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Post by anothermanicmondas on May 8, 2021 11:12:22 GMT
No credible opposition to people who are willing to see the most vulnerable in the communities die without doing to the slightest bit to help them? Doesn't that make those who vote for them equally culpable? Are we really living in a replica of Germany circa 1930? Seriously, I do get the dissatisfaction with Labour, but there are choices on a ballot paper other than that party? Vote Green or for an independent. Don't say there's no choice. There is. The problem with that is the "first past the post" system means that any vote not cast for the top 2 candidates is wasted which discourages people from trying an alternative. I do not let it stop me, but, until a lot more people vote for the other candidates, I feel I'm spitting into the wind. The Liberal Democrats tried to bring in electoral reform to change this but the Tories watered it down, weakening it significantly and then lied about it to discourage people who didn't understand what the changes were from voting for it.
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Post by doctorkernow on May 8, 2021 11:38:50 GMT
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Post by doctorkernow on May 8, 2021 11:47:59 GMT
Hello again. This has probably been mentioned earlier in this thread, but like a lot of government decisions it is short-sighted. It totally ignores the financial and cultural contribution the arts make to UK society. I think we need a proper conversation about education in this country. The Victorian model that our system is based on needs radical overhaul to make education and learning a vital part of everyone's experience from pre-school through school, college and university to adult learning while employed. The Government wants to impose a catastrophic 50% funding cut to arts subjects at higher education (HE) level in England. I've joined the petition started by the Public Campaign for the Arts to tell the Education Secretary: arts education matters. www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/stop-the-50-percent-funding-cut-to-arts-subjects-in-higher-education/
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Post by nucleusofswarm on May 8, 2021 12:04:47 GMT
Hello again. This has probably been mentioned earlier in this thread, but like a lot of government decisions it is short-sighted. It totally ignores the financial and cultural contribution the arts make to UK society. I think we need a proper conversation about education in this country. The Victorian model that our system is based on needs radical overhaul to make education and learning a vital part of everyone's experience from pre-school through school, college and university to adult learning while employed. The Government wants to impose a catastrophic 50% funding cut to arts subjects at higher education (HE) level in England. I've joined the petition started by the Public Campaign for the Arts to tell the Education Secretary: arts education matters. www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/stop-the-50-percent-funding-cut-to-arts-subjects-in-higher-education/I was going to comment about this, but this is inexcusable, myopic and the latest round of idiocy from Williamson. If anyone can, do sign.
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Post by doctorkernow on May 8, 2021 12:26:58 GMT
Hello again Nucleus of the swarm,
Thanks for reminding me of goverment petitions. Just signed this one too. Take care and best wishes...
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Post by johnhurtdoctor on May 8, 2021 12:40:41 GMT
Hello again. This has probably been mentioned earlier in this thread, but like a lot of government decisions it is short-sighted. It totally ignores the financial and cultural contribution the arts make to UK society. I think we need a proper conversation about education in this country. The Victorian model that our system is based on needs radical overhaul to make education and learning a vital part of everyone's experience from pre-school through school, college and university to adult learning while employed. The Government wants to impose a catastrophic 50% funding cut to arts subjects at higher education (HE) level in England. I've joined the petition started by the Public Campaign for the Arts to tell the Education Secretary: arts education matters. www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/stop-the-50-percent-funding-cut-to-arts-subjects-in-higher-education/Yes I have seen this & signed. Hopefully many of us have not forgot how the arts have been so vital to us all during lockdown.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2021 15:50:49 GMT
As a County Durham resident, I may add to this, diplomatically, that the change in voting from traditional, dyed in the wool Labour Heartlands is relatively simple to many. People see that Tory held regions enjoy prosperity. Labour areas, especially in the North East of England, experience long term economic decline or stasis. Boris Johnson speaks of wanting to level up the North of England to enjoy what the South of England has enjoyed for decades. Labour runs the regional Governments, not the Tories. They see questionable spending priorities and corruption on their doorsteps. If the Tories can be said to look after their own, then letting them in appears a route out of low incomes and employment misery. Levelling up in practice. Khalid Mahmood, a Labour Front Bench Shadow Shadow Minister for Defence Procurement, resigned from his position yesterday in protest at how he perceives Labour to have lost touch with its traditional working class voters. He has published this response: www.spectator.co.uk/article/hartlepool-is-a-wake-up-call-for-labourOne can label voters who have voted Tory as racist, thick, transphobic, whatever, but many identify and agree more with the middle ground liberalism of Boris Johnson than that offered at present by Labour. It is why his failings fail to cut through, as there lacks an alternative to him in their eyes. Just as many traditional Labour supporters voted for Brexit, they did not take too kindly to their own party dismissing their voting preferences as misguided and ignorant. Just as they no doubt will respond to the ad hominem attacks on their exercising their right to vote as they see fit, as opposed to what they are told. So yes, I voted Tory and that is my right and business. I do not need a lecture as to why I am wrong. I know that facts myself and understand that pragmatism trumps idealism. Always.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on May 8, 2021 17:46:57 GMT
As daver had his moment to vent about the perceptions of Northern voters and their right to vote for who they wish, I'd like to take mine to take Mr Mahmood to task, especially on the perception of London, my home city.
