Presumably voters flocked to the independent candidate because that was a better bet than Labour…
When Labour performed catastrophically in the recent North Shropshire parliamentary by-election, Keir Starmer’s apologists tried to claim that the seat had been ‘unwinnable’. Nobody bothered to tell the LibDems, who destroyed a huge Tory majority to win the seat.
So the starmerites switched to claiming that Labour’s worst performance since the seat was created was in fact a victory for Starmer and his (non-)politics, because people had ‘voted tactically’ to give the LibDs the win because they were best placed to defeat the Tories, even though Labour had always been the seond-placrd party in recent elections there and the LibDems a distant third. People didn’t vote Labour – but it was because they love Keir, supposedly.
So presumably yesterday’s result in the Bramsgore and Burley by-election was another show of love for the beige knight – and the people votes for the independent candidate because they’re so enamoured of what passed for his ‘leadership’:
While the chaotic Boris Johnson’s Tories got hammered and lost more than fifty points, Starmer’s Labour lost 23.5 against Johnson’s unravelling disaster. The Greens gained 33 points, showing locals’ appetite for the more radical policies Starmer is pathologically unwilling to offer.
What next – voting for the EDL because Starmer’s collusion with the Tories’anti-immigrstion rhetoric is so popular?
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So, even in Bransgore and Burley (New Forst District Council), when the tories crash it’s an Independents and the Greens that get the gain. Conratulations to Richard Frampton, the Independent that won the election.
Are you paying attention at the back Starmer?
According to the local press Frampton’s win didn’t come as a surprise, he had held the seat as a Tort until 2018 and then as an independent until 2019
The result is not a huge surprise since Mr Frampton is the fourth generation of his family to live in Bransgore and a well-known and popular character who produces his own ‘Dickey’s Dribble’ cider.
Cllr Frampton has been a district councillor twice before, firstly winning the Bransgore and Sopley ward seat in 1999 when he was a Liberal Democrat. He returned to the authority in 2015 as a Conservative, taking the vote after the ward switched to become Bransgore and Burley.
He made headlines in 2018 when he quit the Conservative Party in protest over cuts to public services which he said were leaving residents at the mercy of criminals. He became an Independent, and opted not to stand for the seat at the 2019 election.
https://www.advertiserandtimes.co.uk/news/richard-frampton-wins-bransgore-and-burley-ward-byelection-9232495/
The latest Times poll of 25,000 voters is encouraging.
The findings of a constituency-by-constituency poll conducted between December 1 and 21 suggest Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, would win a general election with a 26-seat majority. Johnson would lose his seat of Uxbridge & South Ruislip, the first sitting prime minister to be ejected from parliament.
Five other cabinet ministers, including Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, and George Eustice, the environment secretary, would also lose their seats, according to the survey by Focaldata.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starmer-opens-up-eight-point-lead-as-partygate-takes-toll-on-tories-lzftkmw57
What is problematic here, as with so much other shallow analysis, is the absence of context.
A sure sign of desperation to the point of clutching at a straw that does not even make it as far as this lunchtimes chip paper never mind tomorrows.
The first problem is the basis of this Sunday Times poll is existing constituencies. There is a Boundary Review taking place which, given the fact the most recent one was kicked into the long grass, is as odds on favourite to go ahead with implementation before the next GE as you are likely to get, this poll is meaningless even for the spurious purpose it is being used for here.
Boundary Reviews invariably favour the Conservative and Unionist Parties. This will be no different.
The second problem, exacerbated by the first one, is the inconvenient facts are that it takes a lot more Labour votes to win a Constituency seat in Parliament than it does the Conservative and Unionist Party. I would recommend a perusal of the presentation put together on this issue around electoral reform/proportional representation by the Hazel Grove CLP last year.
The basic problem succinctly detailed in this section of an earlier analysis by the Electoral Reform Society here:
https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/more-votes-but-less-seats-surely-youre-joking/
“if a party wins huge majorities in constituencies – such as the 77% majority for Labour in Liverpool Walton in 2017 – then those additional votes above and beyond the nearest challengers do not help a party win any more seats. So, the most ‘efficient’ thing to do under Westminster’s voting system is to win constituencies small and lose big. The result is a huge amount of votes going to waste and not counting towards the national result.”
Whilst this factor has on odd occasions in the past slightly favoured the LP it is, as Hazel Grove CLP point out, favouring the Conservative and Unionist Party at present and is likely to remain the case.
Perhaps the most significant contextual problem among others is the purpose for which this poll has been published. It is certainly not published in a vacuum and its purpose is clear to anyone not desperate, unlike steveHeep here, to find some means of shoring up assumptions driven by subjective prejudices via confirmation bias.
