some polling).

When push comes to shove, can the LibDems hack it? Their performance electorally over many years and in government from 2010-2015 would suggest not.

As to the Conservatives, I suggest that my initial analysis was right: former Conservative voters are backing Brexit Party both for itself and because they have lost confidence in the Conservatives as a potentially-winning party. A Conservative vote in Peterborough is now a wasted vote. The tactical option to keep Labour out is therefore to vote Brexit Party. They are obviously deserting the Conservatives in droves; incredible when you consider that Peterborough has had a Conservative MP for most of the years 1945-2019. A symptom of the general and possible terminal decline of the Conservative Party.

Labour is the only party now likely to come close to Brexit Party in the by-election. The “blacks and browns” (etc), comprising a fifth of the inhabitants, will vote Labour if they vote at all. Remain voters are more likely to vote LibDem now. The non-Brexit-Party vote is thus split. Brexit Party may get 50% of the vote, it may get only 40%, but it does seem likely to win.

Note: in the few hours since I wrote the above update for 3 June, the betting market has moved again. Now Brexit Party is in at 1/7, Labour has gone out to 5/1, the LibDems have slumped to 14/1 and the Conservatives are still in outer darkness at 33/1 (125/1 bar those four).

It is pretty clear that the punters and bookmakers have decided that Brexit Party is unassailable at Peterborough. I think that Brexit Party will be elected, and maybe on as much as 50% of the vote.

The Labour candidate has been (supposedly) damaged by her (again, supposedly) “anti-Semitic” online statements of some time ago (my problem with her is that she has recanted, and cravenly “apologized” to the Jew-Zionist lobby). She will probably get 2nd place, and on a vote of about 25%.

The LibDems have no realistic chance now. They will be looking to get the bulk of the Remain vote in a city where most people (61%) voted Leave in 2016, and where the LibDem core vote has been between 3% and 4% for several years (and even in 2010 was only 19% or so). I shall be surprised if the LibDems can get to 2nd place in this by-election. My guess as to their vote share would be somewhere around 20%.

Conservatives? They are just going through the motions. If their vote exceeds 10%, I shall be surprised.

…and the msm “journalists” are still making assumptions based on their belief that the System parties (LibLabCon) are eternal and immortal. Those parties will all be dead soon. “Protest vote” does not begin to cover what is happening.

https://www.itv.com/news/2019-06-03/protest-vote-expected-in-peterborough-by-election/

Update, 4 June 2019

Early in the morning. The betting is now 1/9 Brexit Party, 6/1 Labour, 14/1 LibDems, 33/1 Conservatives. It is already over.

ps. this tweeter makes a good overall point:

https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1134879812621864960

Update, 5 June 2019

So here we are, the day before polling day. The betting has moved in a little. Brexit Party still heavily odds-on but a little out from yesterday (1/7 from 1/9); Labour has come in to 9/2 (from 6/1); the LibDems are at 14/1 (from 16/1), Conservatives still 33/1 (125/1 bar those four).

There was a late attempt in the Guardian to connect Mike Greene, the Brexit Party candidate, with the retention-of-freehold-rights scam/scandal, but it seems to have had little impact for various reasons, not least that 99% of Peterborough voters never read the Guardian.

Brexit Party looks, on the face of it, as if it is going to walk this one.

Update, 6 June 2019

The moment of truth. The polls are open. Brexit Party is still at 1/7 in the betting odds, with Labour again firmer at 4/1; the LibDems and Conservatives have settled together at 20/1.

and at 1330 on polling day…

The betting has altered “in play”, so to speak: Brexit Party still at 1/7 and looking on the face of it like a shoo-in to win; Labour firmed today, to 7/2; as to the others, both the LibDems and the Conservatives have been sliding, the LibDems to 25/1, the Cons to 50/1. (125/1 bar those four).

If the current betting reflects what will be announced tonight or tomorrow, this is disastrous for the Conservatives, who not only provided the MP for the constituency for most of the past 80 years but also had the tactical advantage of the recent history of Labour in Peterborough: Fiona Onasanya etc: https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2018/12/21/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-fiona-onasanya-story/

It is clear that the Conservatives are going to go down very badly. How badly, we wait to see. This may prove to be the most significant by-election since 1945.

(as a light ending, until the result, I reproduce—see below—the most stupid, also the funniest tweet I saw today!)

https://twitter.com/MatthewMahabadi/status/1136626475174699009

Update at 1615 hrs on polling day:

Betting: 1/6 Brexit Party, 11/4 (from 7/2) Labour.

As I predicted weeks ago, it is between these two now. Labour struggling hard not to be too badly beaten. Many of the Remain votes will go Labour, and almost all of the votes of the blacks, browns etc, and those of any immigrants eligible to vote.

The LibDems are only 40/1 in the by-election betting now. Cons 50/1, others 125/1 or more. As usual, the LibDems talk a good game but rarely follow through. They wasted their chance of getting proportional representation in 2010. That sank their party and many of Britain’s people.

Just saw this, illustrating my point that Labour’s core vote is now “the blacks and browns”:

Aftermath, 7 June 2019

Labour won, unexpectedly (and because of the organized ethnic minority vote, including postal vote), and on 31% of the votes cast (Brexit Party got 29%).

My post-poll thoughts are here:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/peterborough-by-election-post-poll-analysis-and-thoughts/

Brexit, Party Politics, Uncategorized

What Now for General Election 2019?

3 Comments

Introduction and background

I have blogged within the past day about the result of the UK local elections:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2019/05/04/the-uk-local-elections-have-been-held-my-view/

We have seen what happened in those elections:

  • the Conservative Party humiliated and suffering a defeat worse than many (but not I) anticipated;
  • the Labour Party, though losing few seats (82), also humiliated, in that, at this point in the conventional electoral cycle, the norm is for the governing party to lose and possibly lose heavily, but for the official Opposition party to make gains, perhaps considerable gains;
  • the Liberal Democrats, who have not, in general, recovered since their rout at the 2015 General Election (and who in fact did worse at the 2017 General Election in terms of popular vote share —7.4% in 2017 as against 7.9% in 2015— though better in terms of House of Commons seats —12, up from 8), had a “good” result in these local elections, more than doubling the number of LibDem councillors.

Local councillors elected (only about a third of the over 20,000 total were in contest this time) were 3,561 (Con), 2,023 (Lab) and 704 (LibDem); others (mainly Independents) elected numbered 1,310, a large increase.

The totals of local government seats now held (mostly council seats) by the three main System parties: Con 7,615, Lab 6,327, LibDems 2,576.

The 2019 local elections gave the System parties the following vote shares: Con 28%, Lab 28%, LibDems 19%, Others (and spoiled votes) 25%.

The electoral swing percentages: 7% down for Con, 1% down for Lab, and 8% up for the LibDems.

