Tag Archives: Reform UK

Boris Johnson, Brexit, by-elections, daily blog, diary blog, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, Uncategorized

Hartlepool By-Election 2021— preliminary look

8 Comments

A by-election is to be held on 6 May 2021 at Hartlepool. The by-election is being seen as a barometer measuring support for the Labour Party, as well as that for the Conservative Party government. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9438925/Keir-Starmer-course-humiliating-defeat-Hartlepool-election.html.

The by-election is seen as an important one, and that fact has already resulted in Wikipedia giving it a dedicated article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Hartlepool_by-election.

Polling seems to show that this is essentially a straight fight between Con and Lab:

A poll - commissioned by the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and conducted over the phone - suggests North Yorkshire farmer Ms Mortimer will walk away with a 20 percentage point increase on the votes won by the Tories in December 2019. Pictured: The predicted split in votes

There are likely to be at least 10 candidates in all, possibly 11 or 12.

Hartlepool has been held by the Labour Party since its creation in 1974. The Labour vote peaked, perhaps surprisingly, when Peter Mandelson was the candidate in 1997. Over 60%. The lowest trough was in 2015, when Labour scored 35.6% (UKIP second with 28%). Labour recovered to 52.5% in 2017, but crashed back to 37.7% in 2019.

The Conservative Party vote peaked early, in the first election of 1974 (45.7%). The Con trough was in 2001 (20.9%).

Brexit Party, represented by its deputy leader, Richard Tice, might have succeeded in 2019 had Nigel Farage not stabbed his own party in the back in order to help the Conservatives win the General Election. Even so, Tice managed a 25.8% third placing, not far behind the Conservative candidate. Reform Party is the forlorn reincarnation of Brexit Party, but already seems doomed. Even Farage, its “leader” until recently, has jumped ship.

Hartlepool vote share graph.png

Labour’s national problems have been intensified in Hartlepool by its candidates of recent years. Mike Hill, the MP since 2017, stepped down because he was facing sex pest allegations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hill_(British_politician). A pretty dull Labour Party drone, who worked in trade unions and public libraries before becoming an MP.

Now Labour is facing further problems, this time with its new candidate, Paul Williams [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Williams_(Labour_politician)], an NHS medic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56460823, though it can probably be said that the story (about old tweets by Williams) is overblown.

Official portrait of Dr Paul Williams crop 2.jpg
[Paul Williams, Labour Party candidate at the 2021 Hartlepool by-election]

Williams is obviously a careerist, and was the MP for Stockton South 2015-2017, when he lost to the Conservative candidate. He has also tried to become a Police and Crime Commissioner.

On paper, Williams looks like a solid candidate, with a solid background in healthcare as a GP etc, but is said to have been not very liked when MP for Stockton South. He is pro-EU in a very anti-EU part of the UK.

Labour’s national profile at present is not encouraging. The Jewish lobby managed, after a four-year struggle, to bin Jeremy Corbyn, replacing him with Keir Starmer, married to a woman who is a Jewish lawyer, and whose children are being brought up as Jewish.

Starmer is doing no better than Corbyn did in gaining public trust or popularity.

The Conservative candidate is Jill Mortimer, a farmer from North Yorkshire: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-hartlepool-candidate-admits-doesnt-23821830. She looks like a pain in the neck but, as she says in that Mirror report, a place like Hartlepool might benefit from an active MP.

An interesting intervener is Northern Independence Party [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Independence_Party], which is disliked by the Jew claque on Twitter— a good sign. Its candidate is Thelma Walker, who was a Labour MP from 2015-2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelma_Walker. Her candidature may stop Labour from winning, in what looks like being a fairly close contest.

I do not feel inclined to call the result, as yet, though obviously Labour is on the back foot. If the Conservative Party wins, it will not be because there is sudden enthusiasm for it, or for Boris-idiot, but because Labour is sliding to oblivion. If Labour loses, Hartlepool may go down in British political history as the beginning of the end for the Labour Party.

