The media don’t quite seem to be picking up the absolutely incredible scale of the collapse in Labour’s vote. Staffordshire County Council is quite simply incredible. Previously a Labour Council, including Stoke and other big industrial areas.
New Labour have lost 30 of their 32 seats on the Council!!!!!!
http://moderngov.staffordshire.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=5&V=1&RPID=653075
But why are people turning to the Tories?
Daniel,
Goodness knows. Lack of imagination? But I gather that overall, the swing from Labour is much bigger than the swing to the Tories, which means a big increase in votes elsewhere.
Staffs isn’t going Tory – look at the turnout. Around 40% of the labour supporters have simply stayed at home. They can’t bring themselves to vote for anyone else, but they are ashamed to vote for this lot!
The actual numbers for the other parties haven’t changed much.
Anyway, check out Essex.
http://countyelections.essexcc.gov.uk/PoliticalBalance.asp
The Independent Loughton Residents Assoc. has more seats than Labour, i.e. 1 !!!
Today we learn that it is likely going be impossible to prosecute any MP for claiming money from the voting public to pay for non-existent mortgages and other frauds.
Had the news come out yesterday, or the day before, I can imagine the damage to the establishment parties could have been even greater.
Still, today is a great day for burying…
Hoon gone now! It’s getting like ‘Ten Green Bottles’. Soon there’ll only be Brown’s musty smell hanging around Downing Street.
Dear All
This is like watching the German Army in retreat from Mother Russia.
Gordon Brown needs to get out of the bunker and call a General Election.
As we say in Glasgow Mein Gott!
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
The depressing thing about today’s election results is that voters are merely switching from Labour to the Tories. Has no-one learned anything from the last 20 years of UK politics? The Tories, once elected, will not repeal the anti-freedom legislation enacted by Labour. If anything they will add to it.
This is my county :), Labour got less votes than the BNP in my ward :O
Hoon is a hoon.
Get lost Hoon,you hoon.
This gets better by the minute.
Tee hee!
You’re not quite right about Staffordshire. It doesn’t include Stoke, as the city is a unitary authority. Still a desperately awful result for Labour, though.
Tim H beat me to it re Stoke.
I suppose some encouragement can be taken from the fact that the BNP didn’t win any seats. With Stoke being a bit of a BNP hotspot at least their influence isn’t spreading out to the County.
Derbyshire has also gone Tory.
BBC are saying Notts has gone to NOC but not quite sure how they work that out as there’s still about 20 odd seats to declare.
Leicestershire has stayed Tory, no surprise, bad news is the BNP have got Coalville.
Seems to be a poor showing for the Greens, shame.
Hi Andy
I think you might be premature about the Greens. They’ve gained 4 new seats I think, and held on to 2 others (lost one as well) but their vote is quite impressive. Contested every seat in Bristol, and were unlucky not to win, but with vote share between 6 and 30%, I think they might well get a MEP in the SW.
Hi Tim,
Should have made clearer I was really only commenting on the midlands, I haven’t really looked further afield. In particular I was hoping they’d do something in Notts as they have some district councillors there. Notts is looking likely to go Tory despite what the BBC might say.
This really is very disingenuous of you Craig. Labour losses are almost exactly matched by Tory gains (250+). The Libs have lost seats. The Greens, Bnp and UKIP have gained fewer than 8 seats each. As I have argued repeatedly on these boards, a vote against Labour is basically a vote for the tories and these results bear it out. If you prefer a Tory governement to a Labour one that is your choice. Craig clearly does, but if you think the Tories will be better I think you are nuts. There is no alternative to either a Tory or a Labour government becasue the British people simply do not trust the fringe parties at a national level. The point being, if you don’t like their policies, get involved and change them. Stop twittering.
Why do I get the feeling that all this has been orchestrated and we are being led by rings in our noses.The tories sacrificing some of their own to make the government even more unpopular to gain power with a very large majority they will need to push through some VERY nasty legislation in the next Parliament.
