New party also holds borough’s elected mayoral role
Keir Starmer’s unfolding – but under-reported – London local election disaster has continued with the new Aspire party taking control of Tower Hamlets council. Labour, who previously held forty of forty-five seats in the borough, lost more than half its seats falling to just nineteen.
Aspire already holds the mayoral role, which Lutfur Rahman won yesterday.
The results in detail were:
Labour and the media had claimed London was a success story for Starmer – but the reality is that it was almost as much of a catastrophe as the rest of the country, in a set of elections where the only place in which Labour outperformed the Greens and LibDems in terms of gains was in left-run Wales. In many places outside London, Labour lost ground even to the chaotic and disgraced Tories.
The headline of this article originally said Labour lost 22 of 40 seats, due to an earlier incoming report that said the party had won 18.
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The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, has said Labour’s performance on Thursday marked a recovery from a “near death experience”.
Speaking to the BBC, he said: “We know we’ve got to rebuild trust. We had a terrible near death experience at the last general election, so we’re not taking anyone for granted.
“But I think what we saw in the results on Thursday is a firm foundation for going on to win the next general election.”
Near death experience? 32% in 2019’s GE vs 35% in these Locals, on a much lower turnout? And on that low turnout, Starmer’s Labour will struggle to get 10 million plus votes in a GE, let alone match Corbyn’s 12.9 million votes in 2017’s GE.
Imagine simultaneously holding such contradictory views – as these Blairites do – that Corbyn was an unmitigated disaster, but matching the votes Corbyn-led Labour achieved in 2018’s Locals is extremely hard because that was a high-water mark of support.
And the media let them get away with their drivel.
Andy, the right wing of the Labour Party are experts at deluding themselves. Hence, really no surprised that Streeting is talking of recovery.
What Streeting appears to forget is what many of us know: the internal sabotage that Corbyn faced that ultimately lead us to the electoral disaster of 2019 General Election.
We know it was Starmer, Streeting and co that pushed for the “Constructive ambiguity” that ultimately lead to our electoral defeat.
It is heartening that the red wall’s former Labour voters know who the traitors are and are refusing to vote for them.
They deliberately ignore 2017’s GE as if it’s been memory holed: 40% of the vote and 12.9 million votes, explaining it away as an anti-Brexit vote. It’s too inconvenient to their narrative Corbyn oversaw nothing but electoral disaster.
Note how 2019’s result is allowed no such Brexit-related defence. Johnson’s simplistic message of ‘Get Brexit Done’ played well among a population who were understandably thoroughly sick of the subject dominating politics and TV news. And Labour’s promise to open the whole issue up again, to yet another referendum before the first had been implemented, was forced on the leadership by the likes of Watson and Starmer. In a deliberate ploy to lose? Who knows?
Without basic honesty from these people there can be no trust.
“Without basic honesty from these people there can be no trust.” Yup! There is no trust! Atrociously low voter turnout at elections* and ubiquitous “they’re all the same” complains are the markers of this lack of trust.
The wonderful Corbyn Interregnum saw a marked and much-welcomed reduction in the ‘they’re all the same’ gripes from the thoroughly unserved electorates.
* Jeremy’s moderate, reasonable common-sense in GE17 and GE19 manifestos re-incarnated the 5-miiion-plus votes that blair’s third way deceit had disenfranchised. These people actually started participating in politics again. Thank you JC.
the media not likely to really attack Starmer hes returned Labour to the neoliberal fold plus hes eminently beatable by the tories
Yes and those media were very accommodating to Lisa Nandos who evidently drew the short straw to tour the tv news studios today defending the indefensible…
I have just checked the BBC’s website it reported the total number of seats won by Labour in England as 29. Labour won 20 in Scotland, so a total of 49, for a total of 178 local elections. Wales Labour 66 seats from a total of 22 elections.
Croydon still to report, so perhaps Labour is going to lose even more seats.
But, even in the best scenario Welsh Labour will have won more seats by itself than Scothish Labour and (English) Labour combined: 66 v 49 maybe 54 at best if Labour manages by a miracle to win some seats in Croydon.
Somehow the MSM is amalgamating the good results in Wales and massaging the figures trying no doubt to protect Starmer’s blushes.
115 seats so far in total including the 66 seats from Wales with the worse Tory government in living history, it doesn’t spell Labour’s success at the next General Election.
This page – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2022/may/05/elections-2022-results-live-local-council-england-scotland-wales – could have come from Labour HQ, topped with a chart showing Labour making the most gains, a very partial analysis of ‘Councils of Interest’ (in which given the massive swing one would expect Tower Hamlets to feature) and a conclusion that seems to have been penned before the results and blissfully ignorant of them:
“The results present a mixed bag. Labour scored some major successes in London councils and made modest gains elsewhere. The Conservatives have lost seats across the country, especially in their southern strongholds, with the Lib Dems among the beneficiaries.”
