Litany of right-wing anti-democracy and purge of left activists and candidates sees Labour trounced
Labour’s desperate attempts to spin its electoral flop – gaining barely any seats against a murderous and incompetent Tory government and losing out to the Tories in large parts of the country outside London – as a success have centred in large part on the party’s win in Barnet in north London.
But this evening the returning officer has confirmed that Labour has lost Harrow, which borders on Barnet, massively to the Tories:
Labour previously held the borough by 35 Labour councillors to 28 Tories, so the party has done even worse than simply revere the proportions.
The Labour right’s anti-democratic machinations and purge of the left have been on show in Harrow as much as almost anywhere, as Skwawkbox has often reported. A purge of left activists included a prominent left councillor – who had suffered a prolonged campaign of harassment by right-wing figures – on the feeblest and most trumped-up of excuses, while Labour members accused the party’s regional office of colluding with the right to rig selections and exclude left-wingers, even at the cost of failing to include the required number of women on the ‘panel list’ of potential candidates.
One local left figure summed up:
Despite expelling their best activists, despite purging all the left who wanted to stand despite disenfranchising in a most brutal persistent fashion they have shown a talent for catastrophe with all their handpicked candidates – throwing away the council after twelve years and handing Boris Johnson a lifeline in London.
Great effort.
No amount of media collusion in Starmer’s delusional claims that these elections have been a success or ‘turning point’ for Labour can hide the reality – attested by the country’s leading electoral expert – that this has been a disastrous performance by the Labour right and a massive rejection by former Labour heartlands of Starmer’s vacuous, policy-free and collaborationist ‘leadership’.
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Another factor may be the ethnic make up of Harrow with over 40% of the population being of Asian origin much higher than Barnet.Obviously I have no evidence to support this suggestion but is it possible some of these will have found involving Israeli politicians in Labours canvassing programme in next door Barnet suggestive of a lack of balance? I remember canvassing before the Peterborough by election in 2018 ,I think,and being told by a Muslim voter “it’s not us they care about “
The good people of Harrow saw through the six hundred and sixty six faced Sir Starmer.
🎉🪅🎊🎉🪅🎊🎉🪅🎊
Sir Shifty Starmer cannot be trusted🔵🔵🔵
Anyone who cosies up to war criminal creature Blair, is bad Bad BAD news🟪🟪🟪
I’m sorry, but Steve Walker (who I assume wrote the above article) is doing it yet again! He puts the loss of Harrow and not doing very well generally in the local elections down to ‘The Labour right’s anti-democratic machinations and purge of the left’, and in the sub-headline to the article says ‘Litany of right-wing anti-democracy and purge of left activists and candidates sees Labour trounced’ etc, etc, and yet outside of the left (and the Right!), the vast majority of the electorate are not aware that it’s going on, and THEY believe, as such, that Starmer removed the whip from Jeremy because Jeremy said the A/S accusations were exaggerated, and the groups (and their members) that were banned were banned because they denied that there was an antisemitism problem in the Party.
The main thing that may very well have had an effect on the results is that the thousands of left-wingers who would have been out canvassing and putting leaflets through doors in the weeks before the elections have now left the Party because of their anger and disgust towards Starmer and Co..
PS Most people get their news via the MSM, and the MSM have NOT been telling their readers etc that Starmer and Co are purging the left etc, and have of course been playing along with the fraudulent reasons given by Starmer and Co (backed up by the JLM and the CAA et al) for expelling people and banning groups and their members etc.
In defense of Steve Walker,
the point is that the Starmer purge effect has deprived Labour of grassroots local campaigners on the street.
The Starmer rightwing Tory B-team ideology effect had robbed Labour voters of having any material self-interest in making the trip to the polling-booth.
Does voting Starmer get you…
The council house provison of Clement Attlee,
The Welfare & Education provison of Harold Wilson
The trade union links and job protections of Jim Callaghan
The ‘cradle to grave’ welfare state & NHS of Nye Bevan.
The answer is NO, NO, NO, NO.
The Starmer effect attacks Labour as a culture, social movement and material improvement on peoples lives.
(the real question about the Starmer effect – what are these neoliberals doing in our Party?)
More fully explained in this article… https://arena.org.au/the-lefts-right-turn/
Maybe the thousands of members/ former members who would normally have worked for the election of a Labour candidate but didn’t this time because of the Trilateral. Comm’ission’s Special Envoy from the Billionaires being the ‘leader’ of Labour and – also – he’s not doing a very good job at it, well, these people also talk to friends, family members and colleagues and maybe this provides a sufficient additional cause of Labour’s poor electoral performance? As you say, the synchronised MSM isn’t reporting Sir Keir’s ‘new mangement’ skullduggery, so what else could it be?
I suppose, Sir Keir’s policies, values, lack of passion, uninspiring parliamentary performance and poor PR might just have been enough on their own.
Either way, he’s not a happy bunny this Friday night.
Thankyou Bernie for repeating more-or-less what I said at the end of the post that you were responding to, which qwertboi then, in effect, repeats!
Why on earth do you defend Steve Walker for what is as good as fake news AND tantamount to trying to dupe readers of this blog into believing that the loss of Harrow and the relatively poor result for Labour was all down to Starmer purging the left etc. Yes, he does mention left-wing activists in the sub-heading, but at no point does he explicitly state that the loss of so many left-wing activists.may have very well affected the results, and the whole theme of the article is that it was all down to Starmer purging the left and the Labour Right’s anti-democratic machinations etc, etc.
But then all the MSM coverage about ‘beergate’ during the couple of days prior to the elections no doubt had an effect on the results, as it was obviously designed and intended to do (see my post further down the page).