In the same way that Hartlepoolers have the right to express anger at being seen as thick racists, I'll exercise mine to say that the idea of London as some golden city, full of wine-and-cheese chugging elites who live in ivory towers on gold-paved streets, is perhaps the biggest crock of utter B*llsh*t I've heard as a (shock, gasp) working class Londoner and child of immigrants, born and raised on a council estate. The City and all those big, shiny buildings is a tiny part of what London, its people and its culture is. You raise me Hartlepool, I'll raise you Tower Hamlets if Mr Mahmood wants to play poverty olympics. There's issues with air quality; the housing market being shot to sh*t and the borderline crime syndicate that is renting; all that purdy gentrification that Boris helped initiate pushing people out of affordable homes and disenfranchising minorities; even the fact that yes, gay bashing and hate crimes with very lethal consequences still happens from time to time in 'The Wokest Place On Earth'. I could literally go on all day about London's flaws, whether the mayor is Tory or Labour, and how we do very much have a working class here who also work those same grimey, exploitative, thankless jobs as anybody up North and that they have just as much a right to a voice as anyone else.
But you know what? Even though The Little Old Lady on the Thames isn't perfect, she's home and I have a soft spot for her. This city's diversity of cultures, creeds and classes, and the people willing to stand up for that and accept that, is her greatest strength: no two streets are truly alike, and you can be exposed to just about culture here, make friends of any variety. The way communities come, and have come, together to help each other is heartwarming: up in Stamford Hill, Jews and Muslims walk side by side, as friends and neighbours, not enemies. The people whom I've called teachers, mentors and guides, who made me conscious of the wider world and to think harder and try harder: they run from a conservative, church-going New Zealander, to a Communist documentary director, to an Antiguan Pentecostal teaching assistant. None of whom were wealthy, but all were worldly. You'll never be bored here, I promise you that. Sorry Mr Mahmood if I'm proud of all that as a Labour voting, working class man whose parents never even got a secondary education, and had to scrounge a living from every menial job you can imagine - guess I'm not real or authentic enough for you because I'm so-called 'woke' (that I see a vision of the UK where these 'salt of the earth, honest, working class white folks' have open arms and minds, and don't dismiss others because of who they are or where they've been. Because I've seen it. Here, from those same kinds of 'Daves and Sarahs'.)
Apologies for poaching daver, but I think this is a good line to end on: I do not need a lecture as to why I am wrong. I know the facts myself and understand that pragmatism and idealism are not enemies. Maybe we need to reintroduce the concept of 'doing both' back into this country's political lexicon. Maybe when that happens, things can heal.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2021 19:11:06 GMT
As daver had his moment to vent about the perceptions of Northern voters and their right to vote for who they wish, I'd like to take mine to take Mr Mahmood to task, especially on the perception of London, my home city.
In the same way that Hartlepoolers have the right to express anger at being seen as thick racists, I'll exercise mine to say that the idea of London as some golden city, full of wine-and-cheese chugging elites who live in ivory towers on gold-paved streets, is perhaps the biggest crock of utter B*llsh*t I've heard as a (shock, gasp) working class Londoner and child of immigrants, born and raised on a council estate. The City and all those big, shiny buildings is a tiny part of what London, its people and its culture is. You raise me Hartlepool, I'll raise you Tower Hamlets if Mr Mahmood wants to play poverty olympics. There's issues with air quality; the housing market being shot to sh*t and the borderline crime syndicate that is renting; all that purdy gentrification that Boris helped initiate pushing people out of affordable homes and disenfranchising minorities; even the fact that yes, gay bashing and hate crimes with very lethal consequences still happens from time to time in 'The Wokest Place On Earth'. I could literally go on all day about London's flaws, whether the mayor is Tory or Labour, and how we do very much have a working class here who also work those same grimey, exploitative, thankless jobs as anybody up North and that they have just as much a right to a voice as anyone else.
