Early results suggest other parties have gained from Tory collapse while Starmer’s Labour static – and worried about losses in Liverpool
Despite the frantic spinning by his cronies already underway, last night’s already-disastrous results for the Tories have not shown any gain in vote-share for Labour under Keir Starmer, according to electoral expert John Curtice.
While the Tories have had an ‘unambiguous’ nightmare, according to Curtice, Labour has made no progress and any gains have simply been because the Tories fell past them:
In contrast, with about a third of results declared the Greens, independents and even the appalling collaborator LibDems have gained vote share:
Meanwhile, Labour has admitted to one of its supportive local hacks in Liverpool – where results will not be announced until later today – that it fears losing key wards to the independents and is worried about the LibDem taking seats:
Even more worryingly for Starmer, he remains a negative phenomenon for Labour – less popular than appalling Tory PM Sunak and putting off voters more every time they see him.
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The PLP has become a “party within a party” to the extent that is is possible to vote lab at (many) local elections but not at a GE.
Thank you, – that is an excellent observation.
In my constituency, where the Mzp was one of the most active underminers of JC, their highest ever vote was in the 2017 GE. The vote increase the was very much against the overall decline of the vote under their predecessor, and thanks to the deliberate confusion of Starmer’s 2nd Referendum strategy – a deliberate ploy to undermine Corbyn – the decline continued.
I don’t mind voting for hardworking local Labour councilors, but voting for a member of a useless, right wing PLP is really asking too much of people who recognize the true degree of change we need in the UK. An Establishment Second 11, with a devotion to the ideology that has put us in this mess just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Here comes Caribbean Charlie….Any minute, one, two, three……
No, no. He’s still abed and the servants won’t wake him for another half hour.
More worrying for Labour is the lower participation. Even in local elections it usually stand at around 35%-40%. This time is around 30%-35% and even lower is some traditional voting Labour areas.
Hence, Labour can spin the results to its heart content.
True the Tories have an extremely back performance but, Labour clearly isn’t on course to win the next General Election. The best it can hope is to get a hung parliament.
But then the Tories can recover and still while losing seats managing to form government after a General Election next year.
Turnout figures in Barnsley – which has three Wards in a Red Wall seat won by the Blue Tories in 2019 – and which was pushed hard in the other two seats by the Brexit Party in that election:
Central 20.80% from 21.87% (in 2022); Cudworth 16.64% from 21.99%; Darfield 22.73% from 24.58%; Darton East 29.92% from 30.95%; Dearne South 19.54% from 20.13%; Hoyland Milton 26.9% from 27.1%; Monk Bretton 23.61% from 23.76%; North East 19.77% from 22.6%; Royston 22.07% from 23.64%; St Helen’s 17.59% from 18.2%; Stairfoot 19.78% from 22.9%; Worsbrough 27.81% from 27.1%;
These are former mining communities with very, very long memories. At the May Day march and rally a few days ago in Sheffield, for example, the finale was the reading of an almost century old letter by a descendant of a striking miner from the 1926 General Strike.
These communities never forgave Churchill and they have certainly not forgiven the Red Tories for the betrayal in 1984-85. They would rather stay away in droves than vote for a Tory, whatever colour rosette it is wearing, when those are the only ‘choices’ on offer.
The notion of Mandleson – and by extension, Starmer – that voters in these communities have ‘nowhere else to go’ is regularly given the two finger salute in a variety of ways.
Addendum:
Here’s the result in Barnsley Central:
12:24 BST
Central (Barnsley)
CENTRAL (Barnsley) Steve Bullcock – Yorkshire Party 456 Martin Joseph O’Donoghue – Labour 856 Ruby Paul – Independent 92 Catherine Theresa Rogerson – Liberal Democrat 84 Chris Scarfe – Green 153 Charlotte Helen Wilkinson – Conservative 176 Labour HOLD
Not one candidate reached a thousand votes – 1817 votes divided among 6 candidates in Ward with 7,621 voters in the 2019 GE (source: Electoral Calculus). A relatively high turnout for a Ward in this Parliamentary Constituency of 23.84%.
Further addendum concerning turnouts:
13:15 BST
Kingstone changes hands in Barnsley
KINGSTONE (Barnsley) Liberal Democrat GAIN
Jusy Barnsley – Independent 99 Peter Giles – Green 109 Roger Haw – Conservative 71 Tracey-Ann Holland – Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition 33 Kevin Williams – Labour 640 Philip Wright – Liberal Democrats 688
A ward with 6,974 voters at the 2019 GE (source: Electoral Calculus) and the winning candidate can’t muster 700 votes.
And compared with other Wards in this area this is a high turnout.
The rate things are going anyone wanting to make easy money might well be onto a safe bet by placing their shirt on the ‘none of the above’ vote exceeding 20 million at the next GE.
I did vote Labour yesterday – only three candidates stood in my two-seat ward, two Labour and one Tory, so I voted to ensure that the Tory did not get in. I also delivered Green party leaflets in the adjoining Saint Margarets and Saint Nicholas ward and have high hopes of green successes there.
“so I voted to ensure that the Tory did not get in”
You sure about that?? 🤔.
