Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

I lolled and rescinded too tbf xp

winning here

Here is CCTV of the @LibDems @LibDemPress stealing our red and white @UKLabour leaflets out of people’s letterboxes in #newtonlewillows this morning for the @sthelenscouncil elections. Not on. Tit for tat is fine. Stealing out of someone’s letter box is disgraceful. #VoteLabour pic.twitter.com/ZcJXda2AZa

— Sev Gomez-Aspron (@superseveriano) May 2, 2019

Heidi Allen showboating about Claire Fox's refusal to condemn the Warrington bombing, i assume she was equally radge about her former party's stance on Bloody Sunday

really weird stance to be looking to become a gammon MEP and to not take back pro RA bombing remarks imo. like the venn diagram of "thinks the RA bombing england was good" and "loves a bit of nige" has got to be fairly slim

I mean Claire Fox straight up supported the Warrington bombing did she not? But no, I’m not aware of HA having anything to say about Bloody Sunday being bad.

Ha. Just remembered Williamson got fired.

xp she is from an Irish family as well ffs

I don’t want to say “maybe the famine wasn’t bad enough” but...

hesitate to be dogmatic abt the spuked! long game" but being gammons really isn't it

i mean i'd say "every position is a tactic for them and they believe in nothing" -- and you can literally catch forehead o'neill writing columns taking opposite lines in consecutive weeks -- so fox NOT just fibbing or flipping here is actually interesting

Think the on-brand way for Claire Fox to deal with this is to wipe all previous comments from the record like they're a photo of her with Yezhov.

The NCCL was right to affiliate with PIE

this O'Neil classic was linked on here the other week and I lolled.

might as well have put the link, they don't even need clicks.

You expect a certain amount of this sort of carry-on, but still.

#LE2019
Doxford (Sunderland) result:

LDem: 42.7% (+42.7)
Lab: 23.3% (-26.8)
UKIP: 16.6% (-3.6)
Con: 12.6% (-11.9)
Grn: 4.8% (-0.4)

Liberal Democrat GAIN from Labour.

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 2, 2019

Swindon tho, fucksake

Slow clap for Hartlepool for the first For Britain Movement councillor.

Lib Dems winning Cotswold must be the shocker of the night.

It’s what you’d expect to see, I think? Fairly low turnout, LDs doing well based on their horror show performance last time (nowhere to go but up).

Votes for everyone in my area are down but both Conservative candidates polled less than half of what they did last time and UKIP about a third. Not much joy for the smaller parties either. Turnout pretty dismal though.

Conservatives

Councils held: 29 (down 11)

Seats won: 896 (down 254)

Labour

Councils held: 37 (down 2)

Seats won: 806 (down 45)

Lib Dems

Councils held: 8 (up 6)

Seats won: 384 (up 177)

Greens

Seats won: 40 (up 33)

Ukip

Seats won: 12 (down 4)

not great for Labour so far but not as bad as Today reportage made it sound earlier, much much worse for Conservatives.

A ton of councils aren’t going to report until the afternoon too.

Re Swindon:

Swindon, vote share:

Con: 39.4% (-3.2)
Lab: 39.4% (+8.2)
UKIP: 7.1% (-7.8)
LDem: 6.5% (+1.0)
Grn: 6.7% (+1.1)

Important to note the vote share given Labour saw a net seat loss. pic.twitter.com/uqja9ky6T4

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 3, 2019

bloody hell!

I noticed some some numpt saying it is end days for Corbyn cos they lost overall control of Wirral. Nothing like good morning huff on the crackpipe.

no wonder turnout is low - you’d hardly know the locals were on. a large percentage of ppl get their news from the BBC - they had some minor passing refs to it on today yesterday and today also refused to cover numerous labour policy announcements in the lead up.

Looking forward to some hot conclusions being drawn from this desultory scattering of not much

Yeah that seems right - you’d think the European elections were the only ones happening this month.

Also the locals four years ago were the same day as the GE, last time round you were looking at double turnout in some cases

Vaguely interesting that UKIP are shedding seats but i guess their ground game is shambolic and they'll be focused on the Euros.

Getting this in early but if the Euros were to show a drop from Labour and Tories in the direction of Pro and Anti Brexit and the split is roughly even then it almost vindicates Labour's Brexit approach. Difficult to maintain political focus in the teeth of single issue obsessives of either stripe.