But you know what? Even though The Little Old Lady on the Thames isn't perfect, but she's home and I have a soft spot for her. This city's diversity of cultures, creeds and classes, and the people willing to stand up for that and accept that, is her greatest strength: no two streets are truly alike, and you can be exposed to just about culture here, make friends of any variety. The way communities come, and have come, together to help each other is heartwarming: up in Stamford Hill, Jews and Muslims walk side by side, as friends and neighbours, not enemies. The people whom I've called teachers, mentors and guides, who made me conscious of the wider world and to think harder and try harder: they run from a conservative, church-going New Zealander, to a Communist documentary director, to an Antiguan Pentecostal teaching assistant. None of whom were wealthy, but all were worldly. You'll never be bored here, I promise you that. Sorry Mr Mahmood if I'm proud of all that as a Labour voting, working class man whose parents never even got a secondary education, and had to scrounge a living from every menial job you can imagine - guess I'm not real or authentic enough for you because I'm so-called 'woke' (that I see a vision of the UK where these 'salt of the earth, honest, working class white folks' have open arms and minds, and don't dismiss others because of who they are or where they've been. Because I've seen it. Here, from those same kinds of 'Daves and Sarahs'.)
Apologies for poaching daver, but I think this is a good line to end on: I do not need a lecture as to why I am wrong. I know the facts myself and understand that pragmatism and idealism are not enemies. Maybe we need to reintroduce the concept of 'doing both' back into this country's political lexicon. Maybe when that happens, things can heal.
I fully appreciate your perspective and would not argue with it. You tell it as you see it from London and your own background, I tell it as it appears from up in the North East. I would never be guilty of assuming that the wealth in the capitol is anywhere close to being equitably disbursed. I do know from my own life choices however, that having attained a good degree at Bournemouth, how my peers of whom I collaborated closely with on our final year project (and of whom I gained a higher award classification), have attained a very well remunerated career in our chosen degree specialism (Systems Analysis). Jobs that I found simply did not exist in the North East (I had to return on graduation for financial necessity). 'Graduate opportunities' for no more than I earned on my Industrial Placement year. Teaching was not a choice as a career, but like so many others in this region, one of the few plentiful graduate opportunities. Too many here are what is termed 'underemployed'. That is to say over educated and over skilled. A region where Call Centre work was for quite a few years after I finished University, the biggest form of Graduate recruitment. My County remains one of the 10th hardest places in the UK to find a Job (any). There is a lack of diversity here still. Towns and communities are still largely homogeneous. People have little need to feel resentment of immigration or lack of integration, it simply exists as something people read about or see in the media in many areas. We have racial communities in towns such as Middlesbrough, but often ethnic minorities are usually the 'one family on the street', and as such are simply one of us. The same demographic as far as most are concerned, except for the knuckleheads. What Mr Mahmood appears, from what I discern, to allude to, is that the preoccupations of those in the metropolis do not register with traditional working class communities. Movements such as BLM are all very laudable, but are issues that affect other areas, that happen elsewhere. Many feel the same disconnect (right of wrong - that is their issue, not mine), from the mainstream and do come to feel forgotten about. It is not a racist issue, just a sense that they never seem to reach anywhere near the top of the list of priorities. I am not a Labour voter, so many of my points do not apply to myself. However, it has to be acknowledged as a case whereby long standing Labour supporters do no longer see their own priorities evident in the manifesto of their own party, yet find them front and centre in the traditional enemy - the Conservatives. As I say, no wish for disagreement - I appreciate that things are seen differently elsewhere. But by heck - this area of England is decades behind now. That needs to change.
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Post by johnhurtdoctor on May 8, 2021 22:15:38 GMT
Sadiq Khan re-elected! No great surprise even though he has been a bit disappointing as London Mayor, still better than a Tory.
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Post by number13 on May 8, 2021 22:18:03 GMT
"No, no, no! We said we wished you'd led us to a Labour surge! Not a purge!"