Update, 9 May 2021

Well, in the end, the Conservative Party candidate won easily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartlepool_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.

Out of over 70,000 eligible voters, fewer than 30,000 turned out to vote. Official turnout was 42.7%. Of those (nearly) 30,000, only about 8,500 voted for the Labour Party candidate. 8,500 out of a possible 70,000…

The beginning of the end for the Labour Party.

Update, 13 July 2025

Well, since 2021, much water under the bridge. At the 2024 General Election, Labour recaptured the seat with 46.2% of the vote. The former MP, Jill Mortimer, sank with the rest of the Sunak Con Party, and came third, with a vote-share of only 21.9%. Reform UK came second, with 24.5% (about the same as the Brexit Party vote in 2019).

The present MP is one Jonathan Brash, an almost invisible former schoolteacher. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Brash. I imagine that Reform UK might unseat him in 2028-2029. We shall see.

As for the 2021 by-election candidates, the Labour candidate, Paul Williams, returned to work as a doctor in the NHS, and the Conservative Party candidate and then MP, Jill Mortimer, seems now to have returned to her farm and B&B business in North Yorkshire.

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative Friends of Israel, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, society, Uncategorized

After a 2019 General Election, What?

24 Comments

I just read a typically unsatisfying yet not completely uninteresting article in the New Statesman [below].

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/07/boris-johnson-all-roads-likely-lead-general-election

The conclusion of that article is that Boris Johnson will be forced to a general election before very long. Unlike msm talking heads, we have no need to say “whoever is the next Prime Minister”: the system is broken, the 100,000 elderly people actually given a vote love “Boris”, and so we, the other 65 million, are having imposed upon us the least honest, least competent, least loyal, least decent, least worthy, least genuinely British Prime Minister in living memory, perhaps ever.

The crunch is coming, but Boris Johnson has never kept to any “pledge” or promise, whether political or personal, so will not be bound by his “Leave EU by 31 October 2019” one either, in my view.

As I have blogged previously, Boris Johnson likes to be presented as a strong maverick character, whereas in fact he is actually rather weak: weak in logic, weak in general knowledge, weak in resolve, weak in ethical standards, weak politically.

Philip Hammond puts it more diplomatically: ” “He is actually a more complex personality than it sometimes seems,” Hammond said of Johnson in his interview. “He is a mainstream conservative on all topics except Brexit. I very much regret his attitude to Brexit. His own story, which is multicultural, multinational and liberal, speaks for itself.” [The Guardian].

Hammond’s words of course are two-edged and allude to Johnson’s part-Jew, part-Muslim, born-in-USA (and brought up largely in USA and Belgium) background, as well as his loose and indeed louche morality.

I may be overthinking this, because I do not see Boris Johnson as a determined —or indeed any sort of— planner (except in terms of trying to become Prime Minister for the past 20+ years), but I wonder whether Johnson foresaw that the Commons would block fulfilment of his “Brexit on WTO terms by 31 October” so-called “pledge”? After all, it would hardly require clairvoyance. The House of Commons has a large Remain majority.

If Boris Johnson “pledges” to leave on WTO terms on 31 October 2019 and if that is then blocked by the Remain majority in the Commons, Johnson can then sigh loudly in public and say “I did my best, but have been stabbed in the back by all those pro-EU MPs…”, thus absolving him from blame for not “delivering Brexit” (the EU will very likely grant further “extensons” etc…). Johnson can then present himself as the Tribune of the People, fighting the corrupt Remain MPs. A hero to fools…

From Johnson’s point of view, perfect. No need to actually negotiate with people who are more intelligent, more knowledgeable, better prepared than Johnson himself ever is, no need to put in much effort and, finally, also parking tanks on the lawn of Farage and Brexit Party (that less certain, though).

