Party begging for support on ground and turnout expected to be low as new regime inspires apathy at best and right’s racism comes home to roost
Sources in the area say that Labour’s campaign in the Birmingham Erdington by-election is ‘bombing’, with even the party’s right unenthusiastic about the candidate and the left staying away en masse.
The absence of Labour campaigners apart from local councillors and a few MPs drafted in from outside has already been documented – a stark contrast to the grassroots support for socialist candidate Dave Nellist. But local sources say that the response ‘on the doors’ when Labour does manage to knock has been tepid at best, with a mix of outright hostility as residents of an area where more than a quarter of the population is black or Asian bridle against the rampant Islamophobia and racism of the Labour right.
And Skwawkbox has been told that those right-wingers are ‘livid’ about the candidate, as their favourite ‘f***ed up the hustings’. But that has generated no enthusiasm among the left, as Hamilton is seen as too keen on NHS privatisation and has been accused of participating in attacks by the council on its refuse collectors and care workers.
As a result of the failure of the party to generate any enthusiasm and the backlash against the right’s discrimination, turnout is expected to be low and in a seat it has held since the 1940s the Labour regime is reduced to desperately hoping that the apathy among Tory voters will be enough to allow it to scrape through.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
In 2018 I would have travelled the hundred or so miles to Birmingham to canvass for Labour. Today I wouldn’t walk the hundred or so yards to my polling station to vote for them.
When the spiteful Starmerites thought it was a brilliant idea to start suspending the left it was predicted they would struggle to find activists who’d be willing to door knock. Yet they still went along with it.
Now they are reduced to relying on apathy amongst Tory supporters. Surely this reliance is misguided, especially now with the war in Ukraine and Johnson acting a Churchillian big dog may well only encourage them to get out and vote and no doubt Tory canvassers have been badmouthing Dave Nellist to scare them. If they lose it’ll be Corbyns fault anyway.
“Labour’s Erdington campaign bombs’. What a highly apt metaphor!
Wait until you read about Southside Labour taking over @YoungLabour’s Twitter account. You should be furious.
George Peel
Do you have a link to this?
Thanks
There’s a Skwawkbox post today. Talk about p****g on your best assets.
What is happening in Erdington will happen everywhere else too. Starmers Labour has suspended ,expelled or alienated so many people because of the vindictive campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters and because of the total distain with which our BAME Muslim Irish and Kashmiri brothers and sisters have been treated.
Starmers Labour does not do empathy. They cannot put themselves in the shoes of e.g. a Muslim of Arab origin who sees members, many of them Jews, being expelled wholesale from the party for “antisemitism” when all they did was protest about the human rights abuses visited on Palestinians by Israel.
They can’t understand how a black person feels when local Black members are deselected solely on the grounds of their race . They do not understand the resentment of our Irish and Kashmiri members and supporters or realise how appalled most people are by the way Jeremy Corbyn and other socialists have been treated.
They seem to think that they can be as unjust and as dictatorial as they like without consequence. They are starting to find out in Erdington that this is not the case.
If right-wing Labour thinks that left members like me are going to turn out to assist a right-wing stooge in a by-election, they must be deranged.
Nellist is head and shoulders above all of them.
Respect to the guy !
Labour is defending a majority at Erdington that is just slightly smaller than the one that it had in Hartlepool. The alt left have a strong candidate in Nellist & some of the Brexit Party supporters from the last election are bound to go back to the Tories. The writing seems to be pretty much on the wall.
I am betting that Keith will blame the defeat on Corbyn’s invasion of the Ukraine
How many votes did the left’s candidate get in Hartlepool?
250
The torys always turn up to vote.We need a good turnout and boots on the ground to maximise yes “and poss” voters….We can win this ….
The Labour Candidate would – I suspect – in normal circumstances
be supported***. However she is now a Patsy – sidelined because of
the machinations of Evans and his stooge.
*** I am going by what I read about her in Labour List for she seems
like a well-meaning person.
Dave Nellist’s recent track record doesn’t inspire much confidence.
1997 Coventry South Socialist Alternative 3,262 6.5% Not elected
2001 Coventry North East Socialist Alternative 2,638 7.1% Not elected
2005 Coventry North East Socialist Alternative 1,874 5.04% Not elected
2010 Coventry North East TUSC 1,592 3.7% Not elected
2015 Coventry North West TUSC 1,769 3.9% Not elected
2022 Birmingham Erdington TUSC (will he manage to hold onto his deposit this time)
Why is BBC West Midlands excluding
Dave Nellist from Erdington radio hustings?
The socialist former MP Dave Nellist is standing in the Birmingham Erdington by-election
for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition 1 .
Dave has pledged that, if elected, he would only take a worker’s wage. The BBC has
recognised his outstanding record on this issue, describing him as “the MP who gave away
half his salary”. 2
Dave’s campaign has generated a lot of local enthusiasm, with the biggest election launch
of any candidate. Yet he has not been allowed to take part in the BBC Radio WM hustings,
unlike the Reform UK, Liberal Democrat and Green candidates. This is hardly an
evidence-based approach. Whereas Dave’s campaign has put out three leaflets across
the constituency, these candidates’ campaigns have been extremely low key. Perhaps,
however, this decision says something about who the real anti-establishment candidate is
in this election.
Dave explained:
“In a by-election we don’t get to change the government, but we can shake up the
establishment. Red Tory, Blue Tory, Yellow Tory – there’s no difference. We need
someone on our side. Someone the system can’t buy. If I am elected I will shake up
the establishment and provide a fighting voice for working-class people. And I will
only take a worker’s wage, just as I did when I was an MP in Coventry.”
Anyone have any info on the Militant Bus-Pass Elvis Party candidate and what they’re standing for?