Westminster Politics

[Kentonio]

Strange how comments on gender, colour, race or sexual orientation would result in certain cafe warnings, but age is fair game.

Laugh the recent ones off by all means, but it's been a trend here for a long time. Maybe a few who think of themselves as champions of social justice are actually quite the arseholes themselves in reality?

It was meant light heartedly actually, but if you want to get serious about it fair enough. I'm actually backing Sanders for the next US election, who will be 78 at the time. 82 at the end of his first term if he wins. Even so, by the time people enter their 90's, apparently the incidence of dementia rises exponentially year on year, health issues are a massive likelihood and frankly mental acuity and physical enery are likely to be heavily impacted.

Oh and I was wrong btw, Florence Kirkby is actually 96.

 

[Fully Fledged]

Sky projected that based on results Tories and DUP would lose power in a General Election.

Oh good. Quick call an election.

 

[Ubik]

Surprised at some of the London results. Wonder what the projected national shares will be.

 

[Adisa]

 

[711]

It was meant light heartedly actually, but if you want to get serious about it fair enough. I'm actually backing Sanders for the next US election, who will be 78 at the time. 82 at the end of his first term if he wins. Even so, by the time people enter their 90's, apparently the incidence of dementia rises exponentially year on year, health issues are a massive likelihood and frankly mental acuity and physical enery are likely to be heavily impacted.

Oh and I was wrong btw, Florence Kirkby is actually 96.

It's ok, I've forgotten what it was all about anyway.

 

[Adisa]

Sky bringing Livingstone to discuss the Barnet result...fecking wums.

 

[sun_tzu]

He probably just got confused and thought it involved blacks dying... probably some immigrunt disease from bongo bongo land... hopefully the party disappears soon enough

 

[montpelier]

Bit more like it for Labour as more results come in - compared to what I saw earlier

source: Guardian (Jamie Grierson)

State of parties after 98 of 150 councils:
Conservatives: 30 councils; 878 seats (-31)
Labour: 50 councils (-1); 1,424 seats (+57)
LibDems: 4 councils (+1); 324 seats (+41)
Green: 21 seats (+6)
UKIP: 2 seats (-44)
Independent: 61 seats (-49)
Liberal: 1 seat (-1)
Ratepayers and Residents: 37 seats (-4)
No overall control: 14 councils

 

[Adisa]

Lib Dem gaining seats in Hull is very odd.

 

[Cheesy]

Lib Dem gaining seats in Hull is very odd.

In general with stuff like this I feel it can be difficult to apply national trends to local elections. As should be the case, often local issues and a strong local candidate irrespective of their party can perhaps sometimes swing a vote to a certain extent. The Lib Dems are often notoriously strong on local issues, because as a smaller party than the big two they have to be to build up a respectable reputation in key strongholds. While they did feck up my council area in Scotland monumentally and will likely never gain full control again for a long time as a result of that and their general national decline, they do have a councillor who's very well-respected and who can get Labour/SNP voters to rank him fairly highly on how he's campaigned on certain local issues. Similarly, the fact the Lib Dems ever gained full control of my council area, a Labour stronghold at the time both at Westminster and Holyrood, indicated they'd campaigned very strongly to get a stronger local result than they would national.

Which is why barring a collapse or surge on either side I'd be wary to apply too much to this vote in a wider context, even though the usual suspects are trying to. There'll even be some ardent Brexit supporters out there who opt for their local Lib Dem or Green ahead of the Tory because said person has been so strong on a key local issue for them, and vice versa you'll maybe get the odd person considering voting for a Tory in their area who's been very good even if they'd never usually vote for the party.

 

[Dobba]

Racism is the new black.

 

[Ubik]

BBC's projected national share is 35% each for Labour and Tories, slight swing to Tories compared to 2014 but both shares up on then.

 

[Abizzz]

Tories benefited from collapse of UKIP vote, as expected. Labour tried hard to win them too by in many ways trying to out UKIP UKIP especially if you look at the concessions to the hard right on the Brexit issue, immigration and freedom of movement the party has given to that constituency of voter over the last two years. But whilst there was an element of disenfranchised Labour voters moving to UKIP in previous elections, the bulk of the UKIP support was always ex-Tory voters and that's where they were always going back to.

Not that hard to pick up the UKIP vote though when one turns his/her party into a more extreme version of UKIP. Imagine Farage proposing deporting elder citizens for being brown (with targets as to how many to deport), recall the ridicule UKIPERS encountered when advocating leaving the EU on WTO terms...

Theresa May is seriously hard to out wing on the far right side.

 

[DOTA]

BBC's projected national share is 35% each for Labour and Tories, slight swing to Tories compared to 2014 but both shares up on then.