It can be seen from the above that these elections were disastrous for the Conservatives, not successful for Labour. As to the LibDems, their upsurge was mainly a protest vote by pro-Remain former Conservative voters. Not very important. I do not want to waste more time than I have already on washed-up UKIP or on the Green protest vote.

Had the Nigel Farage vehicle, the Brexit Party, been contesting the local elections, the Conservative and Labour parties would have done very much worse, the LibDems about the same (their votes coming exclusively from Remainers and from those who think that mass immigration actually somehow benefits the people of the UK).

The 2019 EU election

It is now too late for the EU election not to be held in the UK. The pathetic “deal” cobbled together (as I write this, not quite agreed between Theresa May and Corbyn) will not be able to prevent the EU election happening. Thus Brexit Party comes into play.

Look at the film clip below. Nigel Farage arriving at a rally in Newport, Wales, on 30 April 2019. His reception is not just warm or supportive; it is ecstatic, an ovation by followers who seem almost to worship him.

Reminiscent of the entry of Adolf Hitler into the speech hall at Nuremberg in 1934, as shown in Triumph of the Will [dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1935]. None of the substance and depth, of course, but superficially rather similar.

Opinion polls: Brexit Party was recently running at about 30% (2 May) and may by now be higher, maybe even 35%. That figure, though, relates purely to the upcoming EU elections

As regards Westminster elections, Brexit Party was running at 14% a few days ago, but it might well rise, perhaps considerably, from there. Labour is on about 30% and Conservatives around 25%.

Brexit Party is pretty much the only game in town as regards the EU election in the UK. Indeed, if Conservative/Labour do agree some unsatisfactory last-minute and cobbled-together “deal” to put to the EU, i.e. “Brexit In Name Only”, Brexit Party might well do even better on 23 May.

Possible General Election 2019

The System parties are assuming that, if some kind of limited faux-Brexit is presented to the British people, with or without a fake “Second Referendum” or “People’s Vote”, that that will shoot the Brexit Party’s fox. I’m not so sure.

There is huge dissatisfaction around, not only around Brexit (from both main directions), but also around the continuing other issues that bedevil the UK: the continuing low levels of pay and “welfare” (social security), overcrowded rail, poorly maintained roads, the spending cuts of a decade now impacting services such as NHS and police; immigration is continuing on a very large scale, too.

The msm and Westminster Bubble crowd have not fully caught up with what is happening. Look again at the Con, Lab and LibDem local results. Labour did not do well in terms of pressing ahead, but did not much slip back. The Conservatives suffered a really big hit. The LibDems did well mainly at the expense of the Conservatives.

In any 2019 General Election, the Conservatives, under whoever is their new leader, would face a three-front war: against Labour, LibDems and Brexit Party. It has been assumed up to now that Brexit Party would take the role and have the effect of being a spoiler alone. Maybe now it might be more than a mere spoiler. Half the Conservative voters of 2017 are saying that they will not vote Conservative next time. I have already blogged about how that could mean a loss of 100 or even 200 Commons seats for the Conservatives. Most ex-Con voters will vote Brexit Party.

It may well be that Brexit Party can do well enough to create its own bloc of seats. Maybe 50. Maybe even 100. Labour will also benefit from the Conservatives losing votes to both Brexit Party and the LibDems.

I cannot see the LibDems doing better than staying at about the same level that they are on now (12 MPs), but votes for them from former Conservative voters may easily let in either Labour or the Brexit Party, depending on the seat in question. Having said that, it is not impossible that a small number of LibDem candidates might slip past the Con, Lab and Brexit party candidates in closely-fought 3-way or 4-way splits.

So the Conservatives will be losing Remain votes to the LibDems, Leave votes to Brexit Party. It may be, also, that those floating voters whose priorities lie elsewhere than with the EU/Brexit situation will go with Labour.

The Conservatives may be left as a niche party for the wealthy, the smug affluent, the buy to let parasites, the Zionist Jews etc. In a sense that was always so, but other categories of voter made up the weight in elections.

The Conservative Party may be permanently reduced to a hard core of 25% of the electorate, and perhaps to an even lower level than that. The ethnic minorities (except the Jews) are estranged from the Conservatives and are fast-increasing in number. The “blacks and browns” etc vote Labour. Many of the English/British (i.e. white) middleaged and elderly are either disappearing by effluxion of time or are defecting to Brexit Party; only 16% of voters under 35 favour the Conservatives; only 4% of those under 25. Very many of the young or quite young vote Labour or Green.

The msm seems to be saying now that the most likely outcome is a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives as biggest party in the Commons. I tend to stick with my prediction of 2+ years standing, that Labour will be the biggest party, though without a majority, if an election really is called this year. There is an outside chance that Labour might get a majority, but if its remaining Northern English base continues to erode, a Commons majority is not going to happen.

Notes

https://news.sky.com/story/local-elections-what-bruising-results-mean-for-labour-and-the-conservatives-11710446

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_local_elections

Some tweets

In the clip immediately below (from Sky newspaper review), journalist Brendan O’Neill, with loudmouth “Fleet Street Fox” (Susie Boniface), addresses the Labour lack of success in the local elections:

In fact, there were no less than 39,000 spoiled papers in all! Many had “BREXIT”, “Brexit Party” or Swastikas drawn on them…

https://twitter.com/EddieDempsey/status/1124075048984350727

and here below we see Lisa Nandy MP trying to avoid mentioning that the Labour vote is now at least partly (in some areas, almost entirely) an ethnic non-white vote. Seems that the Conservatives of Smethwick, at the famous 1960s by-election, were right: “if you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour”! Lisa Nandy is trying to say that “graduates” (meaning “the educated”?…hardy ha ha in the era of “everyone gets a First” degrees) prefer Labour. Everyone and his dog is now a nominal “graduate”, who has gone to “uni” and got a crap (in many cases) “degree” leading to (also in many cases) a low-wage job, thus (ditto) leading to socio-political dissatisfaction…

 

Afterthought

My main article, above, says nothing about Change UK, the new party for Remainers and pro-Zionists. The article does not cover Change UK because Change UK is doomed and (as I said in another blog post) all but pointless. It is running at about 4% in the opinion polls re the EU elections, but better (some polls even had it recently at 10%!) re. any general election.

Readers will recall that UKIP had support, at the 2015 General Election, of 12.6%, yet gained no MPs (except for the ex-Con MP, Carswell). UKIP’s support was evenly spread throughout England and Wales; it had no Schwerpunkt or concentration of support in a few constituencies (which is how the LibDems and Greens, both with lower levels of support nationally, score). It follows from that that Change UK, even with 10% of votes (5% is more likely) has no chance of getting anywhere in any general election in 2019.

The significant thing about Change UK is that it will pull even more votes from the Conservatives, already losing votes to Brexit Party and LibDems.