What if it goes wrong for Boris-Idiot and there is a no-confidence vote? I am wondering whether the prospect of this stupid clown as Prime Minister, even leaving aside Brexit, might not be enough to make some Conservative Party MPs abstain in a no-confidence vote. I would not bet against it.

If Labour put forward a no-confidence vote, and if that succeeds, it might not mean an immediate general election. The Conservatives can put forward another, less obviously clownish MP as their prime ministerial choice. If all the Conservatives and all the DUP support that person, then that freezes out Corbyn and Labour for a while.

What if there is a general election? If Brexit Party put up a fairly full slate of candidates in England, and if at least some form of Brexit has not happened by then, there might well be an explosion of rage from the half of the country (more than half) that voted Leave in 2016. That explosion might well not spare the Conservatives who have so badly handled the Brexit negotiations for the past 3 years. After all, that inept performance calls to mind the other stupidities of the past decade.

Scotland seems likely to vote at least 40% SNP in a general election, creating (maintaining) a bloc of about 40-50 Westminster MPs. As for England and Wales, if you take out the blacks and browns (etc), and you take out London (and Gibraltar, which has no votes in Westminster elections), the Leave vote was around 70%. What does this mean?

First of all, Brexit is not the only issue. The socio-economic problems of the country play more to Labour’s advantage. What is letting down Labour electorally now is that it is seen to be largely the party of the blacks and browns, the immigrants and their offspring, as well as public service workers, and those reliant on State benefits. I speak in broad-brush terms of course.

The people who are voting Labour now and might vote Labour in any 2019 general election are concentrated in quite few seats, about 200-250, but some polls are saying that only 40% of 2017 Labour voters will vote Labour if there is a general election this year. Translating that into seats is not easy, but it could mean a substantial reduction from the position now.

The above is however affected by the effect Brexit Party might have on the Conservative vote, bearing in mind that, as with Labour, as high as 60% of 2017 Conservative voters say that they will not be voting Con next time.

If Brexit Party puts up candidates all over England and Wales, and scores at least 15% nationwide, the present 312 Conservative seats will reduce to about 250 and possibly fewer. Most will fall to the LibDems or Labour, but no doubt Brexit Party could win a few too. If Brexit Party can score 20%+ nationwide, then there might be only 150 Conservative MPs left.

We are in minority, possibly coalition, territory. Either

  • Labour + SNP or
  • Labour + LibDems; or
  • Conservative + Brexit Party or
  • Conservative + LibDems

One intriguing fact is that Boris Johnson is apparently marginally more popular with Brexit Party members than he is with Conservative Party members.

My guess today (in this volatile climate, one alters perceptions almost daily) is that it is a race between Labour’s vote (especially in the North) collapsing and the Conservative vote collapsing in much of the country, and weakened further by the existence of Brexit Party (even if Brexit Party itself scarcely wins a seat).

I cannot see Boris-Idiot lasting for long as Prime Minister— he is completely unsuited for such a position; but having said that, the country has already gone half-mad…

Postscript

I had scarcely published the above when, about an hour after that, the Guardian published the report below:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/19/brussels-to-offer-boris-johnson-extension-on-no-deal-brexit

“Brussels to offer Boris Johnson extension”… Quelle surprise…

There is also this now:

 

Update, 10 April 2021

Nearly two years later from when I wrote the above blog post, we look back at the December 2019 General Election and see that most of the analysis was correct. What made the prediction of Conservative Party electoral collapse misfire was the event few —if any— predicted, meaning that Nigel Farage, snake oil salesman, stabbed his own party in the back, and withdrawing from active participation the majority of Brexit Party candidates, all of whom had actually paid for their own deposits (and more)!

All or almost all Conservative Party candidates were given a clear run by Brexit Party. Brexit Party candidates in some formerly Labour seats where the Conservative Party was always unlikely to win, were allowed to stand, as in Hartlepool, where the Brexit Party 2-i-c, Richard Tice, came a very close third and, had the party not been killed by its own leader, might have pulled off an historic coup in a seat Labour-held since it was created. Farage’s actions destroyed Brexit Party credibility during the campaign.