This poll is merely the latest shot in a campaign to ‘persuade’ the Conservative and Unionist Party to ditch Bloody Stupid Johnson sooner rather than later. Johnson having served his geo-strategic purpose of getting the UK Single Market out of the EU Single Market.
Among other contextual factors which will most certainly see a Conservative and Unionist Party win against a Starmer – in a collective rather than just individual sense – led Tory tribute act can be found in a number of salient factors which are driving a certain significant demographic vote away from the LP. Some larger part of that 51% demographic will be captured by the Conservative and Unionist Party; some of it will simply be lost either by spoiled ballot papers or not voting as a result of this factor on that demographic.
And that’s on top of the loss of votes in many key constituencies which will occur as a direct result of the deliberate hollowing out of the Labour Party and its wider movement by the collective Starmer Junta.
Take it as read steveHeep, this is not going to happen. If I were you I’d stick to counting the railings mate.
Dave – What the polls clearly indicate is that many of those Labour Party voters who abandoned Labour under Corbyn are now returning to Labour.
Your ‘concerns’ about the boundary changes appear to be misplaced. There will no doubt be many polls comparing the old and the new once the boundaries are finalised but in the meantime here are the current polling results projected onto the provisional boundary changes
Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
·
30 Dec 2021
Current polling projected onto the Provisional 2023 Boundaries*
LAB: 296 (+101)
CON: 259 (-119)
SNP: 55 (+7)
LDM: 17 (+9)
PLC: 4 (+2)
GRN: 1 (=)
https://mobile.twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1476573775571345412
New MRP Analysis of Nolan Principles & Westminster Seat Forecast:
New research and MRP analysis on voting behaviour and standards conducted on behalf of 38 Degrees by Survation in conjunction with Professor Christopher Hanretty of Royal Holloway University has found that the Conservative majority won in 2019 could disappear, should the current voting trend continue. The projections result in a hung Parliament, with Labour the largest party by a significant margin.
https://mailchi.mp/survation/new-survation-research-projects-111-conservative-seat-losses
Labour received 59 [fifty nine] votes, obviously the stain of Corbynism is proving harder to iradicate, Starmer must remove thousands more members who disagree with Labours policies [or lack of them] and move further to the right, maybe consult the Board of Deputies and make L Ellman shadow Foreign Sec. /S
No that’s Berger’s job.
Harry Law, I enjoyed the irony. I wonder how many Labour members were in Bransgore and Burley in 2017/2018 at the pick of Corbynism?
Looking at the result from the local elections in 2015 the Greens have always outperform Labour. Hence, it make it sense for former Labour voters to vote Green and use the opportunity to send Starmer a message. No sure Starmer will get the message but no harm in trying.
The ‘Independent’ candidate was a Tory in all but name. It gives a hint to Tories who don’t want to be associated with Bozo that they would do much better and maybe win if they ditched him at election time. Meanwhile Starmer looks up at them from his gutter.
Apparently in 2018 he quit the Conservative Party in protest over Tory cuts to public services
It looks as if Starmer preferred to see this essentially right-wing “Independent” win the seat rather than the Green candidate- who, unlike the right-wing independent, would at least be nominally progressive. Yet another sign that, when it comes down to it, Starmer will ALWAYS make the most right-wing, antisocialist choice possible- as he has ever since he essentially banned all left-wingers from nomination as Labour candidates.
V interesting! Recently there has been a concerted MSM theme to say ‘Starmer is becoming popular’ and Labour is back! The Guardian is the leader in these things when it can cl ear space from its Daily We Hate Russia, China, Iran stories. This shows just what rubbish that is!
An odd outcome, yet again, given that this site has on numerous occasions been assured by its resident self appointed and self referenced expert on these matters that the LP is consistently leading in opinion polls.
Yet that alleged and supposed lead is not transferring into real world votes. Given this reality two possibilities present. Either the respondents are lying through their teeth when the question is asked of them or the fifth column corporate media which pretends to be the fourth estate (mired in its entirety as it is in the practices observed by the late Upton Sinclair) is selling us yet another pup to go with all the others it has sold us over the years.
It would seem reasonable to suggest to this site’s self appointed Uriah Heep tribute act that he is most likely suffering from the gibbs-mann amnesia effect as described here:
http://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/2021/11/20/the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect/
And it would be more productive and intellectually honest (okay I know, but is Christmas and stranger things have happened) to concede to reality rather than continue to peddle what the evidence screams out to be grade A horse droppings.
Or maybe the winner was a popular and well respected candidate (as well as safe pair of Tory hands) who had previously held this solid Tory seat
A misframing of the point. Again.
