British Politics Thread

Errr,I think you're in the wrong topic!

Yea, move it over here (as I just remembered that thread exists)

So, when would the results of the London Mayoral election come out?

Confirmed now - Khan gets a third term for Labour. The Conservative candidate was not exactly graceful in defeat.

(And Count Binface beat the far-right party Britain First, which is always good to see)

The Conservative incumbent, Andy Street, also lost the West Midlands mayoral race (covering Birmingham, Coventry etc.) to Labour's Richard Parker. That one felt unexpected.

It feels like Rishi Sunak's Very Bad Week is about to start.

> Richard Parker

[insert life of Pi jokes]

The only victory the Tories have is that the Teeside mayorality was held by a guy who avoided mentioning them or Sunak at all costs.

Hell, the by-election nearly had them in third behind their own Brexit-obsessed offshoot (I presume the Reform party hasn't improved since that name change, although I concede they have the nicest colour of any party)

And we already have certain types creating conspiracy theories about the elections being fixed.

They seem to be particularly salty about Sadiq Kahn keeping his position.

Edited by PhoenixAct on May 4th 2024 at 9:45:07 AM

Yeah, especially since Friday had outlets report that the London Mayoral election may be a very tight race in favor of Hall, which didn't turn out to be that way.

The Tories look to have actually won fewer seats on Thursday then the Lib Dem’s. Result (from the BBC) as they stand with oen council still not fully reported are:

• Labour: 50 councils (+8), 1,140 councillors (+185)
• Lib Dem: 12 councils (+2), 521 councillors (+104)
• Conservatives: 6 councils (-10), 513 councillors (-473)
• Independents/Other: 1 council (+1), 228 councillors (+93)
• Green Party: 0 councils (=), 181 councillors (+74)
• Residents Associations: 0 councils (=), 48 councillors (+11)
• Workers Party of Britain/Galloway’s lot: 0 councils (=), 4 councillors (+4)
• Reform/Brexit/Farage’s lot: 0 councils, 2 councillors (+2).
• No Overall Control: 37 councils (+1). Note that these will end up run either by minority cabinets, by coalitions or by committees.

Mayoral results (all reporting) are:

• Labour: 10 (+4 including 3 new ones)
• Conservatives 1 (-1)

Note that mayors aren’t purely urban, the (now Labour) one for York and North Yorkshire covers such rural areas as the constituency of Rishii Sunak.

PCC results (35 of 37 reporting)

• Labour: 17 (+10)
• Conservatives: 17 (-10)
• Plaid Cymru: 1 (=)

As not all council seats were up the Tories do still have the 2nd highest number of council seats total, but they won’t for long if they keep performing like this.

It’s almost like the British press have an agenda of some sort…

Edited by Silasw on May 4th 2024 at 12:01:10 PM

Labour also have a vested interest in presenting London as a tight race - they know Starmer's demotivated some of their usual supporters, and didn't want to risk them taking Khan's victory for granted and staying away.

Question, if they know that Starmer demotivates people, why is he in charge of the Labour party exactly?

Because he won the leadership election.

Now, why is he still popular with the membership generally despite demotivating a solid chunk of the left of the party? There will be a number of factors (some people who joined during Corbyn left the party, some who left during Corbyn have returned, Tories are just that terrible, etc…) but I personally suspect a big factor is the most simple one.

Line (on polling graph) go up.

A lot of the Labour membership are sick and tired of us having spent 10 years loosing. Right now we’re winning by-elections and polling very well, nobody previous to Starmer or who opposed him has shown the capability to manage that. Beergate was the kind of thing that would have destroyed a less competent leader (see Corbyn and everything plus Ed and both his brother and the bacon sandwich) but Starmer managed to turn it to his advantage.

We can have an internal civil war later, first we have to drive the Tories out of power.

Edited by Silasw on May 4th 2024 at 12:34:53 PM

cos he's probably the best chance they have of a Labour prime minster

Starmer is disappointing for voters and party members on the left, but reassuringly unthreatening for the centrists. He's seen as a competent, safe pair of hands.

Which, right now, the Tories aren't.

But because he's so focused on that he was slow to respond on Gaza and he's seemingly unwilling to defend against some parts of the Tory culture war (e.g. on trans rights). Which has upset and angered a lot of traditional Labour voters.

There’s also the fact that the hard-Left of the Labour Party are in full clown-car mode right now. Between Ukraine and Israel-Gaza we’ve seen a lot of left-wing racism. The Tankies are on one side saying Ukrainians don’t have free-will and you’ve got Dianne “[Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers] are not … subject to racism.” Abbot on the other.

Id say that the soft-left of Labour (who are often no less radical in desires, just more capable of compromise) are okay with Starmer, even if we’d rather someone like Burnham.

Edited to make the quote fully accurate.

Edited by Silasw on May 4th 2024 at 1:44:03 PM

Also, similar to similar discussions in the US politics thread, it's not uncommon that politicians that motivate your supporters also motivate your opponents (if they are perceived as being too extreme etc.). At the end, you only need to motivate voters to head to the ballot box and check off the box next to your party/candidate.

