UK Politics: Striking at the heart of the nation

[mormont]

The answer to Spocky's question, unfortunately, is that Starmer failing to win Uxbridge probably means he will feel he has to keep hewing to the right.

[Derfel Cadarn]

If Lib-Dems don’t stand a candidate in next year’s election for the Uxbridge seat, it might be different.

What no one seems to be asking is, how would it have been had Johnson not quit, and a by-election been called due to his suspension. 

[Gaston de Foix]

21 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The Selby and Ainsty result is great for Labour.

The Uxbridge result really is not.  But, if you look back at last year's local election results, the Conservatives led by 17% in the seat, exactly the same as in the 2019 GE.  That suggest a very sticky Conservative vote, added to the fuss over ULEZ, and also, a fair-sized Indian population in the seat.  That's an ethnic group that has moved quite heavily in the Conservatives' direction, over the past few years (witness results in Harrow or Leicester).

I put £50 on the Conservatives in Uxbridge, at 9-1, which were stupid odds.

Yeah I think it's safe to say that Rishi Sunak is a potent vote-getter for the Tories amongst the British-Indian community. 

Barack Obama he ain't but we shouldn't underestimate the pride that people feel to see one of their own as PM, especially someone who openly celebrates his Hinduism and doesn't mask his identity.  

[Gaston de Foix]

3 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

If Lib-Dems don’t stand a candidate in next year’s election for the Uxbridge seat, it might be different.

What no one seems to be asking is, how would it have been had Johnson not quit, and a by-election been called due to his suspension. 

or the Greens for that matter.  I mean it really was that close.  But what makes you think it would have been different if BoJo hadn't quit?

[Pebble thats Stubby]

15 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

or the Greens for that matter.  I mean it really was that close.  But what makes you think it would have been different if BoJo hadn't quit?

because a lot of that vote was a protest vote against Ulez and Sadiq Khan, many of those also really don't like Boris after all the parties so might have valued getting rid of Boris more than the Ulez protest vote.   Yes there are a hard core Boris fans,  they probably voted conservative this time as well.

 

although part of me would like a general election ASAP, I feel it would be better if its on or after the London Mayor elections next May.  

Edited July 21 by Pebble thats Stubby

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

At the risk of being seen to ignore the fact that it's Nigel who has nasty and odius political views (IMO) who suffered this slight, what an incredible own goal by the bank. It appears the bank had legitimate objective account holder policies that would allow it to uncontroversial close the account and offer a plebs account in its stead. But someone(s) at the bank just had to have a dig at his political views / persona, and write it down no less.

The main policy of the bank that needs to be changed is the "front page of the Daily Mail" policy. Which is to say never commit to writing or recording anything that you don't want to see on the front page of the Daily Mail, regardless of how confidential you think the document / recording is. Organisational policy 101.

It's the very idea that Nat West has "values" that I find laughable.  This is the Bank that got fined £265m for money-laundering, in 2021.  A Bradford Jeweller, which supposedly had a turnover of £15m, deposited £264m in cash with them, over the course of five years.  And nobody questioned this.

[Gaston de Foix]

2 hours ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

because a lot of that vote was a protest vote against Ulez and Sadiq Khan, many of those also really don't like Boris after all the parties so might have valued getting rid of Boris more than the Ulez protest vote.   Yes there are a hard core Boris fans,  they probably voted conservative this time as well.

although part of me would like a general election ASAP, I feel it would be better if its on or after the London Mayor elections next May.  

Fair enough, but Derfel's counterfactual was a little more specific which is what I found intriguing:

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

What no one seems to be asking is, how would it have been had Johnson not quit, and a by-election been called due to his suspension. 

 What difference would those few weeks have made?  Or is the idea that Boris as a candidate would have swung the vote one way or the other?

Edited July 21 by Gaston de Foix
clarity

[Heartofice]

15 minutes ago, SeanF said:

It's the very idea that Nat West has "values" that I find laughable.  This is the Bank that got fined £265m for money-laundering, in 2021.  A Bradford Jeweller, which supposedly had a turnover of £15m, deposited £264m in cash with them, over the course of five years.  And nobody questioned this.

Sure, but did that jeweller like a Ricky Gervais tweet?  That’s the sort of thing that really gets you blacklisted

Edited July 21 by Heartofice

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Fair enough, but Derfel's counterfactual was a little more specific which is what I found intriguing:

 What difference would those few weeks have made?  Or is the idea that Boris as a candidate would have swung the vote one way or the other?

I wonder if his scandals woukd have dampened Tory support, or if ee’d hsve seen more tactical voting, with Lib-dem/Green supporters more interested in kicking Johnson out than in voting for their preferred party

[mormont]

I just can't construct a credible scenario where Johnson resigning instead of being suspended makes a difference. Did any voter, in Johnson's own constituency, who actually cared, not understand that his 'resignation' was a case of jumping before he was inevitably pushed?

[Gaston de Foix]

44 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I wonder if his scandals woukd have dampened Tory support, or if ee’d hsve seen more tactical voting, with Lib-dem/Green supporters more interested in kicking Johnson out than in voting for their preferred party

Yeah it's entirely possible.  It's also possible that a certain amount of personal loyalty for BoJo would have led to greater Tory turnout.  He's a skilled campaigner. 