To repeat for the hard of thinking; the point, already clearly made and spelled out Janet and John style for you Steve Heep, is about an anticipated increase in the Labour vote arising from the alleged lead in the polls put out by the media.
No one has argued the LP should have won a safe Tory seat. What everyone else is arguing is that according to your line of argument the LP under its current incompetent, malevolent and authoritarian loyalty to the unsustainable status quo puppet regime should be increasing its share of the vote in these types of election to reflect that alleged poll increase.
Not seeing its share of the vote plummet by nearly a quarter. Seeing most of the non Tory vote going to the Greens and coming a poor fourth. Though at least the drop in vote here was not in the 40% region like the Firth Park by election in September. Though that Ward is in a northern red wall constituency.
I suspect ‘a safe pair of Tory hands’ rather appeals to you Steve?
Paul – Don’t be silly, unlike many of the Tory enablers that contribute to these pages I want to see Labour in power.
There are about 10/15 UK Labour Party MPs left in the sea of Thatcher’s Neoliberal Neo-Labour Party Parasite TORIES, so good luck with THAT!
What have they done for The PEOPLE SteveH!? NOT WHAT DID THE SAY THEY WILL DO! What have they DONE FOR The PEOPLE!? Here’s what they’ve done, for 4y 3m they connived, colluded, backstabbed, sabotaged, undermined The UK Labour Party and as good as stuck a Rusty Nail in The PEOPLE’S Eye! Looks like The PEOPLE are waking up with sore eyes, if they had to choose between two TORIES to boot I reckon it will be the one with Rusty Nails in his back pocket! You keep forgetting GE19 we had CHOICE Neoliberal Conservative TORY or Democratic Socialist UK Labour Party the next GE The PEOPLE have NO CHOICE (overused cliches ignored)! Neoliberal Conservative TORIES or Neoliberal Neo-Labour Party Parasite TORIES
Your Parasite TORY Party is done for SteveH Done For “I want to see Labour in power” My Fucking Arse!
nellyskelly – On the contrary, recent polling indicates that the (ex)Labour voters who (under Corbyn) for the first time ever voted in such numbers for the Tories are now returning to Labour.
We’ll they will, they are Zombified MSM, MSSM Sheeple! They don’t know what research is even if it smacked them in the face like a Wet Fish!
So long as they can have their latest iPhone/GalaxyS/etc, their little mass big data robbing goddess Alexa, they will happily walk into any disaster, wit full Manufactured Consent I guess a bit like you. We’ll see who votes what!
nellyskelly – Yes we will.
You are mistaking popular for Lord of the manor in the “Sticks”.They were usually not too long ago treated to free beer,but Frampton no doubt free cider for the surfs.IF the knight of the realm wishes to play Labour as the Tory party in reserve then its clearly not working even if he offered whiskey with a chaser.Sorry Steve H Hall but theres only one route in playing second fiddle to the Tory party and thats oblivion….Never mind father Christmas as at least delivered on my grandchildren this Christmas morning even if it was across the rice fields in a wheelbarrow and a headlamp.Happy Christmas comrades…!
SteveH, “I want to see Labour in power”
When will the penny drop, Starmer is NOT labour, nor will he ever be and neither will those who he has gathered around him. It is more than evident now that if there was ever a ‘Starmer’ government it would not be a Labour government!
Allow Ken Loach a few minutes to give you a few home truths which the media will not do:
To quote the man himself;
“It’s still all to play for”
Nice post Dave 👏👏👏
Some people always lie through their teeth, isn’t that right AH?
Any party in the ascendance – starts by winning byelections, not moving from second place to third, no matter how supporters of Starmer embellish.
It has occurred to me that Starmer isn’t so much interested in winning outright, and would welcome a hung chamber so that the Neo-Liberal agenda can roll on unhindered, and they can all blame each other for their own policies, which they all know only serve the interests of the 1%.
I think Boris and Starmer are doing GREAT! The more Independents, Greens and Lib Dems get elected the fewer self-serving MPs who only do what the rich and Media tell them to do the better. We have to see Labour decimated before we can elect socialist MPs. Bring it on!
the core argument ‘moderates’ have is their insipid politics win elections. its a completely busted flush of an ideology
D.iogens….I don’t support insipid politics and never will.I cut my teeth and beliefs in the protest movement of Ulster in the late sixtys.ITs so different with the brits they love it and think the middle ground is revolution and a change.the real change can only come from the ordinary not so successful working-class movement.Anger will be the flux and once started no return…I doubt I will live to see it but change is like the tide coming in.
Joseph – Did it escape your notice that the tide turned in 2019 when Labour lost 60 seats.