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Post by number13 on May 8, 2021 22:28:05 GMT
No credible opposition to people who are willing to see the most vulnerable in the communities die without doing to the slightest bit to help them? Doesn't that make those who vote for them equally culpable? Are we really living in a replica of Germany circa 1930? Seriously, I do get the dissatisfaction with Labour, but there are choices on a ballot paper other than that party? Vote Green or for an independent. Don't say there's no choice. There is. The problem with that is the "first past the post" system means that any vote not cast for the top 2 candidates is wasted which discourages people from trying an alternative. I do not let it stop me, but, until a lot more people vote for the other candidates, I feel I'm spitting into the wind. The Liberal Democrats tried to bring in electoral reform to change this but the Tories watered it down, weakening it significantly and then lied about it to discourage people who didn't understand what the changes were from voting for it. It is simply not correct that 'the Tories watered it down'. The Alternative Vote system was the only one on offer (I know the LibDems have always wanted STV, but that was never on offer from either Labour or Conservatives in those negotiations, neither of their parties would have stood for it.) Both parties in the Coalition agreed it and the referendum was fought on that system. And people rejected it by a massive margin, fortunately imo. AV has the worst features of FPTP and PR, and lacks the best features of either!
I wouldn't object to PR, but on the Scottish 'top-up list' system for choice. Keep the individual local constituency members elected FPTP, but make the overall result much more proportional via a second vote for a party of your choice. Or elect the Commons by FPTP as at present, but replace the Lords with an elected second House using party list PR.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2021 22:34:16 GMT
I think Shaun Bailey polled very well - far better than predicted. It's a shame his own party seemed to have abandoned him to campaign within only himself and his team to fly the blue flag. Almost as if they lost confidence in him early on. With a stronger campaign he may have done better. I myself was impressed with him. It seems he was deemed too educated and middle class to sell it to the BAME vote.
A pity - he was very focussed on getting to grips with inner city drugs & gang culture and the associated affliction of knife crime. He won the affluent vote, but not the core areas necessary.
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Post by number13 on May 8, 2021 22:46:32 GMT
Sadiq Khan re-elected! No great surprise even though he has been a bit disappointing as London Mayor, still better than a Tory. And even in "Labour London", a swing to the Conservatives of 1.6%.
Catching up with the RoUK results, I was right to keep on eye on Wales but from behind the sofa! Best ever result for the Welsh Conservatives up about 5%, but Welsh Labour still held on in most of those target seats, despite the polls yet again, and also went up by about 5%! Still, they seem a reasurringly reasonable, traditional sort of group. There's a lesson there, perhaps?
All that sound and fury in Scotland for the last five years and Brexit and Boris and... almost no change! A change of 3 seats from pro-union to pro-indy and the vote share 50/50. Gosh, what a mandate that is, the people must be really champing at the bit for a second indyref... (Seriously, I'm amazed that post-Brexit, and without Ruth Davidson, and we're told how they all hate Boris in Scotland, the Scottish Conservatives suffered a massive loss of precisely zero seats from their 2016 high point of 31 seats, which was before Brexit and with a very popular SCon leader. But Labour with their new, dynamic leader lost 2 seats, and the LibDems lost 1. Well, well.)
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Post by number13 on May 8, 2021 22:57:12 GMT
I think Shaun Bailey polled very well - far better than predicted. It's a shame his own party seemed to have abandoned him to campaign within only himself and his team to fly the blue flag. Almost as if they lost confidence in him early on. With a stronger campaign he may have done better. I myself was impressed with him. It seems he was deemed too educated and middle class to sell it to the BAME vote. A pity - he was very focussed on getting to grips with inner city drugs & gang culture and the associated affliction of knife crime. He won the affluent vote, but not the core areas necessary. Agree, he was much underestimated imo. But the hard politics are the Conservatives knew they wouldn't win London this time and there were other contests to focus resources on where they could win, and did, such as the surrounding council elections, and further afield in the West Midlands, Hartlepool and the other councils and PCCs.
Below the headline events, one of the most interesting features of these elections has been how well the Conservatives have done on councils which relate to "marginal" Westminster seats (or at least, seats which did vote Labour for Blair.) Places like Dudley, Nuneaton, Gloucester, Worcester, Swindon, Harlow, etc., etc. The lists may only say 'Con Hold' but in many such places the swing to the Tories was very large - from an already winning position last time round. And many of the 'Lab Hold' entries hide similar movement, especially in your part of the world.