Update, 7 May 2019

In the past days, while “Change UK” has apparently already sunk without trace (and almost nothing is heard about it), Brexit Party is really developing into something. Today, it was announced that there will be EU elections in the UK on 23 May, only 16 days from today. Brexit Party looks odds-on to be largest UK party and perhaps to take most of the seats allocated to the UK.

and nearly 2,000 people (see link below) turning out for Farage and his Brexit Party in Peterborough, where a by-election will be held in early June.

https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/nigel-farage-brexit-rally-peterborough-16240485

Update, 11 May 2019

“A ComRes poll for the Sunday Telegraph showed that if a Westminster general election were called, Labour would reap the largest share of the vote with 27%; the Brexit party would garner 20% ahead of the Conservatives on 19%. The Liberal Democrats would win 14%, followed by ChangeUK (7%) and the Greens (5%) with Ukip trailing on 2%.” [The Guardian]

Update, 18 May 2019

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7042737/Ministers-threaten-bring-government-accept-Boris-PM.html

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1128326/Brexit-news-Michael-Portillo-UK-EU-withdrawal-general-election-Brexit-Party-Theresa-May

Brexit, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

The UK Local Elections Have Been Held: My View

3 Comments

Introduction

The 2019 local elections are at an end and the results collated and endlessly analyzed in the msm. I had predicted a seat loss for the Conservatives of well beyond 1,000 seats, somewhere between there and 1,500. In that, my prediction was correct. Where I went wrong was in thinking that Labour would do well.

What I got right was the disgust and despair voters generally now feel in respect of the Conservative Party. What I got wrong, mainly, was in assuming that voters in the North and Midlands would vote Labour to spite the Conservatives, even if only as a choice between evils and not much supporting Labour as such.

The facts

The system of voting for local councillors etc in the UK is as antiquated and convoluted as one might resignedly expect: not all councils are elected in the same year, and some councils only elect a third of their councillors in any one election. Absurd.

The actual result of the election nationwide, where 8,798 seats (between a third and a half of all the 20,712 local government seats in the UK) were being contested was:

  • Con 3,562 (loss of 1,334) seats;
  • Lab 2,023 (loss of 82) seats;
  • LibDems 1,350 (gain of 703) seats;
  • Others 1,310 (mostly Independents). The Greens did well and now have 265 councillors (a gain of 194). UKIP did badly, and now have only 31 councillors (a loss of 145).

Analysis

The two major System parties are now widely despised. More than that, the political/electoral system is now despised; people have little or no trust in it or in those who are making their living from it. Those facts are reflected not only in the votes cast, but in those not cast. Turnout varies depending on the type of body being elected, but seems overall to have been only about 30%, if that. In addition, unprecedentedly huge numbers of ballot papers were spoiled, some being endorsed with the words “Brexit” or “Brexit Party” or a drawn Swastika. Unsurprising, when one considers that, in many local council seats, there was no real choice.

In many areas of Southern England, the Conservatives were not opposed by even System party opponents from Labour or the LibDems. That explains the way in which disgusted voters voted for anyone not tainted by System connections: Independents (despite most being completely unknown to most of those who voted for them; complete wild cards); Residents’ Association candidates, Greens. How though to explain the relative success of the LibDems (a System party)? How to explain the collapse of UKIP (a non-System party)? In fact, there is no difficulty in understanding those apparent anomalies.

The LibDems were obviously voted for by voters who liked the LibDems’ focus on local affairs, those who are Remain supporters voting for the LibDems as an anti-Brexit protest vote, and by those former Conservative voters who wanted to punish the Conservatives generally, but who were unwilling to vote for Labour, Greens or for complete wild cards. For those people, I suspect mainly in the South of England, the LibDems were an acceptable compromise “dustbin” vote.

The Greens were probably mostly voted for as a pure protest vote, as well as an environmentally-oriented protest vote.

UKIP lost out badly and now, out of a possible nearly 21,000 councillors, has only 31. I think that one can see why that has happened. I have been tweeting/blogging for years that UKIP peaked in 2014. Since then, UKIP has been sliding. The good, but not good enough, 2015 General Election result led to a precipitous plunge in UKIP’s fortunes. Its new leader, Batten, has slowed the plunge, but not stopped it.

UKIP had insufficient troops and funds to fight these local elections hard. It did not contest the vast majority of seats anyway. Apart from that, it is clear that the connection with the “alt-Right” wastes of space (“Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin, “Prison Planet” Watson, “Count Dankula” Meechan) has damaged UKIP badly. Benjamin’s spat with ghastly “Labour” (Labour label) MP Jess Phillips was probably a huge turn-off for many voters. This is the end of the road for UKIP, even re. the EU elections (if any are held in the UK), because defections to Brexit Party have already left UKIP with only 3 MEPs, and BP is running at 30% or more in the opinion polls, while UKIP is now down to about 3%.

Conclusion

These were elections in which voters clutched at straws, weakly trying to damage the main parties of the System. In most seats, there was no non-System candidate standing. The aftermath has been that Con and Lab are now trying to cobble together a faked-up “deal” (“Brexit In Name Only”) so that both parties can avoid having to hold EU elections at all on the 23rd of this month..

We are coming to the end of even the pretence of representative democracy in the UK. Any means will soon be entirely justified in replacing the present corrupt, decadent and totally incompetent system with a better one. The present political system is just not working.

Notes

https://www.itv.com/news/2019-05-03/why-tories-and-labour-should-be-petrified-by-local-elections/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_local_elections

http://www.heritageanddestiny.com/early-ukip-gains-as-voters-turn-against-main-parties/

Update and afterthoughts, 4 May 2019

There were almost no candidates ostensibly “nationalist”, still less social-national. A few did well where they stood, here and there. The standouts were Karen King and Julian Leppert, both of whom were For Britain Movement candidates..

Julian Leppert was elected for the “For Britain” party in Waltham Abbey, Paternoster ward, in Epping Forest, Essex. The one-time BNP councillor received 40.7% of the vote, 321 votes; the Con in second place got 227. Turnout was only 23%. About 808 votes were cast in toto.

Karen King, in Hartlepool, de Bruce ward, won with an even more striking 49.5% vote. “The turnout for the elections was 27.18% with 19,284 verified votes from an electorate of 70,943” [Northern Echo]. That of course relates to all Hartlepool and not simply the ward picked out, where Karen King/For Britain Movement got 694 votes, Labour 527, Con 180.

Hartlepool Borough Council councillors now consist of 13 Labour, 8 Independent Union, 5 Independent, 3 Conservatives, 1 UKIP, 1 Veterans’ and People’s Party, 1 For Britain Movement and 1 Socialist Labour Party. Such fragmentation is interesting. The old “three party” or “two party” System stitch-up is just not working any more.

Of course, readers of this blog will know that I have little time for “For Britain Movement”, and 2 councillors is a very small contingent out of the nearly 21,000 in the UK, but looking at those results in isolation, one can only congratulate the candidates.