Vote share in England in the general election was Tory 45.4% and Labour 41.9%, if anyone finds that relevant.

 

[DOTA]

Also, most bookies are currently offering 10/11 for both parties as to most seats after the next general.

 

[Ramshock]

I fecking hate political spin can someone tell me if this was a good performance by Labour and if it bodes well for an election?

 

[DOTA]

I fecking hate political spin can someone tell me if this was a good performance by Labour and if it bodes well for an election?

I'd go with it was an okay performance from Labour and it doesn't tell us that much about general election prospects.

 

[Silva]

Sky projected that based on results Tories and DUP would lose power in a General Election.

BBC projection:

 

[DOTA]

BBC projection:

So Labour minority government propped up by the SNP.

 

[Dan]

So Labour minority government propped up by the SNP.

And Lib Dems?

 

[FlawlessThaw]

BBC projection:

That's interesting and I imagine Labour turnout for local elections is lower than the Tories.

 

[DOTA]

And Lib Dems?

I suppose so, yeah. Can't really imagine them daring to vote against a Labour Queens' speech.

 

[DOTA]

Anyway, it's all nonesense. We haven't a clue what's happening until the Tories have their new leader. The optimistic side from a Labour point of view is it's gonna be bloody hard for the Conservatives to play the 'we're the grown ups in the room' angle if they're led by Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson. Labour majority is not out of the question by any means.

 

[Mr Pigeon]

BBC projection:

SNP, with more seats than the Lib Dems, in the Other column is like putting me in the other column for biggest wanker but highlighting @Cheesy.

 

[Silva]

Spoiler: racist content

One of last nights Tory winning candidates.

 

[Ubik]

I fecking hate political spin can someone tell me if this was a good performance by Labour and if it bodes well for an election?

Guardian's got a pretty good summary of the good/bad

How it’s good for Labour

• Labour is getting the same of the vote as the Conservative party. They did not at the 2017 general election, and so in that respect they are moving forwards.

• Labour is also doing much better relative to the Tories than it was in the 2017 local elections (which were held a few weeks before the general election). In that contest the Tories had an 11-point lead on PNS.

• At 35%, Labour’s local election share of the PNS is the highest it has been since 2012 (when it was 38%). That was a year when the Lib Dem vote had collapsed, because of Nick Clegg going into the coalition, but the big Ukip rise had not fully materialised.

How it’s bad for Labour

• Opposition parties almost always have to be ahead in mid-term local elections if they are going to go on and win the subsequent general election. Labour is not ahead.

• Labour is doing worse relative to the Tories on this measure than it was in 2014, when most of these seats were last fought. Four years ago Labour came out two points ahead on PNS. (The figures are here.) It is also doing worse than it did relative to the Tories in 2016, when on a relatively disappointing local elections night Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour was still one point ahead of the Tories on PNS.

• Excluding general election years, this is the first year since 1988 when Labour has been in opposition and it has not been ahead of the Conservatives on PNS at the local elections.

But Dota's also right that we probably shouldn't read much into it.

 

[Untied]

Guardian's got a pretty good summary of the good/bad


But Dota's also right that we probably shouldn't read much into it.

Some of this is pretty nutty journalism though, e.g:

"Excluding general election years, this is the first year since 1988 when Labour has been in opposition and it has not been ahead of the Conservatives on PNS at the local elections."

Let's rephrase that to see what it is actually doing:

"Excluding 7 of the last 30 years, or 23% of them, blah blah blah blah"

 

[Ubik]

Some of this is pretty nutty journalism though, e.g:

"Excluding general election years, this is the first year since 1988 when Labour has been in opposition and it has not been ahead of the Conservatives on PNS at the local elections."

Let's rephrase that to see what it is actually doing:

"Excluding 7 of the last 30 years, or 23% of them, blah blah blah blah"

It's valid because locals in GE years will behave like GE electorates, rather than mid-term ones.

 

[Untied]

It's valid because locals in GE years will behave like GE electorates, rather than mid-term ones.

Except that point is disproved by their own fecking stats. e.g Labour was behind in the May 2017 locals, (when no one knew there was an upcoming general, so should have behaved like mid-term voters) but they can exclude that on the basis it was a GE year eventually. It's just nonsense.

 

[Ubik]

Except that point is disproved by their own fecking stats. e.g Labour was behind in the May 2017 locals, (when no one knew there was an upcoming general, so should have behaved like mid-term voters) but they can exclude that on the basis it was a GE year eventually. It's just nonsense.

Not sure how any of that justifies calling it "nutty journalism", rather than just providing a fairly standard discrimination between local elections in and out of GE years.

