Friday 3 May 2019
Local elections - Westminster gets a Slapping
Early Doors post - will update as the day goes on
Conservative and Labour parties have lied their arses off over Brexit, betrayed the nation and yesterday both received a decent slapping from the electorate - nothing earth-shattering, that's yet to come, but a clear enough message.
UKIP have taken an unexpected drubbing, support tainted I think by Batten's infatuation with Yaxley-Lemon. Surprising winners of the night have been the Independent candidates - winning almost as many seats as the LibDems. I suspect if there had been more sensible local independent candidates standing, they would have taken many more seats.
The rise of the Independents in the locals may be a one-off or may presage the start of something magnificent, a grass-roots push for Localism, untainted by the mendacious corrupt foulness of national politics.
And those of you who pushed so strongly for spoiling ballot papers look to have been vindicated. Not, as thought, because the returning officers have to declare the numbers of spoiled papers (which loses some meaning at ward level) but because conscientious, dedicated local council workers have to scrutinise each one individually - a process that takes a great deal of time. As an act of civil disobedience, it works - I've seen a very cross Labour apparatchik on the box frustrated at the delay to his result from the sheer number of spoiled papers that had to be checked, re-checked and confirmed.
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15 comments:
Why was Ukip's result "unexpected"?
Polls have been predicting a collapse in their vote consistently.
Edward - because TBP weren't standing in the locals, I expected Brexit votes to go to UKIP. It doesn't look like a collapse - but if we're expecting Labour and Conservatives to take a more than 10% hit to existing seats, UKIP may be in the same territory
And there you have it. May's fixation with her 'Brexit In Name Only' has bred with Labour's 'yes but, no but' approach to get a drubbing at the hands of the electorate even at a local level.
I suspect the Conservative/Labour talks aimed at getting the WA through (or bringing the next GE closer, you decide) have spread the contagion of uselessness that hovers like a cloud around May (and her handlers). Typhoid May perhaps? She doesn't appear to suffer, but everyone else does.
As a long time UKIP supporter who left when Batten began to noticeably destroy it by turning it national socialist, I was recommending people vote for a good independent. Being in London I didn't get a vote yesterday.
We won't get true localism until we have citizen triggered binding local direct democracy.
No, not Westminster, its the Tory party getting a slapping, you are all in it. You like to claim the high ground with all your railing about globalism and the like but when the complaint is laid at your door there's no point it trying to say 'nothing to do with me guv'. 434 seats lost as I type and the deputy party leader Whately MP saying that the complaint on the doorsteps that 'we haven't left yet' as promised is the fault of other parties not supporting Treason May's surrender treaty.
You don't get it do you?
And what's all this whining about spoiled ballots? We are entitled to do it.
The BBC's reporting is absolutely appalling.
The headline suggests Con and Lab equally hit. It's about 10:1. They report a "backlash". They don't say against what, of course.
Then the pro-EU Independent Group results are shown on the bar graphs in...purple.
Well, it will have the intended effect on those who only read the headlines and look at the pictures.
The hands-down winners are in fact the pro-EU parties, TIG, LD, and Greens.
There were two Independent candidates in my Ward. Both of them used to be Conservative councillors. I voted against the Conservative candidates (one of whom I know, like and respect) because their party has sustained in power she whom I will not name. I voted for the ex-Conservatives because the only alternatives were LibDem and Labour.
Cull - wipe the spittle off your chin, dear, and grow up a little.
Then try reading the para about spoiled ballots again.
Edward - suspect it's about relative falls
Conservatives - defended 5,521 seats
Labour - defended 2,278 seats
Lib Dems - defended 658 seats
UKIP - defended 176 seats
DUP - defended 130 seats
Sinn Fein - defended 105 seats
Cull, I joined the tory party not because I agree with what Treason May is doing and the direction they are taking, but because they are the only party with a hope of governing and I and many like minded people intend to adjust the direction of travel.
The alternative is to type out angrily with your fists that "you don't get it" without actually doing anything useful to rectify the situation.
I am glad they are getting a good kicking and I hope they do in the Euros as well because it all raises the probabilities of re-aligning the parliamentary party with the grass roots who are basically sound, and very very pissed off, and rightly so.
Readwald and Jack the dog.
It is clear that change can only come to the Tory party by force from the outside from critics - critics are doing something useful - those who within who are calling for change are only doing so because of the force being thus exerted. The party is on the defensive and getting bitchy.
May is using and abusing all members, she has no respect for you. She is a tyrant, she has no honour, no decency and sees her opponents in the party as weak and ineffectual, which is of course what you are. Why would anyone wish to join a party lead in such a way. Members are leaving, subs are drying up.
No, the party must be destroyed as far as it is possible to do so. Only when the shoe pinches tight enough will change come about.
Cull, the change that you seem to want is to change the UK Conservative and Unionist Party into the Radical English Nationalist Party.
Ain't gonna happen, Sunbeam.
You'll have to form your own. It's decision time for quite a few Tory MPs. The party is rent from stern to bow.
The fact that Labour has also lost seats in these local elections, and that the Lib Dems have only made relatively few gains from their previous wipe out, should have demonstrated to the Conservative Party upper echelons that their main competition will be coming in the future from the Brexit Party.
This is similar to the position the Conservatives found themselves after the 2014 MEP elections (where they came third) and I can only hope that as a result they will realise that to survive they have no option but to implement a true Brexit or risk being replaced by a pro Brexit party, just as has happened to Labour in Scotland who have been replaced by the SNP.
JB - I think it goes far deeper than just implementing Brexit. The party needs funmademental reform to change it from a Big State Globalist muppet party to a British Conservative Party - that means a revised constitution, more powers for Constituency Associations, a cull of the more LibDem / CUK MPs.
All that starts with getting rid of May. But a new Leader is only the start.
Raedwald,
You’re absolutely right.
And a new Conservative leader would also have to tackle the swamps that are the HoL, the BBC, the Civil Service and the many quangos.
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