I shall blog separately about the prospects for the main System parties.

Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

Some More Thoughts About the Next General Election in the UK

4 Comments

A 2019 General Election?

A recent ComRes poll indicated that only about half of those who voted Conservative in the General Election of 2017 are intending to vote that way in the next general election, which might come any time between Summer 2019 and early June 2022. I have been thinking and blogging etc for a year or so that 2019 might be the year. Mainstream commentators have recently been gravitating to the same view.

The Brexit chaos has highlighted the incompetence of the Theresa May and other Conservative Party governments stretching back to 2010: roads, rail, social security/”welfare”, the migration-invasion (mass immigration), crime etc.

As I have more than once blogged and (before I was banned in our “free” country, tweeted), the choice for many may be between a Labour Party government which may well prove to be incompetent, and a Conservative Party government which has already, time and again, proven its incompetence.

Labour, Conservative, UKIP, Brexit Party

Labour is now slightly ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls, probably because

  • UKIP, though effectively washed-up as an electoral force, has managed, under its latest leader, Batten, to halt its downward slide;
  • Brexit Party now exists and is taking votes mainly from the Conservatives;
  • also, Theresa May is now finally seen almost universally as the disaster she is.

No-one expects UKIP to win seats in any general election this year; after all, 1 in 8 voters voted UKIP in 2015, but the rigged/unfair UK electoral system deprived it of its merited success. On strict PR voting, UKIP’s 12.6% popular vote would have given UKIP about 80 MPs. Indeed, had many not seen a vote for UKIP as a wasted vote, that number could have been doubled or even trebled. In Mrs. May’s now-famous screech, “nothing has changed!” as far as that is concerned.

UKIP will probably get a few percentage points of the vote in English and Welsh constituencies, maybe even 5%, but that will not win any seats. What it will do, though, is deprive the Conservatives (mainly) of those votes (nearly 600,000 in 2017). Many constituency seats are won and lost by less than a thousand votes.

Now we have Brexit Party, which I had thought would fight only the EU elections, but which, it seems (see Nigel Farage’s comments in Notes, below), now intends to fight the next UK general election.

My initial skepticism about Brexit Party has been proven wrong, at least in the opinion polls. Brexit Party is now running at anything up to 30% re. the EU elections, and, in initial polling, 14% in respect of Westminster elections. That latter polling may already have been superseded by events, but even 14%, at a general election, is huge, inasmuch as it means that Brexit Party and UKIP in aggregate may take away from (mainly) the Conservatives as much as 20% of the votes in any given English or Welsh constituency. In an average constituency with average GE turnout that works out at about 8,000 votes!

As usual, most of the Twitterati get it wrong. Look at the tweets below by one Tom Clarke, who seems to be a fairly typical Remain and anti-nationalist tweeter. He says, probably correctly, that 27% is not enough to “take power” but fails to see the side-effects in terms of depriving others of power…He also bleats about “mandate”. What about the 52% who voted Leave in 2016?

In fact, Twitter is a poor guide to elections and popular votes. The twitterati voted Remain in 2016 (losing side), thought that Trump had no chance of becoming US President (wrong again), and are (or often seem to be) almost all pro-immigration, virtue-signalling idiots etc…

Core votes

The Labour core vote, though no more than 25% of eligible voters, is solid because it is composed of those unlikely to be enticed by other parties presently around, and particularly by the Conservative Party: almost all “blacks and browns” (and other ethnic minorities, except for Jews); almost all of the poorly-paid, unemployed, and disabled. Others, while not “core vote”, add up to possibly another 10% of the eligible electorate: those 18-24 (only 4% favour Conservative), voters under 35 (only 16% favour Conservative). Increasing numbers of persons in their 30s, 40s and older are victims of buy-to-let parasites and bully landlords, or are not getting much personal or social benefit from their work. Labour’s policies speak to them. The Conservatives have nothing to say to such people except “pay up or get out! And don’t complain about repairs!” and “poor pay? Get a different job!”

When one thinks “who today would vote Conservative?” the answer, in broad brush terms must be

  • the wealthy
  • the affluent
  • buy to let parasites
  • those who own their homes outright and are financially stable
  • those elderly who are stick-in-the-mud creatures of frozen voting habits

That is the 25% or so core vote, to which must be added

  • those who hate Labour or Corbyn enough to vote Conservative simply in order to keep Labour and/or a Labour candidate out.

Here is an important point: the Labour core vote may be and probably is growing; the Conservative core vote is shrinking.

The Brexit Party and UKIP strike both at the Conservative core vote and the potentially-Conservative non-core vote.

Would Boris Johnson make a difference?

Doubtful. I concede that I am as anti-Boris as almost anyone could be, but my antipathy is matched by many voters: Boris is apparently the choice for Con leader (and so, unless there is a general election, Prime Minister by default) of about 70% of Conservative Party members (if one can believe sources such as the Daily Express), but even if correct, that is 70% of (at most) 120,000 Con Party members, i.e. 84,000 voters out of at least 40 million (in 2017, about 32 million voted).

In polls of the wider public, Boris Johnson is only a few percentage points ahead of other possible Con leaders.

Conclusion

Since 2017, I have thought that the most likely result of the next UK general election is Labour to win most seats, but not enough to have an overall majority. Now, for the first time, I am questioning that and wondering whether a strong general election campaign by both Brexit Party and UKIP might weaken the Conservative vote to the point where, nationally, the Conservatives might get as little as 30% (could it drop even to 25%?) as compared to 42.4% in 2017 and 36.9% in 2015.

I am of course no psephologist, but using online tools etc, it seems not unlikely that, if the Conservative vote falls to 30% and Labour is five points ahead, Labour might end up with about 300 seats and the Conservatives about 250. Others, about 100. No overall majority.

If, though, the Con vote were 25% and the Lab vote five points ahead, the Conservatives would end up with perhaps 225 or fewer seats, while Labour might get about 320. Yet again no overall majority for Corbyn, but closer.

However, we are uncharted territory, and in the “glorious uncertainly” of the British electoral system, it is not impossible that, in dozens and perhaps hundreds of constituencies, the Conservatives might come in second rather than first, their vote sapped by voters voting for UKIP, Brexit Party and others.

The ComRes poll cited at the start of this article said that only just over half of 2017 Con voters were planning to vote Con next time. In 2017, about 13,600,000 or so voted Con. If that is reduced to about 7 million, then the Conservative Party is toast.

In that event, the parliamentary Conservative Party would be reduced to a half, even a quarter of its present strength, and Labour under Jeremy Corbyn might actually be elected with a considerable majority. After that, anything might happen.

