[Politics] May 2021 local elections and Hartlepool by-election

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

That’s almost the exact number the Tory Party + Brexit Party is down on the last election too! Who’d have thought!

I still agree about it being a disastrous result for Labour though.

Below is a piece by Curtice - it's clearly not all about Brexit...

Labour's loss of the Hartlepool by-election is the most dramatic illustration yet that the party has so far failed to connect with the Leave/working class voters that, the party lost heavily in 2017 and 2019.

Support for the Brexit Party, which registered 26% in 2019, collapsed - the successor Reform party secured just 1% of the vote. It looks as though the Conservatives picked up the Brexit Party's former support, in line with the proportion of Leave voters preferring the Conservatives to Labour to the order of 3/4 to 1.

However, the swing to the Conservatives of 16% is more than can be accounted for by the collapse of the Brexit Party.

Labour's vote fell 9 points to 29%, so the party clearly lost some of its 2019 support, as well as suffering from the movement of Brexit Party voters to the Conservatives. Part of the explanation may lie in the success of independent candidate, Sam Lee, who won 10% of the vote.

Together with the pattern in key wards, there is clearly a debate about whether Labour can win support from Leave voters by ignoring Brexit as it has in the last 12 months.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I'm pretty much in the same boat - rejoined Labour when Starmer got elected - he always seemed very impressive....the word "competent" comes to mind, in leadership terms. Unfortunately competence can often seem dull. And it seems that what we crave at the moment is a leader who lies at every opportunity and generally bumbles around like an idiot.

Fortunately Starmer and Labour have plenty of time before the next General Election. But they must be pretty depressed at the moment, and it's not clear which direction they need to travel to become electable again.

We are on exactly the same page, Jim. My best wishes

 

[Harmyar]

You talk some sh..it at times

He's absolutely spot on regarding the Labour Party , I voted for the Democratic Network which concentrate on local issues,

 

[Chicken Run]

You talk some sh..it at times [emoji23][emoji23]

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[Bozza]

That’s almost the exact number the Tory Party + Brexit Party is down on the last election too! Who’d have thought!

Sir John Curtice suggested this was far more than a Brexit / Brexit Party thing. I was walking the dog and picking his shit up at the time I heard this, so can't recall the specific numbers he quoted to back this assertion up.

Regardless, he knows a lot more about election results than I do, so I'm happy to accept he probably knows what he's talking about.

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

Have we ever had a more divided labour Party?

Quote from Abbott below:

Crushing defeat for Labour in Hartlepool. Not possible to blame Jeremy Corbyn for this result. Labour won the seat twice under his leadership. Keir Starmer must think again about his strategy.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

She has a very short memory - Corbyn led Labour to a historically disastrous result at the last GE.

Probably best if she, Corbyn, McDonnell, RLB and the like disappear into the sunset and set up a new Party with Lansman as their spin doctor.

The Labour Party is now in effect two parties, completely divided (as was the Tory Party with pro-EU / Brexiters splitting them before Johnson's purge of moderates)

It feels like it's over for Starmer before he's even started.

Mmmm....Abbott was wheeled out for comedy value. She did the interview while doing her morning walk and could be barely heard among the traffic and the sound of wind. Nicky Campbell was extremely sweet, inviting her to machine-gun herself in the face, and she duly obliged.

I don't think her and her ilk have any sway in labour right now.

I would be surprised if labour mounts a coup against Starmer. Now is not the time - no labour leader has a hope all the while the nation is Winning (defeating Covid and Winning with Brexit.....). If England win a major football competition soon, it will be blue sunsets for the forseeable....

 

[Harmyar]

Yes we do, they are ignorant, racist thickos.
As has been proved again.
Have you been to Hartlepool?
Jesus, its full of them, that is why 70% of them voted to leave without having absolutely no idea of what it was about.

You and people like you are the reason Labour will never get in again,which is a shame as we need a decent opposition to the current bunch of tossers,this pretty much sums up your election strategy

 

[Harmyar]

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[Happy Exile]

I think a lot of people are so used to being treated like shit they've got used to it. Huge amounts of people have become disenfranchised and don't vote, this suits the tories well. They're wallowing in it as they have virtually no opposition at present. Its not in good peoples nature to bew a total **** so the Tories will continue to be top ***** for the forseable. It all harks back to Thatcher convincing the working classes they were middle classed whilst sneakily making them all worse off.

I did a few inflation based calculations recently, as an experienced engineer I'm considerably worse off, and have been consistently in the last 12 years, in reality, than at any time from the mid 90's up to 2008. I'm not alone. we're being subliminally shafted.

That's the staggering thing - in Hartlepool more than 1 in 4 children live in poverty, almost 1 in 3 live in households earning less than 60% of national median income, and these figures get worse every year. There's no improvement, it's continual decline. How have people become convinced that there's nothing better than more of the same for their communities, and that the those who have consistently ignored the problems and actively created policies to make them worse will somehow now fix it?

 

[Biscuit]

Is the UK suffering from Stockholm syndrome syndrome?

Utterly bizarre.

Giving millions to their mates in dodgy deals and nobody really cares. Depressing.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Yes we do, they are ignorant, racist thickos.
As has been proved again.
Have you been to Hartlepool?
Jesus, its full of them, that is why 70% of them voted to leave without having absolutely no idea of what it was about.

So how are you proposing that labour starts to appeal again to these people who were previously signed up members of the party?