The net result was that, with most intended Brexit Party votes going to Conservative candidates, the Con Party achieved a huge 80-seat overall majority. Many Conservative candidates, especially in the North, won by fewer than 2,000 votes. Had Brexit Party put up more than a token fight, the Conservative Party might well not have achieved a majority at all.

As for Nigel Farage, after his treachery in 2019, he had the gall to wind up Brexit Party (literally, since it was set up as a private company) and start yet another party, Reform Party or Reform UK, which he then abandoned when offered a great deal of money in business. An out and out, controlled-opposition, con-man.

by-elections, elections, Jewish lobby in UK, Labour Friends of Israel, MPs, Party Politics, Starmer, Uncategorized

The Sliding Labour Party– What Next?

2 Comments

Some months ago I blogged about what I saw as the emerging political vacuum in England and Wales. My overall view now is the same but more so.

The 2015 General Election would have broken the mould of British politics had it been carried out under conditions other than the absurd First Past The Post system, more suited to the UK of the 1920s than that of the early 21st Century. The distribution of votes in Southern England illustrates this well enough, where the Conservative Party got about half the votes but won about 95% of the Westminster seats (a similar ration to that of the SNP in Scotland).

The UKIP insurgents famously won nearly 4 million votes UK-wide (mostly in England), some 12% of the vote, yet won no seat except that of Douglas Carswell, who is really a Conservative and was previously elected as one.

It can be asserted as simple fact that, in almost any given English seat, most of the voters do not get the MP or party that they want and for which they voted. Moreover, even the typical 30%-50% received by the winning candidate often reflects more the candidates that most voters did not want: voters vote tactically in the absence of a true choice being available.

FPTP has distorted British politics, giving the incumbent party in any given seat a great advantage and –far more– giving the main System parties as a whole a like electoral advantage and an anchor against sliding into ruination. All the same, when the forces become unstoppable, that slide does happen. It happened to the Liberal Party during and after the 1920s (replaced by Labour) and it happened to Scottish Labour after 2010. This illustrates it well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Party#UK_General_Elections

Founded in 1934, the SNP often scored less than 1% of the vote in Scotland and had to wait until 1970 to get a single MP elected. Even in 2010, the SNP only got 19.9% of the Scottish vote and 6 MPs (out of 59). Then the tipping-point was reached and in 2015, its vote swelled to 50% and suddenly the SNP had (a typically-disproportionate FPTP result) 56 MPs (out of 59). Labour in Scotland was ruined and now (2017) is only the third party in the polls there (after the Conservatives!) and has only about 15% voter support.

Moving to Labour overall, we see that this is a party that has been living “off its hump” for a long time. It even managed to jettison almost every remnant of “socialism” in its policies and yet win elections under Tony Blair (via appealing to otherwise Conservative or Liberal Democrat voters in the South and Midlands). Labour, in effect, “sold its patrimony for a mess of pottage”. When one asks oneself “what does Labour stand for?”, nothing coherent comes to mind: a confusion of old history, trade unions, strike banners, post-1945 nationalization, 1960s-1970s managerial technocracy, that old humbug Michael Foot in his donkey jacket at the Cenotaph, then, from the mid-1990s, the mirage of Blairism (New World Order pro-Americanism meets the Israel Lobby meets managerial “socialism” meets Common Purpose careerism).

It is often said that Labour is now split into Corbynists and Blairites. Another fault line (closely following the first) might be said to be the pro-Israel lobby bloc and the generally anti-Zionist bloc (though most in both still feel the need to pay lip-service to the “holocaust” narrative and its faked history, non-existent “gas chambers”, the now-derided “six million” etc).