Notes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party#House_of_Commons_2

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/nigel-farage-thinks-his-brexit-party-can-win-general-election-1-5998829

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/24/nigel-farage-brexit-party-use-eu-elections-oust-remain-parliament

Afterthoughts, 25 April 2019

In my concluding sentences, above, I explored what might happen if Brexit Party (and/or UKIP, but Brexit Party is plainly taking off in a way that UKIP now is not) were to take away a large number of votes from the Conservatives. I examined what would happen if, nationally, the Conservatives went from 35%-45% down to 30% or 25% (or even lower).

Nigel Farage has made comments indicating that Brexit Party might make inroads into the Labour vote too, especially in the North where Labour was once monolithic in its supremacy in most constituencies.

The polling percentages and national vote percentages can only take you so far. In 2017, Theresa May led the Conservatives to inconclusive victory-defeat and 317 MPs, despite getting 42.4% of the national vote, a level not achieved by any political leader since Mrs Thatcher in 1983. In 2015, David Cameron-Levita’s Conservatives only got 36.9% of the national vote, yet 330 MPs. Only in an electoral system as Alice in Wonderland as that of the UK could that make any sense.

In other words, predictions are tricky when it comes to exact or even inexact numbers.

However, in my view, Brexit Party (and what is left of UKIP support) will hit the Conservatives harder than Labour. Indeed, some voters in seats where Labour never wins may vote tactically to unseat Conservatives, even if the result is that a LibDem or other may get in as a result. One can easily imagine seats fought until now as effectively a two-way split which may now be fought as a three-way or even four-way split.

If Brexit Party can go up from its 14% polling (Westminster voting intention; in EU elections the figure may be as high as 30%) to 25%+, that raises the serious possibility of Brexit Party MPs being elected. If about half the 2017 Conservative voters are not going to vote Conservative (as ComRes reports), are they going to abstain or vote elsewhere? The fact that they bothered to vote before seems to suggest that they will vote again. That means that even in the handful of seats where the Conservatives won in 2017 with over 60% of the vote, the Conservative share of the vote might go from 60% or so to 40%. (the safest Conservative seat is North East Hampshire: 65.5% in 2017).

In the circumstances above, defending a 60% vote share and ending up with perhaps 40%, the Conservatives would still win in most cases, but that would not be the case in more typical constituencies, where the Conservative MP won in 2017 with 50%, 40% or an even lower percentage of the votes cast. A Con MP who got 40% in 2017 might end up getting 30% or even 20% next time.

If Brexit Party can maintain momentum, it (with UKIP’s effect added) will cripple the Conservatives, who will lose swathes of seats. For example, in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson received about 50% of the vote in 2017. Most of the rest (40%) went to Labour. Were half or even a quarter of the Conservative votes to be cast elsewhere, Labour would win (even if the votes “cast elsewhere” were not cast for Labour). In that example, Boris would end up with less than 40% and (if Labour’s 2017 40% vote were to hold up), the Labour candidate would win. That could be replicated in hundreds of seats, in theory. Most would fall to Labour, a few might go to or revert to LibDem, but it is also possible that some would fall to the Brexit Party. At present, unreal though it feels, it is not totally impossible to foresee Nigel Farage’s Frankenstein coming to life (energized by the Brexit hullabaloo itself) and actually ending up as a bloc of anywhere between a few MPs and as many as 50.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uxbridge_and_South_Ruislip_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/insights/ge2017-marginal-seats-and-turnout/

https://fullfact.org/news/how-many-seats-are-safe-and-how-many-votes-count-under-first-past-post/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkaOb1Ivr4QIVDFXTCh3Ing2pEAAYASAAEgK6fvD_BwE

and Farage has now confirmed that Brexit Party will fight the next general election. The Conservatives are toast.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/brexit/8938714/nigel-farage-brexit-party-general-election/

Update, 27 April 2019

Times columnist Iain Martin tweeted on 27 April 2019 that “Disintegrating Tories need a leader who can get the Brexit Party to shut up shop.” It is clear to him, quite evidently, that Brexit Party, even if only as a “super-protest”, has the ability to smash the Conservative Party forever by reducing a typical Conservative vote in a marginal or even hitherto “safe” constituency by anything up to 8,000 votes…

The corollary is —almost— equally true: if Brexit Party (and UKIP) either did not exist or were not popular, the Conservatives would be well ahead of Labour for the next general election.

27 April 2019

Interesting analysis from 2017: had Labour won 7 more seats (requiring only 2,227 votes!), Corbyn might now be Prime Minister!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/corbyn-election-results-votes-away-prime-minister-theresa-may-hung-parliament-a7782581.html

and here is John Rentoul, writing in The Independent, saying outright part of what I have been saying (I think that he is the first msm commentator of importance to have done so), that is that the Conservative Party is a dead duck (he says “smoking ruin”!) and likely to run only third after Labour and Brexit Party at the next UK general election:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-betrayal-corbyn-pm-farage-european-elections-a8888991.html

Not sure that Rentoul is right about Labour manifesto policy though: Corbyn might just continue to sit on the fence. It is working for him so far…

Meanwhile, Britain Elects tweets thus:

If that polling is right, the combined Brexit Party and UKIP vote at the possible/probable 2019 General Election is now running above 20%. Today 21%, tomorrow 25%, even 30%? Anything above 10% (as in 2015—UKIP got over 12% that year) is pretty bad for the Conservatives; anything above 20% will kill them stone dead. They would lose not even 100, but 200 MPs.

Update, 1 May 2019

With only 1 day to go before the UK local elections, I saw this tweet:

Meanwhile…

This is incredible! I am not a “supporter” of Farage or “Brexit Party”, but this is the sort of reception that few get! Reminiscent of the Fuhrer (though without the depth or substance, of course). Brexit Party is on a roll! Only three weeks to go before the moment of truth (EU elections).

Alt-Right, elections, ethnostate, historical, historical revisionism, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

What Can Be Done To Create A Social-National Movement in the UK?

6 Comments

I was just reading a few appreciations of Paddy Ashdown, the one-time LibDem leader, who recently died. I tend to adhere to the saying de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but when it comes to political people, kindness must sometimes give way to clarity.

In fact, I rather liked Paddy Ashdown, at least in parts (not that I ever actually met him). I certainly feel more respect for him than I ever could feel for the idiots who preceded and followed him (Thorpe, Steel, Kennedy, Campbell, Clegg etc, though I do have time for Jo Grimond, whose interesting and erudite memoirs I reviewed on Amazon years ago; Grimond was by far the best of the Liberal/LibDem leaders, to my mind).

I feel that Ashdown was a great deal more honest than most System politicians, for one thing. Also, he was an idealist, and someone willing to put a mission above his (and his family’s) comfort: not many men in their mid-thirties would leave a comfortable and perhaps promising SIS/FCO career to get involved in the hurly-burly of UK politics, particularly for something as marginal as the then Liberal Party (at the time it had only 13 Commons seats, despite having garnered nearly 20% of the popular vote in both of the two 1974 General Elections). Ashdown gave up a pleasant diplomatic/intelligence near-sinecure based in Switzerland to take ordinary jobs in the Yeovil (Somerset) area while pursuing his political mission. When his employer folded, nearly a decade later, Ashdown applied unsuccessfully for 150 jobs. When elected MP for Yeovil in 1983, he had been unemployed for 2 years and was doing unpaid volunteer work as part of a programme for the long-term unemployed.

