Free as a Dodo: UK Politics Welcomes 2021

Tfw you don't get a promise of a pay rise

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA pic.twitter.com/twHltHsn6U

— joolsd (@joolsd) May 7, 2021

well well well

I can’t believe I’m writing this. But Tory sources say Shaun Bailey’s campaign now believe they can win the London mayoralty.

— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) May 7, 2021

tough on votes, tough on the causes of votes xp

Round-up of the council election results so far:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/beginning-end-labour/

BBC: Is the Labour Party facing an existential crisis?
Starmer: No

— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) May 7, 2021

He won. https://t.co/APne2l8hFZ

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) May 7, 2021

Extraordinary video now where KS is asked the same question multiple times and gives the same long non-answer, word for word.

Like something that May or Miliband used to be slated for.

Re: Bailey that's some Guido bullshit.

From a locked acct on twitter: "Most recent count I could see before website crashed was 38-37 Khan, and the likes of Camden, Islington, Tower Hamlets and Newham not started"

A narrow win for Khan would be much harder for Keith's supporters to defend.

Lab's Community organising unit is being dismantled so fat chance any of this will ever see the light of day:

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/07/hartlepool-labour-same-old-tories-conservatives-keir-starmer?

Corbyn was going the way of that piece (which is pretty much AC wrote at the end of 2019, lol covid and all that) but couldn't re-shape the party in that image.

Starmer won't go that way because he doesn't believe in it (or anything), nor does he have the language to seize on crisis, the way the Blair right could post-Black Wednesday.

And of course as Lab has less members it will have less money for any initiatives whatsoever. Even if it had it would be blocked by local lab right vermin.

One of the writeups last night mentioned that the party has no money because they’re not pleasing big right wing donors or the small donor base that grew under Corbyn.

Remember that day on here we all donated money to Labour? Seems about twenty years ago now.

that narrow Khan win hoving into view now as well

Khalid Mahmood, shadow minister in Labour's defence team, quits frontbench in a piece for right-wing think tank Policy Exchange... He says Labour has been captured by a "London-based bourgeoisie".

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) May 7, 2021

just drowning in woke that's the trouble

It’s like when Jamie Reed quit, who even knew this fella was on the front bench (or who he is)

lol

I'm told by @khalid4PB that he left the Labour front bench four weeks ago, and it wasn't related to the issues he raises today https://t.co/k3rGFlWJry

— Jonathan Walker (@jonwalker121) May 7, 2021

I don't which Labour party he is talking about there, but it isn't an applicable description of the one led by fucking Kieth.

“We are definitely seeing the product of lower turnout and complacency from voters who believed it was safe to put a candidate from a smaller party as first preference”

oh you selfish complacent Londoners!

this is all incredibly funny right up to but not including the point where shaun bailey gets elected mayor of london

— jonathan nunn (@demarionunn) May 7, 2021

Khan to win a single vote plz!

Mahmood speaks:

My view is simple: in the past decade, Labour has lost touch with ordinary British people. A London-based bourgeoisie, with the support of brigades of woke social media warriors, has effectively captured the party. They mean well, of course, but their politics – obsessed with identity, division and even tech utopianism – have more in common with those of Californian high society than the kind of people who voted in Hartlepool yesterday. The loudest voices in the Labour movement over the past year in particular have focused more on pulling down Churchill’s statue than they have on helping people pull themselves up in the world. No wonder it is doing better among rich urban liberals and young university graduates than it is amongst the most important part of its traditional electoral coalition, the working-class.

I'm sure there's another party or two he can jump ship to if things get even worse for him!

The history of the Labour party for the rest of time is just opposing factions, journalists and columnists accusing the other lot of being too London, too metropolitan, too woke, too middle class. It wont end. Its meaningless.

NEW: Exclusive polling for @Channel4News by @JLPartnersPolls shows the top reason given for not voting Labour in elections in England yesterday was Sir Keir Starmer's leadership.