But mostly IT'S THE TURNOUT FFS

Labour MP Ruth Smeeth said voters just don't believe the party will deliver Brexit.

She told the BBC that spoiled ballot papers had messages like "we don't trust you"

Fuck me somebody wrote something on a ballot paper let's have a major rethink

Apparently, T.May was at the bottom of our road, yesterday.

Corbyn crisis as three men and a dug decisively reject Labour.

Backlash is so so on. From your Lib Dem paper.

The Conservatives and Labour are both losing seats in the English local elections in what appears in part a backlash from voters against Westminster’s failure on backlash

feels like we’re back in the halcyon days of 2015, with people reading the tea leaves for the next GE in council election results

Hope the Lib Dems are preparing for government

turnout 25%? fs

You could say the focus is on the Euros, media-wise, but even so it's very hard to see what people can vote on wrt local govt.

I bet all those For Britain voters had strong opinions on bin collections and social care!

Greens preparing for government.

Barry Gardiner saying ‘we’re trying to bail you guys out’ to a Tory re: Brexit on the morning coverage isn’t helpful for the EUs, cue FBPEs flinging toys out of prams in Labour’s direction for the next few weeks.

Labour being seen as/promoting themselves as agents of change in all the things we want changed is not helped by the Brexit talks; they really need a pretext to say ‘fuck this’ and leave the Tories to it, otherwise there’s a situation where Corbyn winds up solely blamed for Brexit if it happens.

Why are they still sending Barry G out to talk to the media, foot conveniently in mouth?

I assume it's the mellifluous Glasgow High School accent.

Barry G is very good at distracting from other stuff, and he’s basically unflappable. The accelerationist choice!

Anyway Labour saying they’re invested in a good outcome in the talks, whether they mean that or not, is going to piss off Tory voters far more than their own and has done so already. Tory poll numbers have been in freefall since the talks started.

I'd much rather hear Barry G fumbling about with his foot in his mouth and winding up FBPEs than Andrew "flapper" Gwynne getting bullied by lightweights.

Am I going to have to wait till lunchtime to hear one of you claim that actually if you think about it, this is a good result for Labour?

It’s too early to tell. Don’t think anyone claimed otherwise.

Tory numbers going into freefall isn't necessarily a good thing if the message they take from this is 'Hard Brexit more racism now!!!'

Everyone's drawing their own conclusions from this based on their preexisting viewpoints but the pitiful turnout should be an alarm call to all parties.

Seems pretty obvious though 'constructive ambiguity' reached the end of the line as a viable strategy a while ago. TBH probably the stupidest people in politics right now are the ones saying Labour should take this as a signal to agree a deal with the Tories. When has being seen to be teaming up the Tories ever benefited anyone other than the Tories? The two most recent examples are Scottish Labour and the Lib Dems and we all know what happened there.

it’s clearly not a good result qua result. and it’s clearly not as bad as the CONs who are haemorrhaging seats AND lost overall control of several councils

I’d be reluctant to read too much into it, however, having been burned last time doing so for labour’s pretty bad local election performance... which was then followed by GE17.

a lot of the overheated nonsense I've heard on R4 seems to assume the electorate are so thick that they don't know the difference between GE/LE. I think the death of the 2 party resurgence might be being overstated a teensy bit by some.

I’d be very surprised if a deal emerges from inside that room - the political pain for each side is too high
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/02/tory-labour-brexit-deal-may-corbyn

Regardless it seems an odd take to be sneering at people contextualising these results?

I mean, I know I’m not paid 500k to be a politics and language understander, but... no it doesn’t

This is most significant political reaction to the local elections so far. It suggests Labour's leadership, led by @jeremycorbyn and @johnmcdonnellMP, are now keen to agree a Brexit compromise with @theresa_may. But not clear either Corbyn or May can carry their parties with them https://t.co/9RFXeReOnr

— Robert Peston (@Peston) May 3, 2019

Today's News Confirms Everything I Already Believed, new column by me, on all platforms

lol the convergence here is the worst:

Idea: a social media platform where the Hot Takes of politicians and pundits are limited to admissions that emerging political news contradicted their pre-existing views.

— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) May 3, 2019