Not that I agreed with much of Ashdown’s policy-set: Ashdown was a politician for an England which was disappearing even in the 1970s. He seems to have been sanguine about mass immigration, for one thing. I doubt that he was ever anti-Zionist in any sense (certainly not my sense). Ashdown was no intellectual and not (to my mind) a policy person. Neither was Ashdown intellectually honest in a way that might match what I still perceive to be his personal integrity (leaving aside the “Paddy Pantsdown” episode). Certainly, amid the pathetic rabble called the LibDems, Ashdown could hardly fail to be seen as a star, just as the young Bill Clinton, with his Georgetown, Oxford and Yale academic background, could not fail to shine in the intellectual backwater that is Arkansas.

Yes, much can be laughed at in Ashdown, not least his absurd sense of his own importance and weight, as when he was or tried to be (using my own parody-title for him) “the Lord High Panjandrum of the Balkans and Afghanistan”, but without at least some elevated sense of self-worth, Ashdown would never have tried to be a political leader in the first place, I suppose.

So why am I talking about Ashdown, when this blog piece is supposed to be about the creation of a social-national movement?

What caught my attention about Ashdown as politician was that he only got elected as MP in 1983, after about 8-9 years of trying; also, once he was an MP, it only took him 5 years to become the leader of his party (admittedly tiny in terms of MP numbers).

One of the precepts of the American “self-help” guru Anthony Robbins is that “most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.” That is very true. Examples are all around in history.

Famously, Hitler joined the NSDAP as “Member no.7” in 1919. A year later, it was still of little importance even in its home city, Munich. By 1923 Hitler had attempted the Beer Hall Putsch, which went down in shambolic ignominy; by 1928, 9 years after its foundation, the NSDAP could still only raise a national vote of 2.6%. However, Hitler had built a party and beyond that, a whole volkisch movement. It only needed the right conditions in which to flourish. The Depression provided that, together with the widespread feeling against the Jewish exploitation of the German people: by 1930, the NSDAP had a vote of 18%, by 1932 of 33%, and by 1933 of nearly 44%.

Lenin’s serious revolutionary political activity could be said to have begun with the establishment of Iskra [The Spark] in 1900. Though by 1910, Lenin was still politically marginal, he was considered to be one of the leaders of the Marxist tendency, at least. However, both Bolsheviki and Mensheviki together numbered only 8,400 by 1910 (perhaps 75% of whom were under 30 years of age). Once again, though, the important point is that a party, albeit split, existed and, once the disastrous Russian participation in the European war of 1914 onward had destroyed the strength of the Tsarist government and society, that party could take over the existing uprising in 1917 and perform a coup d’etat later the same year.

Other examples? How about “Solidarity” in Poland? Founded by a small number of workers in Gdansk (former Danzig) in 1980, by 1989 it was the governing party in Poland.

UKIP was formed in 1993 and had become an organized though marginal party by 2003. UKIP never did break through. It peaked in 2014 and deflated from 2015. What stopped UKIP from taking power was not only the UK’s totally unfair First Past the Post electoral system (though that did not help). What stopped UKIP was, first, that it was and (to the extent that it still exists) is not a revolutionary, nor even radical, party/movement; also, there has been no truly “triggering” event comparable to the First World War, the Great Depression etc in the UK of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.

Even if the future for the UK and Europe is a kind of multifaceted civil war, a political party or movement must exist. It is the sine qua non. In a year, it would achieve nothing, but in ten years it could achieve everything.

Notes

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

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

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

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/16/paddy-ashdown-i-turned-to-my-wife-and-said-its-not-our-country-any-more

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#German_Reichstag

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jo-Grimond-Memoirs/dp/B0015L8O0G

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#Revolutionary_activity

Further Thoughts, 28 December 2018

As to practical steps, I have blogged before about these:

  • Focus on one, two, or a very few areas of the UK at first;
  • Establishment of safe zone(s) which can develop into a germinal ethnostate;
  • “Tithing” as a way of building up operational funds.

elections, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

Impressions of The System Parties in the UK in 2018

10 Comments

The System in the UK is like a rotten wooden building, perhaps a termite-riddled one in the tropics. It stands until a storm or strong wind knocks it down. In the purely political sense, the building is the “three party system”, while the storm or strong wind (which has not yet hit) is a revolutionary situation, a radical movement, or a war.

Introduction and the LibDems

We have just had the three main-party conferences. I include the Liberal Democrats out of custom and long practice, though they have surely come to, or close to, the end of the line now. They still have 12 MPs (peak was 62, from 2005-2010, under the egregious Charles Kennedy, then 57 MPs under the ghastly hypocrite Nick Clegg from 2010-2015), but there is every reason to think that (as I predicted since 2011) the LibDems are really washed-up this time. Best advice is that the projected 2022 boundary changes would leave the LibDems with, on present voting, 4 MPs.

LibDems think back to the superficially-similar trough of the 1950s (sub nom Liberal Party) and imagine that another “revival” can occur. I doubt it. Politics has moved on from vague “centrism”.

I did not follow the recent party conferences closely. I saw news reports, Twitter reports etc. The major difference between the Labour and Conservative conferences was in terms of attendance and the median age of attendees. The Labour conference was well-attended and seemed to be more mixed in terms of age than the Conservative equivalent, where the average attendee was about ?80 years of age (young by comparison to most “Conservatives” in the constituencies, though, where the norm may be 85 or 90).

The Conservative Party

The Conservative Party is now a “virtual” party, where the facade is maintained via millions of pounds from “City of London” (often Jewish) donors, and which has few members: it still claims 100,000, but many suspect that the true number is maybe 40,000 or even 20,000, with active members even fewer, which is why,  a few years ago, the Jew Shapps [Grant Shapps MP] put together the ultimately disastrous Conservative Party “Road Trip” bus jamboree, organized by the degenerate and now (politically, certainly) washed-up Mark Clarke and his slut girlfriend India Brummitt (whose jaw was once dislocated during their, er, private play).

Clarke was banned for life from the Conservative Party and as a Conservative candidate for elected office; he was also, a couple of years later (in 2018) effectively sacked (he resigned, notionally) by his employer, Unilever, over an unrelated sexual scandal. India Brummitt was sacked from her job working for thick/ignorant Claire Perry MP [Con, Devizes], but is presently climbing the managerial-bureaucratic ladder in the NHS (see note, below; Clarke’s wife is a doctor in the NHS). As for the Jew Shapps, he resigned from his ministerial post. Another Jew, Robert Halfon MP, a one-time Director of Conservative Friends of Israel, and who (despite being a semi-cripple) had been conducting an affair with another Conservative slut-activist in the same clique, also had to resign as minister a little later.