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Post by number13 on May 8, 2021 23:02:16 GMT
Hello again. This has probably been mentioned earlier in this thread, but like a lot of government decisions it is short-sighted. It totally ignores the financial and cultural contribution the arts make to UK society. I think we need a proper conversation about education in this country. The Victorian model that our system is based on needs radical overhaul to make education and learning a vital part of everyone's experience from pre-school through school, college and university to adult learning while employed. The Government wants to impose a catastrophic 50% funding cut to arts subjects at higher education (HE) level in England. I've joined the petition started by the Public Campaign for the Arts to tell the Education Secretary: arts education matters. www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/stop-the-50-percent-funding-cut-to-arts-subjects-in-higher-education/I was going to comment about this, but this is inexcusable, myopic and the latest round of idiocy from Williamson. If anyone can, do sign.
I think we've found someone to agree about...
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Post by number13 on May 8, 2021 23:25:59 GMT
Just for once JHD, on this beautiful spring morning, why don't you at least consider the possibility that you are wrong and the voters of Hartlepool simply don't see the world as you do?
(And Dudley, Nuneaton and other councils where the results have been, if anything, even more spectacular for the Conservatives. Dudley, for example, is a traditional marginal council where Labour/Conservative have held power by one or two seats. The Tories now have 46 to Labour's - a correct apostrophe btw! - 24. All on direct swings Labour->Tory.)
As long as so many on the Left very openly regard Conservative voters as (at best) people who are deluded and (at worst) thick Little Englander bigots and dinosaurs, last night will happen over and over and over again. I've seen nothing like it since Thatcher swept up the working-class vote across much of the south of England (and they stayed Tory for 18 years.) Actually, I've never seen anything like it. What has happened in the last few years is even more extraordinary - not only in England (and keep an eye on Wales later today, maybe from behind the sofa) but Scotland too. People may have different views and have switched for different reasons, but one view seems widespread: not Labour. It really might be worth thinking hard about why that is.
I'm not here to lionize Labour - undeniably they ran a bad campaign, they have an image problem and also Labour's track record up north does open room for questioning. That I'm not here to defend. For thw record too - I'm not a hardcore fan of Starmer. I think he does well in PMQs, but he is too soft and safe in his presentation and strategy.
However, 'Labour really needs to get its act together' and 'The Tories have the answers' are fundamentally different questions. From where I sit, if these Tory councillors don't turn out to be bad eggs like their Westminster bosses, then they'll be at best, ineffectual because they know they don't need to really fix Hartlepool and similar places like it - just keep what are, demographically, older voters, fed with the same inaccurate, statistically wrong boogeymen (the immigrants, the cities, the south, Europe), supplanted by right-leaning media (The Mail, The Telegraph, The Standard, The Sun) firming that up. I think the culture of these places is worth investigating to understand the how and why, and not just rely on argumentum ad populum - opinions and views don't come out of nowhere, after all. (I'm sure number you can point to a number of events in history that were 'majority' supported that didn't pan out well, to put it mildly).
Maybe Jill Mortimer'll prove me wrong, I hope for Hartlepool she does, but forgive me if I maintain healthy skepticism based on a decade of Tory rule elsewhere.
I watched quite a few 'Vox Pops' with the voters of Hartlepool in the aftermath - 'demographically older' they were not all, and nor were they all white. But they had all (but one) voted Conservative. The one Labour voter they spoke to was white and middle-aged, make of that what you will.
Cities and the South? In fact, I think you make a point. Our public life and cultural life in this country is dominated, not so much by the South or London specifically, as by cities generally. Policy is driven by and for cities, most policy-makers, journalists and the vast majority of the voices and places you see or hear on the media (apart from unusual events like a by-election or a local 'crisis') are city voices, either by birth or adoption. Yet most people in England do not live in the major cities but in places which are cities for historical reasons rather than modern size, towns large and small, and their rural hinterlands. Such places and their people are almost invisible, unheard and forgotten, most of the time by the people who live and work in cities, of whatever class, who dismiss them as (at best) out-of-touch people who don't "get" the modern world. But they're living in the modern world too and often without the same resources or opportunities that people have in a major city.
I think that is the main reason why Brexit caught out the opinion pollsters and politicians so badly - for once, the unheard people beyond the big cities became audible and started an avalanche which is still rolling.