In fact the “constructive ambiguity” was
nothing of the sort – for the decision at
the 2018 Conference was to adopt REf2
as a last resort if all else failed – a simple
statement which was easily understood
rather than a complicated algorithm.
All this nonsense of a complicated
algorithm with “IFs and Elses” about
Election timing was a confusion – inept
and incompetent***. In fact
I wrote all this to Watson as a response to
an email asking for support for Ref 2
which included a lot of box ticking. I write
what I think and NEVER respond to box
ticking ..
The truth is that with a land border with NI
the only solution was some sort of Single
Market – as anyone could see and it still is.
We should join the Northern Ireland in the
Single Market and not insult them with the
so-called protocol
Back to Starmer ..
It is poetic justice if he is unseated over this
lockdown fiasco – if he had been more
judicious over his criticisms of Johnson
and let the events speak for themselves
this would likely not have happened.
*** I still think that Starmer was inept over
REf2 rather than duplicitous for that would
require intelligence and subtlety – which he
lacks. He has since tried to hide his
incompetence with lies and dirty politics.
You’ve summed him up perfectly Holby. “I still think that Starmer was inept over REf2 rather than duplicitous….” Not just Ref/2, but in his ‘beer’ and ‘party’-gates performances too.
Not only is he a policy-free, vacuous waste-of-carbon as party ‘leader’, he hasn’t even got the emotional and political intelligence to “perform” well.
He probably thinks that the various surveillance-capitalism algorithms that monster-operations like g**gle, Apple and F’book use so their billionaire owners can control us without even needing to acknowledge us, can be harnessed by his WEF-endorsed Labour party and secure massive landslide majorities as a result.
He’s a bit of a Wally.
Holby central …Sir Donaldson leader of the DUP was quoted “I would refuse to serve under any circumstances a Assembly first minister led by Michelle O’Neal Sinn Fein…..Protocal is not the only problem Holby but I am sure that Michelle despite wishing to get on with the job of the serious problems of funding for the NHS and vulnerable people of Ulster will not be suprised..
When all’s said and done Joseph, Sinn Fein’s wonderful resurection in NI is a direct consequence of the global-capitalists fucking-up their pro-Brexit experiments (think of f’book’s pro-UKIP ads, etc) on their journey to promoting Ukraine-facilitated neo-fascism. Irish Unification (and the end of British Imperialism on the island of Ireland) is the benefit.
“Every cloud…..”
Prepare for War
The Butchers of Belfast are still out there, fully supported by police, army and intelligence services
Please take a moment to contemplate waiting until everyone of those fuckers is 6 feet under
Biggest mistake we all make is thinking democracy meana anything to them
Something’s not quite right, here…We were more-or-less promised that those ‘self-appointed guardians of the left’ who weren’t wearing the red rosette would be losing their deposits…
I think that poster ought to come on here and explain himself. He’s always demanding we do so – even when our predictions and views are vindicated.
I agree that Northern Ireland was far more complicated
than indicated in my post – which really only pointed
up the Brexit aspect.
In fact the problems go back 100yrs in a “divide and rule”
strategy which ensured the Unionists always had power –
and the voter suppression and election chicanery ensured
this was so. Both parties (Labour and Tory)
allowed this to happen .. until1968 when the Nationalist
population had had enough and attempted a peaceful march
in Derry for Civil Rights and were beaten up by the RUC.
This was captured by TV and we saw what followed.
I can understand (sorry Joseph!) the DUP being fed up with
the NI protocol which was a dogs breakfast dreamt up
by Boris Johnson but presented as an
“Oven Ready Solution”.which the British public were deluded
enough to accept. As I keep (boringly!) on about it – the
ONLY solution is for the UK to join some sort of
Single Market so that there will be no border down the English
Channel – or anywhere in fact.
Loving the brutal take-down of the incompetency in Croydon by the Inside Croydon blog – https://insidecroydon.com/2022/05/08/from-bankrupt-to-laughing-stock-as-council-count-continues/
A flavour below but worth reading in full to get the full venting of justified contempt:
Broad Green, probably the safest Labour ward in the borough, waved through Stooge Collins, for six years Newman’s deputy leader of the council, fellow loyal numpty Sherwan Chowdhury and the exceptionally useless cabinet member for business, Manju Shahul-Hameed. Here turn-out was just 26.5per cent – hardly a mandate at all.