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way”
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
George, I think you’re right. The Labour government has served its purpose: it has promised our money and our children’s money to the banks. Stage 2 is to make the swingeing cuts in services that this will entail. Since the Labour government is now too weakened by the crisis and general fatigue, this will be the Tories’ job. If you haven’t already been doing so, it’s worth following one of the contributors to the Guardian’s CiF pages, GolemXIV, who has been on the money for well over a year in his predictions and analysis:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/users/golemxiv/comments
Yes, I agree. This whole thing quite clearly has been an I/OP. It will come out – some of it – in thirty years’ time, but even then the story will be buried and discredited. With security state active agents actively and overtly (as well as actively and covertly) involved and in prominent positions in politics, one is hardly surprised.
The reason few commentators are suggesting this dynamic, apart from the usual fear and complicity – whereas the destabilisation of the 1966-70 and 1974-6 Wilson Governments by the security state is a matter now of factual historical record – is because of the unpopularity of the current Labour Government and the deep sense of betrayal many progressive people feel vis a vis 1997.
“A Gobsmacking defeat” Yes, but in favor of the Tories. Not a victory for anyone but the Tories, whatever fantasies you may hold in your heads.
Today’s results in the Guardian.
Tory +230, Lab-268, Libs -4, Independent +27, Green +6
Vote against Labour and you get a Tory government, as I am tired of saying.
“Vote against Labour and you get a Tory government, as I am tired of saying”
http://tinyurl.com/lw798f
George
Credit where credit is due – that is quite amusing. Well done.
But what aboutT ommy and his perjury and his sleazy sexual shenanigans? Are you STILL a supporter???
Picture Anne Widdecombe under a sun-bed.
eddie
That is where you New Labour supporters go wrong,you believe everything your big supporter and backer Rupert Murdoch tells you to believe.Very sad really.Murdoch has already lost a case against Tommy he will lose again. Remember Tommy won £200,000 in damages after successfully suing the tabloid newspaper for defamation following lurid allegations it made about his private life.He will win again.
Still look on the bright side eddie your friend is about to swap sides to the tories and start telling lies for them next.I bet you will miss him eddie.I know how much you like dealing in lies.
…or Gordon Brown in an orgy?
You see, that was Tommy and the SSP’s tumescent mistake. If they had used it as a propaganda coup (“See – socialism is fun!!”) instead of (allegedly) being somehow ashamed of it, they’d have had an enormous surge in their popularity.
“had an enormous surge in their popularity”
It was because socialism had a surge of popularity in Scotland that so frightened the powers that be and led to them moving heaven and earth to try and take out the most high profile and charismatic socialist politician in Scotland.The SSP having six MSPs and more on the way was not to be tolerated under any circumstance…The only thing that REALLY frightens the powers that be…True socialism.Problem was it turned out that there were only two of the six SSP MSPs that were TRUE socialists.
I take it all back – Tommy is obviously a fine upstanding citizen who never les and never visits seedy sex clubs.
Yes, George, I do agree with you on this. I think it’s the classic case of the Security Service utilising a potential (alleged) weakness in one of its leaders in order to bring down a popular movement.
My point was that Tommy Sheridan was already a heartthrob figure – he’d never pretended to be a priest – so with our without champagne (and it seems all too pat, doesn’t it, ‘the champagne socialist’) such revelations/ allegations would not really have detracted from that, it was the manner in which the allegations were dealt with by the SSP and Sheridan that led to the Security Service and its Press organs winning where it mattered, i.e. destroying the nascent popular movement spearheaded by the SSP. Absolutely, they would not allow it to exist, for the same reason they hate Chavez’s existence in Venezuela, it’s an example to others of an alternative way of being.
I’ll probably get into hot water for this, but one does wonder whether the legacy of Calvinism/ Irish Catholic guilt in Scotland had something to do with their (somewhat predictable) reaction as well as the incessant self-defeating fragmentation that tends to occur on the Left.
Also, the concept that socialists should be ‘moral’ people in thei personal lives. Whether or not the allegations had any basis in truth, even though Sheridan won the libel case, the effect was the same. The damage was done where it needed to be done. Such a pity, a real pity.