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Post by number13 on May 8, 2021 23:41:50 GMT
The Scottish Greens are a separate party but they're on course to have a very, very good election here and have a lot of buzz, pushing the Lib Dems into 5th place if polls are correct. And most importantly for the makeup of the government, they're the pro-Independence backup should the SNP fail to get an overall majority, which I think they won't do (they don't have one just now) - so the Greens are the ones who will tip the balance to a pro-Indy Parliament, should there be one (which seems likely). Turns out the question "Will Alex Salmond damage Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP?" seems to be, as I said here when asked, a resounding "no". We'll see over the wekeend but the SNP look to be holding on, not gaining a majority but keeping enough seats to win comfortably and have an Indy centric chamber with Green support. Scottish Labour look set to finish 3rd. Anas Sarwar ran a good campaign but ultimately Labour are done up here until they back Independence, as many of their traditional voters have shifted to the SNP. Well the Greens gained two seats so that's very very good I guess. Labour lost two. (If we can take our party hats off for just a second, were you as surprised as me that the SCons still hold 31 seats, their high-water mark from 2016, given Brexit and Boris since then and a less popular leader, so we're always told. And given all the same things, that the SNP made only 1 gain?)
I agree, Labour are finished in Scotland until they back independence. And if they do back independence, then whatever the result, they are finished, really finished, in England and Wales.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on May 9, 2021 0:03:04 GMT
I was going to comment about this, but this is inexcusable, myopic and the latest round of idiocy from Williamson. If anyone can, do sign.
I think we've found someone to agree about... 13 criticized a Tory politician?! Welcome to the anarcho-commie-bolshevik revolution, comrade! Chug vodka and lets seize the means of production!
(Sketch aside, the arts are probably one of the most important things we can give youth, whatever part of the UK they hail from. For many, it gives them friends, confidence, even helps them break out of bad environments and acts as a type of therapy. I'm grateful for your support sir!)
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Post by Deleted on May 9, 2021 0:04:09 GMT
Sadiq Khan re-elected! No great surprise even though he has been a bit disappointing as London Mayor, still better than a Tory. And even in "Labour London", a swing to the Conservatives of 1.6%.
Catching up with the RoUK results, I was right to keep on eye on Wales but from behind the sofa! Best ever result for the Welsh Conservatives up about 5%, but Welsh Labour still held on in most of those target seats, despite the polls yet again, and also went up by about 5%! Still, they seem a reasurringly reasonable, traditional sort of group. There's a lesson there, perhaps?
All that sound and fury in Scotland for the last five years and Brexit and Boris and... almost no change! A change of 3 seats from pro-union to pro-indy and the vote share 50/50. Gosh, what a mandate that is, the people must be really champing at the bit for a second indyref... (Seriously, I'm amazed that post-Brexit, and without Ruth Davidson, and we're told how they all hate Boris in Scotland, the Scottish Conservatives suffered a massive loss of precisely zero seats from their 2016 high point of 31 seats, which was before Brexit and with a very popular SCon leader. But Labour with their new, dynamic leader lost 2 seats, and the LibDems lost 1. Well, well.) I don't think you're taking the voting system into account at all in that reading -though I appreciate your tongue is firmly in your cheek for much of it. After a certain point, it's incredibly difficult to add more seats in a voting system almost designed to avoid overall majorities. In the constituency vote, the SNP took 62 of the seats with every other party combined....11. So in the vast majority of the country, the SNP was the first choice. If this was using the FPTP system we're seeing debated upthread, it'd be a mauling, not just a victory. Adding 3 pro-Indy seats to pro-Indy doesn't sound like much but with a majority of 1 being all that is needed, it's rather important. As for Ruth Davidson not being leader any more - that's not the same as saying they went into this election without her - she was plastered all over their leaflets, right on the front. She's been the voice of the party at FMQs. It's not like when a PM goes gently into the night. You also failed to mention that the SNP increased their seats despite the attempts of Alex Salmond to split the Indy vote and the media going nuts when Sturgeon faced the potential of resignation should be found to breach the ministerial code. That was supposed to be the Unionist smoking gun in the election. In the end..didn't do much damage to anyone but Alex Salmond and his Alba mob. I think the big test is the next few years. The Tories really won't have Ruth to fall back on. Labour's Anas Sarwar will have time to do something. I still think their best bet is to cut ties with UK Labour and avoid the "Branch Office" perception that has persisted since the Jack McConnell or even Henry McLeish days. Yet it's hard to see how either have anything in their locker to really fight for anything other than reducing the SNP's success rather than achieve it themselves. 14 years since winning power and the SNP are still winning handily. The constitutional question is, for sure, not going away anytime soon. Even the BBC are calling this a very, very good result for the SNP, if not quite excellent. And looking at their graphic for the results and looking at the map...hard to argue.
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