The point is that those goings-on occurred because the once-solid Conservative Party, which in the 1950s had as many as 5 million members, had shrunk to a few tens of thousands of members, and most of those very aged, infirm, and incapacitated. The vacuum sucked in trash, from Halfon and Shapps to Clarke and India Brummitt (and others of the same ilk). There were other, unrelated scandals (does anyone now remember crass one-time MP Brooks Newmark, yet another “Conservative” Jew MP?).

The Brexit debacle has surely put paid to the (never based on reality) notion that the Conservatives are competent. I supported Brexit and still do, for social-national revolutionary reasons, but there is no doubt that the present government and its immediate predecessors have royally failed to perform with even basic adequacy in regard to Brexit or anything else. Meanwhile, large sections of the population have no decent standard of living, travel, roads, schools, hospitals, pay, housing; and the migration-invasion continues unabated.

Labour

Corbyn has saved the bacon of Labour, but only up to a point. He has increased the membership to over 500,000 and is not an outsider now for next Prime Minister, perhaps as leader of a minority administration, but there are masses of people who will never vote Corbyn-Labour or any Labour. Labour might become the largest party in the Commons, but its chance of gaining an overall majority is slight. The blacks and browns mostly vote Labour and their numbers are increasing fast. The British people have no-one for whom to vote.

The Labour Party under Corbyn promises much and may be unable to deliver. However, there is this: do the voters as a whole prefer a party which promises much and may be unable to deliver to a party which promises almost nothing? Do the voters prefer a Labour Party which may well prove itself to be incompetent to a Conservative Party which has surely proven itself so? “Those who live will see”…

Labour’s millstones round the neck are mostly racial-cultural: immigration (though, again, the Conservative Party has not made good on its promises); the ethnic minority deadheads and freeloaders on its shadow ministerial team (flagship: Diane Abbott…).

SNP

The SNP is pretty much a System party (pro-Zionist, kow-towing to the “holocaust” narrative etc) but will continue to pull in quasi-nationalist votes in Scotland, enough to create or maintain a bloc of MP seats.

The most likely scenario after the next general election is a hung Parliament.

As Hitler said of the Soviet Union in 1941, “all we have to do is kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down!” He was very nearly right, too. We need a party or movement which can do the kicking, first.

Notes

” As of 2015, [Mark Clarke] was reported to be a senior marketing analyst at Unilever, but left the company in March 2018 after claims of sexual harassment were made against him. Clarke was the subject of a formal investigation by Unilever in respect of the sexual harassment matter, but resigned before that investigation was concluded.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Clarke_(politician)

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-activist-claims-woke-up-6887551

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3817531/Tatler-Tory-s-mistress-Commons-party-storm-Mark-Clarke-s-lover-sparked-outrage-turning-Gorge-Osborne-s-cocktail-bash.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/96912/curry-casual-sex-and-pole-dancing-inside-the-sordid-tatler-torys-activist-outings/

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/india-brummitt-64958967

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK)#Near_extinction

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

Addendum 14 October 2018

It should be noted that “the curse of Mark Clarke” left others in his cabal damaged too. This blog post was not intended to touch on the case of Clarke etc more than peripherally, but it might be noted that one of his closest cronies (and sometimes described as the most seriously “weird”), Sam Armstrong, was prosecuted for rape, the alleged offence having been committed after-hours and in the office of the MP who employed him at the time (in the end he was acquitted at trial, despite the evidence presented against him).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/samuel-armstrong-westminster-rape-allegation-cleared-conservative-party-aide-tories-craig-mackinlay-a8123401.html

It is incredible to me that the once-great Conservative Party should have fallen into the hands of such as these, though. It is possible that, had Armstrong not fallen into scandal, he might have been selected as a Conservative candidate to be an MP in time, despite his underwhelming academic background (grammar school followed by a mixed politics/history degree from Nottingham University) .

Likewise, had Mark Clarke not lost the election at Tooting in 2010 (various scandals about him having come out during the campaign), there is every chance that, as a semi-“ethnic” person and one who was partly brought up in a council house (and so notionally not “remote” from the masses), he might have been fast-tracked into government and by 2017 been at least a Minister of State! As it was, he was dropped from the list of Conservative candidates and described by David Cameron-Levita as “a nightmare”; yet he was still appointed to head Road Trip 4 years later! A Conservative Party slut “peeress” (former councillor) from Buckinghamshire seems to have been involved, but it is all very murky. The larger point is that the present UK political system is very flawed, leading to the selection of unsuitable and shallow candidates who then often become MPs and ministers. I shall blog about this separately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooting_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

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

Update, 13 August 2020

Well, nearly two years have elapsed since the last update to this article. The sinister little Con Party activist, Sam Armstrong, somehow managed to get a job as Communications Director at the “interventionist”, pro-Israel, pro-NWO lobby group, the Henry Jackson Society [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Jackson_Society]: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/staff/samuel-armstrong/

At time of writing, his latest tweet was this:

His lucky escape at the rape trial is of course not noted on his Henry Jackson profile.

As to the rest of my article, well…I  have seen nothing about Con “activist” Mark Clarke for years. He seems to have sunk without trace after Unilever sacked him. His girlfriend at time of the writing of my article, India Brummitt, is now “General Manager, Medical Specialties” at the NHS trust that runs Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals in London: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/india-brummitt-64958967

I have occasionally seen tweets or comments by another of Clarke’s little cabal, one Andre-something or other, a scribbler for some online news outlet.

On the wider picture, the vagaries of the British electoral system and the lack of enthusiasm for Labour resulted in a Con majority of 80 at the 2019 General Election. The result was that Boris Johnson, a part-Jew, part-Turk public entertainer, is now posing as Prime Minister.

Finally, it was recently announced that there will not now be any reduction in the number of Westminster constituencies, and so in the number of seats, from 650 to 600. There may be boundary changes in 2023, but so far there has been no legislation to that effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Periodic_Review_of_Westminster_constituencies

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/boundaries2023.html

 

Party Politics, Uncategorized

UK System Parties Struggle For Relevance

11 Comments

Overview

The next UK general election must be held by mid-2022 at latest. Pundits have suggested every time between Autumn 2018 and that date. I myself incline to the view that the next general election will be in late 2018 or Spring 2019, but I have no great faith either way.

What interest me are the prospects for social nationalism and I assess them, at present, as close to zero, assuming a general election in 2018 or 2019. Why? Primarily because there is not only no credible social national party, but in effect no social national party at all.