 

[Untied]

Not sure how any of that justifies calling it "nutty journalism", rather than just providing a fairly standard discrimination between local elections in and out of GE years.

Because non-nutty journalism would draw a distinction between locals held on the same date as generals (where turnout/demographics would be affected) and locals that just happened to be in the same year as generals, and under such an accurate distinction their “bad” point becomes “Labour hasn’t been in opposition and behind on PNS since 2017”.

I really can’t see a legitimate reason to exclude the 2017 locals given that when they took place there was no expectation of a coming general and the turnout/demographics were those of midterm locals. They can fall back on the “it’s standard practice” excuse, but they didn’t provide this very relevant proviso and so it is pretty nutty journalism: “Ignoring the most relevant data we have Corbyn’s Labour is bad, we want Chukka and Yvette”

 

[Sweet Square]

 

[Ramshock]

 

[Oscie]

It is a failure though. These things aren't based on one number being higher than the other. It's judged on a government party mired in absolute wank that the Tories are lost just 2 councillors and an opposition party against such a government could only manage 37.

If you landed from out of space and noticed that -2 is a lower number than 37 you'd be forgiven, but anyone not from out of space like 'EvolvePolitics' should be absolutely fecking embarrassed by that level of analysis

 

[Oscie]

The opposition party performance at council elections since 1995, in terms of councillors. Leaving out years when a general election has been held at the same time

1995 + 1807 (Blair)
1996 + 468 (Blair)
1998 + 256 (Hague)
1999 + 1344 (Hague)
2000 + 256 (Hague)
2002 + 238 (IDS)
2003 + 566 (IDS)
2004 + 288 (Howard)
2006 + 316 (Howard)
2007 + 932 (Cameron)
2008 + 256 (Cameron)
2009 + 244 (Cameron)
2011 + 857 (Miliband)
2012 + 823 (Miliband)
2013 + 291 (Miliband)
2014 + 324 (Miliband)
2016 - 18 (Corbyn)
2018 + 59 (Corbyn)

There really isn't a debate that Corbyn did very badly last night. The fact there is shows you just how far down the rabbit whole we all are.

 

[Silva]

oh man corbyn must have lost every parliamentary seat in the ge after the 2016 local elections

 

[berbatrick]

Spoiler: racist content

One of last nights Tory winning candidates.

Hey, that particular comparison has some ...pedigree.

 

[Untied]

It is a failure though. These things aren't based on one number being higher than the other. It's judged on a government party mired in absolute wank that the Tories are lost just 2 councillors and an opposition party against such a government could only manage 37.

If you landed from out of space and noticed that -2 is a lower number than 37 you'd be forgiven, but anyone not from out of space like 'EvolvePolitics' should be absolutely fecking embarrassed by that level of analysis

I’m somewhat confused because in one thread you are criticising leftists for saying Tory voters have questionable intentions, and in this one that the Tory government is absolute wank. So people want absolute wank?

The opposition party performance at council elections since 1995, in terms of councillors. Leaving out years when a general election has been held at the same time

1995 + 1807 (Blair)
1996 + 468 (Blair)
1998 + 256 (Hague)
1999 + 1344 (Hague)
2000 + 256 (Hague)
2002 + 238 (IDS)
2003 + 566 (IDS)
2004 + 288 (Howard)
2006 + 316 (Howard)
2007 + 932 (Cameron)
2008 + 256 (Cameron)
2009 + 244 (Cameron)
2011 + 857 (Miliband)
2012 + 823 (Miliband)
2013 + 291 (Miliband)
2014 + 324 (Miliband)
2016 - 18 (Corbyn)
2018 + 59 (Corbyn)

There really isn't a debate that Corbyn did very badly last night. The fact there is shows you just how far down the rabbit whole we all are.

Let’s hope he can repeat the consequent GE successes of Hague, IDS, Howard and Miliband. A true catalogue of winners.

 

[Oscie]

I’m somewhat confused because in one thread you are criticising leftists for saying Tory voters have questionable intentions, and in this one that the Tory government is absolute wank. So people want absolute wank?
.

Do you genuinely struggle with the difference between: 'I think the party is useless and doing harm to our country' and 'People who vote Tory are evil' ?

It's one of the major problems with politics in this country where people don't seem to be able to fathom anything other than the absolute binary. 'Everything has to be black and white. Pick a team and cheer for it regardless or we'll get confused'

And it was just looking at opposition leader's performances at local elections. Corbyn may well go on to win a general election. Performance last night was still by recent historical standards.

 

[Silva]

And the best way to win during partisan times is to appeal to neither side. Genius.