(Played on helping the greens out, though 👍)
(Played on helping the greens out, though 👍)
Which ones?
The non-blue ones. 👍
Both Labour and the Toe Rags deserve to be stuffed.
Here’s hoping for some cheering results.
Wrote a message on the ballot paper. Could not bear to vote for Starmer’s party.
Would have voted Labour if Corbyn still leader.
Curtice (just now on the beeb) was hardly complimentary to keef’s chances…😏
Both Prof John Curtice & Prof Michael Thrasher both agree that these results indicate that Labour will probably emerge from the next General Election as the largest party but it won’t have an over all majority in Parliament.
That’s been pretty evident for. a couple of years now. Labour is high and dry without its support in Scotland which for all the carry on in the SNP they won’t get back. Scots voters are somewhat to the left of Labour and Starmer’s Labour has thrown in its lot even further with the right.
The Tories will swallow a GE defeat to a minority Lab Government because they know that they will be back in power within 5 years. And so it will continue until Labour realises that it is never going to replace the Tories as “the natural Party of Government” because the Tories have the FPTP system sewn up. Labour is howvere too cowardly to face the fact that it will always need to got in to partnership with other Parties if it wishes to participate in Government.
Albert, I fear Starmer’s reaction to a forecast to a hung parliament will be to find any excuse to withdraw the Labour whip for the remaining members of the SCG.
With Labour as the Party with most seats but no overall majority, the SCG will be in a position to call the tune and Starmer will do anything to prevent that scenario.
In that scenario I hope SCG’s members will stand as independents. About half of them would lost their seats, but Labour would find very hard to win them outright from them.
Sometime isn’t about winning but rather ensuring that an odious opponent loses.
An expelled Labour councillor in Portsmouth has been re-elected as an independent.
https://twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1654291098561400832
The Charles Dickens ward is very working class and is in the Labour marginal of Portsmouth South.
Charles Dickens ward”
For a moment I thought you were talking about a hospital…🤪
‘His’ broadband connection must be down!
While I’m here, massive congratulations to Alan Gibbons – Liverpool Community Independent – strolled back into the seat he first won as a Liverpool Labour councillor.
There are little pockets of Independents, winning all over the country. Not sure, just, what kind of ‘independents’ they are, but they took Boston, Lincs. Council off the Tories. All welcome!
And there’s this:
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-labour-rebel-storms-landslide-26850991
Feckin ‘reach group’ websites….Each & every page you visit they want cookies confirmation ffs. 🤬
use firefox and install ‘I don’t care about cookies’ extension/ tool and tell Ffox to delete all cookies automatically when you close the programme (Preferences/Settings) = makes life much easier in Surveillance World.
Just crunching numbers and looking at the percentage of seats overturned as opposed to held then it is not too bad a the moment for Labour, in fact better than the LibDems, but the real winners in terms of seats gained are the greens:
Party – Seats overall – Seats+/- (% gained)
Lab – 1165 – +216 (18.54%)
Con – 854 – -369 (-3.48%)
LD – 592 – +92 (15.54%)
GN 158 +81 (51.27%)
Maths eh?
Conservatives down -43.21% (it was independents who are down -3.48%)
If one compares the results from 2019 when these seats were last contested with Thursdays results you will see that Labour have increased their share of the popular vote from 28% to 35%.
In 2019 the Tories lost 1,330 seats but Labour (despite these exceptional Tory losses) still somehow managed to lose 84 seats and the control of 6 councils whereas in 2023 the Tories lost 1,058 seats but this time Labour gained 536 seats plus the control of an additional 22 councils. 🤔
You can check out the figures here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_Kingdom_local_elections# and then follow the links to the 2019 local elections.
here’s the link to the 2019 local election results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_local_elections#
As if it hardly mattered, the citizens of Leeds had to wait until the next-day for their votes to be counted. This afternoon I learned that my ward was a labour hold. Most seats were’ X Holds’. Turnout was low (30%). Labour should be thoroughly disappointed with itself. Massively. It can’t even ride a storm which it should have used to its electoral advantage..
I can verify that the ‘dearly-departeds’ (who were mostly the enthusiastic door-knockers and campaigners) were missed. The Lib Dems and the Greens being the main beneficiaries locally.
When I came home, a school-age Labour member was at my door and when he asked me if I’d voted, I informed him I had and when he asked me if it was for the Labour candidate and I replied ‘sadly, no’ , it seems not to have occurred to him to ask me why (I must be listed as a recent-member and to whom I did give my vote. Was he a YTS trainee, I found myself wondering.
Hopefully, he’ll be better by the time the General Election comes along – and hopefully he’ll be yet another ‘dearly-departed’.
qwertboi – You were honoured. What did you do to get someone knocking on your door? Around here, I saw not a soul either knocking my door or even lurking outside the polling station. Seemed like even the Labour Student crowd had given up the ghost.
I’m also in Leeds.
Last year at this time, I was Chair of my local branch and had worked my butt off for a good Labour councillor.
I resigned as branch chair after the Corbyn “final bullet” and did Sweet FA this year.
I’m sure there are many like me..
Let’s not be churlish. Let’s congratulate Starmer on winning the 0.1% Club.