UKIP

What is left of UKIP is being pushed as a fake “alternative” by those who have no interest in actually having a social national government in the UK: conservative “nationalists”; “alt-right” “social media” weirdos (who never criticize Israel or the Jewish Zionist lobby, or put forward any policies for a better society) such as “Prison Planet” Watson and “Sargon of Akkad” Benjamin; as well as various others who actually wish to prevent a social national movement developing.

Does UKIP have any chance of resurgence if, for instance, Brexit turns out to be a fraud (as seems likely)? If what is meant by “resurgence” is an increase, perhaps even a doubling or tripling, of its vote percentage, yes; if what is meant is a breakthrough and the election of a bloc of UKIP MPs, no.

At present, after 25 years of activity, UKIP has no Westminster MPs (out of 650), 2 members of the London Assembly (out of 25), and 4 members of the Welsh Assembly (out of 60), as well as 17 MEPs (out of 73 in the British contingent). The last will of course disappear next year even on a nominal Brexit. In 2015, UKIP managed a Westminster vote of 12.6%, which fell back to 1.8% in 2017. In order to get back to the 2015 position, UKIP would have to increase its vote 7-fold (and even then probably be unable to get even one single MP elected).

UKIP has been a winner for the System: it took votes and attention away from the BNP prior to 2010 and has taken the wind out of the sails of social nationalism by, to mix metaphors, diverting the waters of popular discontent angry at mass immigration, the EU, globalism etc. All that popular discontent was diverted into a “safe” channel– not “anti-Semitic” and, in fact, not really even anti-immigration. UKIP after 2010 fielded numbers of ethnic minority candidates. At one point, the favoured candidate to take over the party leadership was one Steven Woolfe MEP, of both Jewish and “African-American” descent. Woolfe had become an MEP in 2014 (UKIP’s peak year) after having come third (with only 13% of the vote) in the North West, which result points to the essentially shallow support that UKIP had even at its peak.

As to the small parties trying to swim in nationalist waters, none has any weight or credibility.

For Britain

“For Britain”, the narcissism vehicle of Irish lesbian ex-secretary Anne Marie Waters, is an anti-Islam one-trick-pony and one, er, woman band, pretty much. Not only has it few members (at an educated guess a hundred or so), but its popular support is effectively non-existent: leader Ms. Waters managed a derisory 1.2% (266 votes) at the Lewisham by-election of 2018, coming 7th in the poll. “For Britain” actually expelled a local election candidate because of alleged links to both National Action and Generation Identity. To make matters worse, that information had come from the partly-Zionist-funded “Hope Not Hate” “antifa” snoop-group. The conclusion is obvious: from every point of view, “For Britain” is a waste of space.

Britain First

Britain First is the most important broadly supposedly nationalist party and is said to have perhaps 1,000 members. It is not, to my mind, credibly social-national, being pro-Israel and expressing support for Jews in the UK. Its leaders are not known for intelligence or cultural depth. Its actions, such as invasion of mosques, throwing bacon at mosques etc are little removed from a Monty Python level of tactics and activity. It has done abysmally in all elections contested to date and in fact has (since 2017) been deregistered as a political party. Another waste of space from an electoral point of view.

Others

All other “nationalist” parties and groups (English Democrats, the rumps of the British National Party and National Front etc) are tiny and not worthy of consideration. One possible exception is Generation Identity, but that is not a political party. Other small but non-nationalist parties and groups are of no importance.

System Parties

It is clear that the next general election will be fought among the long-established System parties. Even UKIP will play only a walk-on role: its likely vote of 1% or 2% is unlikely to make an electoral impression in any but the few most marginal seats.

Conservative Party

The Conservative Party can now be characterized as “donkeys led by donkeys”, with not a lion in sight, unless is included the moth-eaten toy lion called Boris Johnson. The Conservative Party’s best electoral argument is that it is not the Labour Party.

Britain teeters on the brink of social breakdown. The “Conservative” governments since 2010 have slashed spending on police, the legal and justice systems, social security, housing etc. In the past, “law and order” was the Conservative Party’s trump card. Now all that is left is a barrage of empty words.

Who now votes Conservative as a natural thing? The few percent of very wealthy individuals? The –maybe– 25% of the population who are relatively affluent? Buy-to-let parasites? I get a sense that formerly loyal groups —pensioners, ex-military, Brexit supporters, anti-immigration small-c conservatives, suburban homeowners— are deserting the Conservative Party in droves. They may not vote Labour or even LibDem, but are not going to make much effort to vote Conservative. If the Conservatives are only going to get their core 25%-30% vote out, they are in trouble.

Labour

Labour is damaged by being seen (and all the more under Corbyn) as the party of mass immigration, though that is not entirely fair: the Conservatives first triggered the post-1945 immigration trickle that became a flood much later; the Conservatives have presided over enormous volumes of immigration, most obviously since 2010 (despite  –again– empty words against the invasion). In fact, the Labour Party that deliberately imported millions of non-white immigrants was that of Tony Blair, not that of Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour’s strength is that its present policies, such as rail nationalization, utilities regulation, building social housing etc, resonate with a population that has seen living standards fall for a decade.

Labour may lose 30 seats in the 2022 boundary changes, but 2022 seems a long way off at present…

Liberal Democrats

The LibDems were mortally wounded by joining with the Conservatives in the 2010-2015 Con Coalition. At present, their only strength is that some voters in the South of England will vote LibDem rather than Conservative, when they would not vote Labour.

The LibDems presently have 12 MPs, but the boundary changes set for 2022 will cost them as many as 8 seats. The LibDems have been there before, but not for many decades and that was in a political milieu where the typical election in a constituency would be a three-way split; now five or six parties, plus minor and joke candidates, contend. If the LibDems lose 8 seats, that will be close to the end. It was noticeable that their recent Conference was attended almost exclusively by the over-60s and indeed over-70s.

Conclusion

If a general election is held in 2018 or 2019, the likely result is a hung Parliament, probably with Labour as the largest party. If a social national party can be founded within the next two years, it has every chance of attaining power within a decade.

Notes: 

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

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

Update, 23 January 2025

Well, having now read the above for the first time in 7 years, I see that my thoughts were almost all correct, yet my ultimate view on what would be the result of a 2019 General Election was not correct. “Events, dear boy”…

I could not have predicted that snake-oil salesman Farage would set up Brexit Party, and at first lead it to the cusp of victory, before stabbing his own candidates in the back, thus gifting the fake Conservative Party under poundland Churchill, “Boris” Johnson, an unmerited electoral bonanza.

by-elections, elections, Party Politics, Uncategorized

Stoke-on-Trent Central By-Election

3 Comments

Last week, I wrote a preview of the upcoming (23 February 2017) Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election, one of two taking place on that day

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/stoke-on-trent-central-preview/.

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections

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:

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/stoke-central-by-election-final-word-before-polling/

and

https://ianrmillard.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/stoke-central-and-copeland-the-aftermath-for-labour-and-ukip/