Harrowing news for keef.
(Well, someone had to…🚕)
As I have made crystal clear in more than a few posts during the course of the past twenty months or so – as of when he started purging the left in the Party several months after he was elected leader – I despise Starmer and have nothing but contempt for him, as I do ALL fascists, but isn’t it amazing that Durham police should announce, the day after the local elections were held, that they are reopening the investigation into ‘beergate’, as it’s been tagged, AND, as such, be the leading news item across broadcast news, and no doubt on many of the websites of the right-wing newspapers. I mean isn’t it amazing that Durham police – as they were saying today – just happened to be in “receipt of significant new information over recent days”, but didn’t give any details as to what this ‘significant new information’ amounted to (as far as I’m aware).
And isn’t it ALSO an amazing coincidence that much of the MSM were reporting the following in the couple of days prior to the election (the following clips are from an Express article):
‘Durham Police should reopen Keir Starmer beer probe: ‘Needs to be investigated properly’’
….. the City of Durham MP. Conservative MP for North West Durham, Richard Holden, has called for a fresh investigation after claims of evidence of a quiz and social event on the same evening.
Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan also said police officers should “look at it again” with “all the new evidence” that has come forward.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1605265/keir-starmer-poll-results-beergate-investigation-reopen-durham-police-spt
And as I said in another thread earlier today, WHO took the photo, through the window, of Starmer drinking a beer. And how long after the event was it passed on to the MSM….. I really don’t remember, and all I know is that it was some time after the Partygate scandal broke, and why would anyone wait until THEN to pass the photo on to the MSM, and not have passed it on at the time.
NB And how would Richard Holden know that there was a quiz and a social event (whatever that means) on the same evening, or ‘claims’ that there were, that is!. It seems highly unlikely that all of this negative publicity just prior to election day didn’t have an effect on the LPs results, as it was obviously designed to do. And in a few months time, will Durham police be announcing that yet again they found no evidence that any rules were broken (and that there WASN’T a quiz or a social event).
isn’t it amazing that Durham police should announce, the day after the local elections were held, that they are reopening the investigation into ‘beergate’, as it’s been tagged,
Not really. Haven’t the met delayed the updates on who got fined in their 2nd round of investigations into downing st parties until after yesterday, in case it prejudiced the election results?
What I was of course suggesting Toffee is that they – and I obviously don’t mean ALL Durham police – are totally corrupt. I mean what are the chances that this ‘significant new evidence’ should just happen to be passed on to them just before the local elections, but THEY, apparently, don’t regard it as highly suspicious that someone or other should do so when they did, and not when the episode first came to light or any other time.
I mean did you somehow REALLY think that I thought it was actually amazing, when I would have thought from the manner in which I was saying it – as with everything else – that what I was saying is that it’s all very convenient for the Tories. I’m sure you’re familiar enough with my posts to know that I would have typed the word in caps if I was saying AMAZING, but I wasn’t.
But I think you know exactly how I meant it!!
PS Next time I’ll stick a hmm in at the end of each sentence in which I’ve said amazing to denote my incredulity.
eg … isn’t it amazing that Durham police should announce, the day after the local elections were held, that they are reopening the investigation into ‘beergate’, as it’s been tagged, AND, as such, be the leading news item across broadcast news, and no doubt on many of the websites of the right-wing newspapers. Hmm
Is that better!
I was being cynical Toffee, which I’m sure was more than obvious to most people who read my post!
Alcohol is the mainstay of the labour party dont you know? along with sniffing in the HOC They have no policy or morals so why not binge into oblivion thats okay by me..!Now telling porkys about a twenty mile drive to a party in Durham as the judge says “cant be relied upon”
The Greens had a good night, they now have over 500 council. No one can say Keef, and New New Labour haven’t helped the fight against climate change. By being crap they’ve boosted the Green vote.
That was a very clever ploy on the part of Corbyn—deliberately doing well in 2018 so as to make Starmer look bad 4 years later.
Mmm – I think it is more the case that Corbyn didn’t do very well in 2018 and that Starmer has done worse in 2022.
And think of the hostile backdrop for Corbyn from within the party and the demented daily lying press coverage.
The Tories weren’t mired in scandal, as now.
Whereas everything in these elections was aligned for Labour to dominate, and yet they fire a blank.
“A one-point advance in Labour’s vote share in London was accompanied by a three-point fall in the North of England.”
– Professor Sir John Curtice
It is pragmatic for Durham Police to briefly pause their investigation and the announcement of wishing to interview Starmer until after the polls closed, not least because it avoids a subsequent challenge regarding undue influence, particularly if Starmer is cleared. Even without Starmer’s position worsened by the announcement and the self-inflicted hypocrisy charge, it was a poor result for a party wishing to be seen as resurgent.
On a more positive note, rather than, as was noted previously in relation to Guardian types mustering up the vision of a grand coalition to get Starmer elected, this does seem the point at which the Lib Dems could make themselves useful. Davey should avoid the hubris that has brought low previous LD leaders intoxicated by a protest vote and acknowledge
1) that his party’s performance, however strong, will not and cannot be reflected in a GE because the voting system is anti-democratic
2) that HE will lead a coalition with the express purpose of dismantling FPTP as its first piece of business in power and commit to a GE within one year under the new system
I have no enthusiasm for Davey but as he is someone who could not lead the country under the current system, any prevarication on his part in effecting the transition would not be tenable (and from his perspective such a self-effacing gesture would hopefully be acknowledged in the negotiations that followed the first election conducted by more equitable means).
“A one-point advance in Labour’s vote share in London was accompanied by a three-point fall in the North of England.”
– Professor Sir John Curtice
Steady progress?