Without the people you so delightfully portray and stereotype, Labour would have never won any elections. I would hope that someone in the party has some kind of plan to reconnect. Otherwise we are destined for a one party system for the foreseeable, which is, in my opinion, undesirable and damaging to our democracy.

 

[Chicken Run]

Not a big story?

15,464 people in Hartlepool voted for Labour in 2019. Just 8,589 voted for them yesterday. Regardless of the Brexit Party -> Tory switch, Labour have lost a significant number of votes they previously had, and they threw a lot at the constituency in recent weeks to do all they could to get the Labour vote out.

It's why shadow cabinet members on the radio this morning, and impartial observers such as Sir John Curtice are very much treating it like a big story this morning.

15,529 Voted Conservative
14,136 Voted for someone else

I think those who could be bothered to vote have truly spoken about what they think


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[zefarelly]

Mmmm....Abbott was wheeled out for comedy value. She did the interview while doing her morning walk and could be barely heard among the traffic and the sound of wind. Nicky Campbell was extremely sweet, inviting her to machine-gun herself in the face, and she duly obliged.

I don't think her and her ilk have any sway in labour right now.

I would be surprised if labour mounts a coup against Starmer. Now is not the time - no labour leader has a hope all the while the nation is Winning (defeating Covid and Winning with Brexit.....). If England win a major football competition soon, it will be blue sunsets for the forseeable....

I think Abbott is a good local MP and nothing more, she wouldn't have had the job 34 years otherwise. like many tory boys around Sussex, tow the line, keep the Daily MAil readers happy and enjoy the extremely cushy ride.

There's zero chance of England winning any kick ball things so we can rest easy on that.

 

[Deleted member 37369]

On the basis that Lewes elected Norman Baker four times in a row by large margins, I'd guess the major issue was that she just wasn't very good, rather than her being Scottish. Unless there's some specific anti-scotch vibe in that part of the county that I'm not aware of.

For that matter, I'm pretty sure a candidate's actual views and opinions are barely relevant. Given most people won't be paying attention, the skill is in cutting through and getting people to notice you (and as you suggest, actually get off their arse and vote).

If people are paying enough attention to even notice you're a boggle-eyed Sussex nationalist fish fetishist, you've already won half the battle just getting them that far.

She was a Corbyn disciple (still is) … and really not very good! I went to a husting and she was awful. I believe that Sophie Cook had put her name forward for the 2019 election - but her face didn’t fit with the Corbyn supporting local activists. Lavinia O’Connor also recently resigned as an Adur councillor having ‘fell out’ with other Labour councillors! So yes … nothing to do with her being Scottish!

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

That's the staggering thing - in Hartlepool more than 1 in 4 children live in poverty, almost 1 in 3 live in households earning less than 60% of national median income, and these figures get worse every year. There's no improvement, it's continual decline. How have people become convinced that there's nothing better than more of the same for their communities, and that the those who have consistently ignored the problems and actively created policies to make them worse will somehow now fix it?

It’s not all doom and gloom. I just googled and found this;

https://www.hartlepool.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/3040/hlp04_10_ers_document_2011_-_2021pdf.pdf

I don’t really know the town although I used to live nearby about 40 years ago and I’ve seen the Albion play there a few times. It’s clearly not true that there’s no improvement.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Hartlepool was already theirs in 2019 due to the Brexit party it not really a big story.

If Sturgeon get a majority tomorrow, then the foundations of Johnson's true legacy will be set

First part of your post is classic ostrich burying head in sand stuff.

The second has merit except maybe one should blame Tony Blair for creating the Scottish Parliament and giving Sturgeon more credibility. After all, it is David Cameron's fault that we have Brexit, isn't it?

 

[Audax]

It's quite likely this will happen . . . . which starts making Australia look like a viable option.

If you're looking to get away from right-wing dominated politics, maybe wait a while. Australia's not quite as extreme as here (thanks to be a better electoral system), but they've still got a right wing national government headed by a PM who's in a similar position to the one Theresa May was in: the right-most wing of his party has a strong hand at the moment. Meanwhile, on the left there's division between Labor and Greens (and others) that splits the vote. Although Australia's preferential voting system usually stitches that split vote back together and prevents Labor losing to Liberal, it does sometimes go the other way and pushes Green candidates to the top at the expense of Labor.

 

[Harmyar]

The current labour leadership will struggle to wipe the image created by the previous leadership and its noisy activists. It saddens me to see that 'no compromise with the electorate' is still alive and well in the minds of those sneering at the likes of the people of Hartlepool. And I say that as someone who spent most of the Thatcher era sneering at tories.

Boris, having saved us all from Covid by inventing not one but two world beating vaccines, is teflon presently. Events.....

Like it or not the elephant in the room is that Labour is seen as the party for minorities, be it race/sexuality/religion or whatever,that is how they're seen
You Can't keep calling everyone racist/thick/gammon or people living hand to mouth privileged and tell should shut up and 'Educate themselves' by a rich black person on telly,as long as this carries on they will not win the white working class vote in previous strongholds.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Local elections tomorrow are you bothered ?

Sir John Curtice suggested this was far more than a Brexit / Brexit Party thing. I was walking the dog and picking his shit up at the time I heard this, so can't recall the specific numbers he quoted to back this assertion up.

Regardless, he knows a lot more about election results than I do, so I'm happy to accept he probably knows what he's talking about.

As above, he said it was the effect of this woman on the Political anti-establishment ticket. 10% is huge for an independent, seems she really struck a chord.

https://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/ne...ns-to-stand-for-mp-in-by-election-3172824?amp