So I would ask if Starmer does or doesn't motivate his opponents, not just his supporters.

I know many, many people are not happy with Starmer but quite a few are holding their nose and voting for Labour candidates despite him, either out of a hope of improving the overall state of the party or just tactical voting to get the Conservatives out. That said, I do know some people who now refuse to vote labour, with trans rights and the Israel-Palestine situation probably being the strongest issues. For the recent mayoral election the green party candidate got a surprising amount of support (he was still nowhere near winning, but nonetheless), and I think a good deal of is that later group.

I'd strongly disagree with that statement, but I don't want to turn this into an argument.

Life of Brian's is ever more true to life.

The problem we have is that the hard-left of the party don’t have anyone who seems capable of winning an election, Long-Bailey got kicked out of the Shadow Cabinet because she couldn’t avoid going on social media and blaming Israel for US police brutality, Corbyn is a massive electoral liability, Burgon is part of the Stop The War and Abbott is an outright racist. Mc Donnell seems to be the only member of the SCG with any sense, in that he keeps a low profile and seems to see the Labour Party as something more than a vehicle for cold-war era foreign policy positions.

Maybe the soft-left could put someone up, that’s where Starmer actually positioned himself in the 2020 leadership election. But right now it’d be dangerous to rock the boat and try and get Starmer out, I’d much rather we try something either after the election or even try and get Burnham back into Parliment come 2028/2029 then manoeuvre him in as a more left-wing leader.

The Israel-Palestine single-issue voters are a very small group, especially as Labour actually got a call for a ceasefire through Parliment and they seem to have memory holed that fact.

Trans people not being able to support Starmer I totally get, Rowling and such have made it very clear they don’t believe trans people have a place in the Labour Party and Starmer is unwilling to push back on that. The Green Party should be a welcoming home for them, but with the influence of socially conservative Muslim voters into the Green Party I’m not sure how long that will last.

We can disagree without having a fight. I certainly have no intention of taking personal offence if you disagree with me.

Edit:

So I’m having a look at the SCG leadership and Sultana seems to have had a good enough head on her shoulders to step away from more extreme positions and recognise that you have to call the press and ‘sources’ out on falsehoods. Given some time and expierance she could maybe act as a capable leader for the hard-left of the party.

Edited by Silasw on May 5th 2024 at 2:21:01 PM

To be clear, this is what Abbott actually wrote about the experience of the Irish, Jews and Travellers:

I would, however, be very cautious about labelling her a racist.

Edited by Mrph1 on May 5th 2024 at 2:26:27 PM

She wasn’t just glossing over antisemitism, she was ignoring the entire history of English colonisation and exploitation of Irish people (and let’s not get into racism against Travellers, which is still widely accepted across the country). Shops in the U.K. very much did used to turn away Irish people the same way they did black people.

It’s telling that when Abbott talks about racism she uses examples from the US and from Apartheid South Africa, rather than from the U.K. itself.

It should also be noted that the redhead stuff is actually part of this discussion, because anti-redhead discrimination in the U.K. comes from racism against Irish people, much the same way the US has a history of discrimination against people with hair style associated with African-Americans.

I believe she’s also made comments about Swedish people that are either racist or very close to.

That’s it. My bad on getting the country mixed up.

Edited by Silasw on May 5th 2024 at 3:04:34 PM

I think you mean this. EDIT:Finns not Swedes, but it close. Quote from wikipedia.

Edited by Risa123 on May 5th 2024 at 3:56:20 PM

""Bringing someone here from Finland who has never seen a black person before and expecting them to have some empathy with black people is nonsense. Scandinavian people don't know black people—they probably don't know how to take their temperature.""

Even ignoring the fact that there very much are black people in the Nordic Countries (Finland isn't in Scandinavia), the idea that you can't possibly feel empathy for races you haven't met is simply untrue. Yes familiarity can breed understanding and sympathy (though the opposite is also true), but the idea that it is physically impossible/incredibly unlikely for people to feel sympathy for another human being, even if they are from a race they've never met before, is absurd. I've never met a Jewish person (who I knew to be Jewish), or a South American person, but I'd hope I'd be able to feel empathy for someone from either of those groups regardless.

I am not from a race who is a minority in the UK, so haven't experienced the racism that this person might have gone through, but suggesting that it is "nonsense" for anyone from countries with less diversity to be able to have empathy for their fellow human being, no matter how physically different, is something I don't agree with.

Banning people of certain nationalities based off the assumption that they'll be racist, is a terrible idea and racist in and of itself. I mean, I imagine there are many people in certain African nations who haven't seen many white people, and yet I certainly wouldn't say it is "nonsense" that they would be capable of having empathy for white people.

Edit: I should also clarify, I'm not trying to say that there aren't more problems with racism in countries with a lower population of minorities, the simple answer is I don't know, but this sort of blanket statement is something I do know to be patently untrue.

Edited by king15 on May 5th 2024 at 2:37:33 PM

I'm not sure I'd categorise Starmer's stance on trans people as "unwilling to push back", considering he's outright calling for trans women to be misgendered and placed with men now.