"we'll change the things that need changing and that's all we'll change": the paSUKification of post-brexit politics 2021

re: trade unions withdrawing funding from Lab. Believe it when I see it.

i think its like the concept of interest rates where any change by BOE has become so blunt an instrument it can no longer be utilised and its instead replaced by announcements of imminent changes as the only suitably delicate intervention

New Statesman lets Sun editor brag about Cockgate

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/media/2021/06/victoria-newton-s-diary-how-sun-got-its-matt-hancock-scoop

It was a shocking video. I couldn’t believe a cabinet minister would behave like that in his government office at 3pm.

...

Excruciatingly for the BBC, by 9am it still hadn’t been able to work out how to cover the story – was it a sex scandal, or a political exposé? Such are the chilling effects of privacy laws, particularly to the BBC, which has been burned before.

lol the bitterness

My daily conference starts with the most searched items on Google

cool cool flawless thinking

The days of measuring performance on print sales alone are long gone.

lol the bitterness

surely performance is measured on success in controlling the public discourse?

fucking Sun editors should be not seen and not heard anywhere outside Murdoch-land. Unless it's a last request before they get shot. As amusing as it is to read one making a serious journalism/public interest claim about a bonking pol scoop.

She is from Liverpool, *spits*

on the batley/spen market on the betting exchanges Labour have gone from something like 13/2 yesterday to something like 2/1 in the last hour. Tories are still clear favs, but there has been some money on Labour tonight.

I'm trying to cope with this by dismissing it as some Betfair bullshit to draw more mug punters in!

I've also seen the rumours, a Galloway-backlash thing, still backed up by nothing whatsoever, so

calz, have you seen this documentary about Batley Variety Club? Louis Armstrong, Eartha Kitt, Roy Orbison, Neil Sedaka and loads of others apparently played there in the 60s / 70s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjGzSruor2Y

oh I will have to check that out. I went down a Batley variety club wormhole recently. The flash git who owned the club tried to book Dean Martin with a very generous for the time £45 grand offer and his agent said he wouldn't even get out of bed for a piss for that pittance.

maybe Dean Martin showed up in Batley today and campaigned for Labour!

Oh yeah, it was very famous. I think it led, directly or indirectly, to Scott Walker breaking up the Walker Brothers and Roy Wood getting Jeff Lynne to join the Move.

Batley, not just there for its shoddy and mungo industries history and Labour by-election angst - it was a fucking cool spot as well!

Or did he do Batley during his CBS years?

(Scott Walker, obvs xpost)

Yes, that might be it, or, more likely, the Walker Brothers reunion, I think it might have pushed him towards recording "Nite Flights" (and alcoholism).

at least Kieth can't blame Batley for his alcoholism but the exit poll might exacerbate an existing problem

So now the polls closed I read a pretty convincing twitter thread arguing that while nationally the picture is v bad for Starmer Lab should edge it tomorrow. Just by looking at the constituency itself.

The only thing he couldn't compute was Galloway's impact.

I talked to an Asian women I know who works as my son's transport escort about Galloway and she really wasn't impressed when I said he was a reet bloody grifter and I felt like I'd overstepped a mark. He's probably a lock in for third, based on pure conjecture and that poll a few weeks back, but he's going to do a lot better than I initially thought he would.

and also the Spenborough Valley side of the constituency is already very Tory and I'd imagine (based on pure conjecture) the toxic nature of this by-election will turn it even more Tory.

apparently a 70% turnout!

yeah that's...unexpected

Tory activist who just left Batley tells me: "Prior to today, I was really really optimistic.

"However, this evening we’ve had a lot of Conservative voters saying they’re not bothering or sick of a divisive campaign." 1/2

— Rachel Wearmouth (@REWearmouth) July 1, 2021

lol as if Tory voters start feeling so annoyed with ugly divisive campaigns that they can't be arsed voting Tory, is it some kind of winning fatigue?