In fact, Labour is now not even two parties but three:

  • the remnant of the old trade union-oriented Labour Party, based around traditional and unthinkingly Labour communities, mostly in the North;
  • the Blairite-Brownite pro-Israel bloc, consisting largely of MPs and their staffs, together with careerists in other parts of the country. These are those who want “to win elections” by promising pie in the sky: socialism to socialists, aspiration to the voters of the suburbs, “diversity” to the ethnic minorities and the rainbow loonies, profits and low taxes to the Jewish Zionist potential donors;
  • the Corbyn  camp, which relates to a partly-imaginary Labour history from the 1930s through to the 1980s: “no pasaran!” Communist (and some syndicalist) propaganda from the Spanish Civil War; an airbrushed “anti-Nazi” and “anti-fascist” Second World War narrative; the conflicts of the 1970s such as that in Chile or those in parts of Central America; the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s (seen mainly through a London lens though). This is largely a bloc based around London, around the half-mad pseudo-socialist local council enclaves that became notorious in the 1980s: Islington, Camden, Haringey, Lambeth. It is the dominant bloc now and is supported by at least half of the ordinary Labour Party members and supporters.

Naturally, there is overlap here and there within that tripartite split. However, what has fallen away is not only consensus among the Labour members and activists, but more, the voters. Most Labour voters now are in that first group and are only voting Labour out of traditional allegiance. When you look at, say, Stoke Central, where the by-election is about to take place, you see that voting Labour, not in 1945 but in 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015 has not given the people anything. Unemployment high, immigration high, large numbers of ethnic minority voters (Labour’s most reliable pawns now); little hope. Why would people in Stoke Central vote Labour? The answer seems to be that they see little choice (those that will actually vote, being probably a minority of those eligible).

In Stoke Central, the only alternative to Labour is UKIP, which is not the sort of social-national party likely to rise to power. In fact, UKIP is not social-nationalist at all, though some of its supporters are. The fact that UKIP is even being entertained (and may yet win the Stoke Central seat) is mainly a sign of Labour’s decline and not UKIP’s strength.

The industrial proletariat has gone, almost entirely. The trade unions are just a feeble bureaucratic, rainbow-coalition, “anti-racist”, Common Purpose-contaminated joke. The people who are suffering under fake “austerity” (the effect of #NWO/#ZOG globalism) and who belong to the burgeoning “precariat” (unemployed, underemployed, disabled, 50+, zero-hours-exploited, minimum-wage-exploited) are not now Labour voters but non-voters, sometime UKIP voters, potential social-nationalist voters. The Labour MPs are now mainly careerists, pro-Israel drones and “what’s-in-it-for-me?” bastards. Stoke Central MP Tristram Hunt abandoned his seat and constituents because, as he said, “the offer [from the Victoria and Albert Museum] was too good to refuse.” £250,000 a year. That was his price.

When a social nationalist movement of the new type emerges, as it must, it will start to scoop up the poor, or poor and angry and frustrated, masses. Labour will then disappear. Already it seems likely that Labour will only get between 100-200 seats in the 2020 Parliament, whether numbers are reduced from 650 to 600 or not. Labour policies– pro mass immigration, “welcoming” “refugees” (not of course to the MPs’ homes and neighbourhoods but to those of the former Labour voters), pro the EU octopus etc, simply have no appeal to those left behind by a conspiratorial globalism and multiculturalism.

As yet, a suitable party does not exist. When it does exist, Labour, already weakened, will fall to dust.

Update, 24 August 2025

Well, scroll on 8.5 years and here we are. The 2017 Stoke Central by-election was won by Labour (from UKIP and Con), and the seat retained by Labour at the 2017 General Election, but lost to the Conservatives in 2019, only for Labour to win the seat back in 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s.

In the bigger picture, of course, the Cons under Boris-idiot won in 2017, and won bigger in 2019, only to lose to Starmer-Labour in 2024, since which time Reform UK has arisen to prominence and, indeed, dominance. We now await events.