More in @GaryGibbonC4's report on @Channel4 and @All4 tonight at 7pm.

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) May 7, 2021

mahmood is a bit of a slow learner it seems. he's talking about an issue the labour party has had starting in the 60s. back then the greatest predictor of voting labour was being working class and the greatest predictor of voting tory was having a university degree. but since then there's been the increasing move of white working class votes to tories, with bedrock of labour support increasingly becoming racialized voters and the urban, university educated middle-class. piketty's brahmin left thesis. the majority of white working class men voted for thatcher though so im not really sure that that is kieth's fault

xp. love to see it

https://i.postimg.cc/prv36cPy/4-E147-A5-C-F9-EE-4-DF0-96-C7-62-DBBBDB5-B4-A.jpg

1. Patriotic COVID bonds
2.
3.

No poll for me.

https://i.postimg.cc/prv36cPy/4-E147-A5-C-F9-EE-4-DF0-96-C7-62-DBBBDB5-B4-A.jpg

fascinating in this discourse how the most precarious and marginalised people in the country are consistently framed as some kind of elite which is somehow oppressing a largely propertied, sometimes business owning "working class" with idk wokeness or whatever xps

They are even politically nuanced enough to judge Kieth's merit as a leader, why do we even allow these plebs to vote.

jesus christ the bbc coverage is insufferable

earlier it sounded like Keunssberg was suggesting that life is rosy in the de-industrial regions of the north that they don't even need an opposition party to vote for anymore

They're considering moving Labour HQ out of London now? Cheaper rents I guess, they'll need to cut corners somewhere.

I'm sure they could find somewhere just as handsome as that iconic Transport House building they used to be based in at a good price in Dewsbury or Doncaster!

Love this wordcloud.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0ziHb3WYAI9NIJ?format=jpg&name=900x900

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0za03NXsAA4_up?format=png&name=large

"no get up and go"

give him a chance till the pubs are open

one can dream

One thing I do hope is that public political discourse finally takes seriously the demographic recomposition of these “red wall” seats, including and especially rates of home ownership, rather than acting as if it’s people facing breadline poverty abandoning Labour

— Jason Okundaye (@jasebyjason) May 7, 2021

snp has won 3 of the constituency seats it needs to get a majority - it needs another 3 and not to lose any of its own. constituency seats will probably be known by the end of the night with list shenanigans to be done by tomorrow night.

the long, drawn-out process of reaching another indy ref begins, perhaps.

xp
Wont happen. If the "public discourse" is mainstream journalists talking about it, its in their interest to obfuscate this very basic reality. Grace Blakely and her cohort are on it, cf Keir Milburn's chapter in the Futures of Socialism book. But they are saying an unsayable truth, like the fact that the vast majority of "woke metropolitan middle class latte-drinking" Labour voters are actually working class, if that term is applied strictly.

Only white people are considered working class in the UK, it's always been like that.

Have you got a regional accent? Then you're in too.

It looks like second preferences will save Khan, will still be a humiliation if he loses on firsts to a figure who the Tory party effectively abandoned https://t.co/Q0rkSiOXFO

— Stephen Smith (@SteveNickSmith) May 7, 2021

can't wait for the pissy takes on complacent Londoners casting frivolous first pref votes on candidates they prefer to Khan

I still think its mostly because he has a voice like a muppet

all politics and factionalism aside, that voice really should have precluded him from the job right from the start

Curtice saying he thinks the SNP will a seat or two short

*be

XxXpost

Is that Starmer or Khan you’re talking about.

I think he definitely means Kieth because he was an early analyser of the voice on here!

I know none of us like to acknowledge it, but people from Surrey are human too!

Here’s a council bucking the trend - vote share and votes up and everything:

RESULT:
Labour 30 (+/- 0)
Cons 11 (+2)
LD 7 (-2)#PrestonModel council marches on! pic.twitter.com/iChyNKASkx

— Preston Labour (@prestonlabour) May 7, 2021