"yeah that's...unexpected"

Hartlepool was 42.7 %

beyond parody

The Labour leader is expected to come out fighting after the byelection, with a string of public appearances and policy announcements. “We know we have work to do,” said a party source.

such strong copium before we've even seen the exit poll

Labour hold by 323! and it certainly wasn't a 70% turnout. Well that isn't going to get rid of Kieth!

BATLEY AND SPEN
Labour: 13,296
Conservative: 12,973
Workers Party: 8,264
Lib Dem: 1,254

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) July 2, 2021

Turnout was 47.61% in Batley & Spen - a LONG way from what was predicted earlier. #BatleyAndSpenByelection #LDReporter

— TonyLDR (@LdrTony) July 2, 2021

Kim Leadbeater repeatedly declines to say to the BBC whether Keir Starmer was an "asset" to the Labour Party campaign in Batley and Spen.

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) July 2, 2021

“This is just the start,” says Keir Starmer of Labour’s victory in Batley and Spen.

lol stop it, by-elections against governing Tories are supposed to be a formality for Labour - Corbz won 9 of them without any fanfare or them being reported as shock results

Getting Jo Cox's sister to run almost didn't work. Bad turnout and this is a v tight marginal now. It looks like Galloway absorbed dissatisfaction from all directions.

I'm astonished he got 22%

but yeah it wasn't just protest votes from previous Labour voters getting on the Galloway bus.

This puts down any talk of a leadership challenge for the summer until more council elections next year, maybe. They can get on with changing the rules on any challenges from the left.

Rayner is no kind of answer anyway. Very bleak.

xp = social conservatism is one hell of a drug

I think you could probably work out which 7 or so simps from the SCG who were going to get behind an Angie challenge.

the gall of Kieth visiting Batley today after mostly avoiding the place and blanking the Labour candidate on social media for weeks after a bad poll dropped. I hope he gets egged.

Surely the cries of voter fraud are amassing from Tories

lol Georgie is threatening a legal challenge as per. Another good point is that they mobilised just about every MP and what's left of the membership to campaign in the area, come the next GE their ground game will be severely stretched and weak.

fuck's sake i hope some HEAVILY REDACTED her

I've got More In Common with the 52.4% of Batley that looked at the reprehensible set of fascists, bullshit merchants and grifters running in this by-election and said fuck this for a game of soldiers.

Lol, 324 votes

One of the most important yet little noticed bits of the messy reshuffle was @ShabanaMahmood appointment as National Campaign Coordinator. Clearly she can claim credit for this significant result.

— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) July 2, 2021

bit of strategic genius was sending every single MP and volunteer they could into the constituency... and then just squeaking it

How did that absurd turnout claim spread so easily

There's some quantity of people who voted Galloway but had he not ran would've voted Tory for those Hartlepool-like pork barrel reasons. Hopefully not that many but I'd imagine far more than 324.

I think the 70% turnout figure was correct for the postal votes only and twitter did it's thing

Labour Batley campaign source says:

“Basically built a new electoral coalition in six weeks. Lost the conservative Muslim vote over gay rights and Palestine, and won back a lot of 2019 Tory voters”

“This result shows we’re reconnecting with the wider electorate again”

the way they are spinning this is utterly vile and delusional and this is something will come back and bite them much harder in future elections, fucking wankers.

yeah Galloway has become a useful idiot for Labour it seems

I don't know about useful but he is undeniably an idiot.

Across both Hartlepool and Batley I'm seeing Labour at -7%. They won't win back the seats they lost in 2019.

But the fact is the won, so they can feed whatever story they like to Lab right ppl in the CLPs to lap up. Demonise Muslim voters and their vote will go down in other areas but they might get away with it now and then and that's enough because of a potential for white racist conservative voters. That's what they will tell themselves, not that it will happen.

Lmao

It was, in effect, a Tory seat (would have been Tory in 2019 if not for pro-Brexit independent), with Galloway a Labour vote-splitter

— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) July 2, 2021

It was, in effect, a Tory seat (would have been Tory in 2019 if not for pro-Brexit independent), with Galloway a Labour vote-splitter

— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) July 2, 2021