But I think his decision to throw in the towel tells us that he expected to lose (both in Parliament and in his constituency) which is revealing. 

[Gaston de Foix]

4 minutes ago, mormont said:

I just can't construct a credible scenario where Johnson resigning instead of being suspended makes a difference. Did any voter, in Johnson's own constituency, who actually cared, not understand that his 'resignation' was a case of jumping before he was inevitably pushed?

I think Derfel is on to something though when he says Lib Dems/Green voters might have been more motivated to kick out Boris if his name had been on the ballot.  It's not logical, for the reasons you give, but political outcomes rarely are.  

[mormont]

13 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I think Derfel is on to something though when he says Lib Dems/Green voters might have been more motivated to kick out Boris if his name had been on the ballot.  It's not logical, for the reasons you give, but political outcomes rarely are.  

The Lib Dem vote already dropped from the heady heights of 6.3% to 1.7%. 526 votes. Not much room for growth there. Even the Greens had only 2.9%, 893 votes. You'd need 35% of those hardcore voters to defect. I'm not buying that, I'm afraid.

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

 I'm not buying that, I'm afraid.

Did you factor in the low turnout?

43% compared to about 68% in 2019.

If Bozo hadn't run away, one suspects that many of those who didn't bother turning out would have done so, in order to give Bozo the two fingers.

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

I strongly suspect Johnson would have lost, albeit maybe by a narrow margin, had he stuck around and a by-electionwas triggered by his suspension.

He won the last vote 3.5 years ago, while PM, promising a great Brexit, and this was before Covid.

Had he atood yesterday, it would have been as a PM who resigned after one disgrace too many, Brexit’s a fuck-up, and he broke his own Covid rules, being fines by the police.

More germanely, what’s he done for his constituency recently? BFC’s spent more time there cycling through! Johnson has been largely absent, sulking off on several holidays and making some money in America.

[Werthead]

This was also a by-election for a seat that will likely be re-contested in 10 months time anyway. It might be people voted one way today knowing they'd vote another way in under a year. Of course, the other two seats might be the same in the other direction (Tories furious with the current state of things voting LibDem, or not voting at all, or maybe even voting Labour, but will vote Tory in the general), since 2 or 3 seats changing hands now has zero impact on Parliament overall.

It's difficult to say, of course, without a much more in-depth survey of why people voted the way they did.

[Zorral]

The Weird Silence About Brexit’s Disastrousness

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/opinion/brexit-disaster.html

Quote

 

.... All this pain and hassle has created an anti-Brexit majority in Britain. According to a YouGov poll released this week, 57 percent of Britons say the country was wrong to vote to leave the E.U., and a slight majority wants to rejoin it. Even Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right U.K. Independence Party sometimes known as “Mr. Brexit,” told the BBC in May, “Brexit has failed.”

This mess was, of course, both predictable and predicted. That’s why I’ve been struck, visiting the U.K. this summer, by the curious political taboo against discussing how badly Brexit has gone, even among many who voted against it. Seven years ago, Brexit was an early augur of the revolt against cosmopolitanism that swept Donald Trump into power. (Trump even borrowed the “Mr. Brexit” moniker for himself.) Both enterprises — Britain’s divorce from the E.U. and Trump’s reign in the U.S. — turned out catastrophically. Both left their countries fatigued and depleted. But while America can’t stop talking about Trump, many in the U.K. can scarcely stand to think about Brexit.

“It’s so toxic,” Tobias Ellwood, a Tory lawmaker who has called on his colleagues to admit that Brexit was a mistake, told me. “People have invested so much time and pain and agony on this.” It’s like a “wound,” he said, that people want to avoid picking at. The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, one of the few Labour Party leaders eager to discuss the consequences of leaving the E.U., described an “omertà,” or vow of silence, around it. “It’s the elephant in the room,” he told me. “I’m frustrated that no one’s talking about it.”

Part of the reason that no one — or almost no one — is talking about Brexit’s consequences lies with the demographics of the Labour Party. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of Labour voters supported Brexit, and those voters are concentrated in the so-called Red Wall — working-class areas in the Midlands and Northern England that once solidly supported Labour but swung right in the 2019 election. “Those voters do not want to have a conversation about Brexit,” said Joshua Simons, the director of Labour Together, a think tank close to Labour leadership. ....

 

 

[Spockydog]

The main problem with Khan's expansion of the ULEZ is the lead-in time. When first introduced, drivers were given three years to get their vehicles up to ULEZ compliance standard. This time, people living or working in affected areas were given just nine months notice of the expansion. Nine months to find the money for a new car, or a new van, during a cost of living crisis. 

No wonder it cost Labour a bunch of votes.

 

Edited July 22 by Spockydog

[The Anti-Targ]

I've seen commentary that ULEZ was Tory policy, and the expansion was also a Tory policy. How did that get turned into a bludgeon against the Labour candidate? Or was the commentary I saw wrong?

[Heartofice]

52 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I've seen commentary that ULEZ was Tory policy, and the expansion was also a Tory policy. How did that get turned into a bludgeon against the Labour candidate? Or was the commentary I saw wrong?

It was introduced by Boris Johnson when mayor but the expansion is a Sadiq Khan thing