Despite being bigged up by the media at large, Starmer is not guaranteed that landslide.
Latest figures from the local elections have revealed that while Labour is on course to be the largest party, it is set to fall short of gaining an overall majority at the next general election.
This is pretty much what I expect to happen. The Tory vote is being eaten into by Reform. Now that Galloway is planning to split the Labour vote and the shy Tories decide to vote to keep Labour out, which they will be more motivated to do at a general election, the big landslide is looking less certain. Frankly, this would be a decent outcome. No overall majority, followed by horse trading to form a government that, with luck will be unstable, gives us a breather.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom for the Conservative party – as incumbent Tory Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen was re-elected despite Labour “throwing the kitchen sink” at the campaign. Meanwhile, rumours are swirling that Tory London Mayor candidate Susan Hall has done better than expected against Sadiq Khan – with results expected tomorrow morning.
I hope she does. Anything to get rid of that vile Islamist piece of shit.
As I saw on Twitter, who’s doing the counting for the London Mayoral election to make it take this long, Diane Abbott?
Those ROPers just can think tactically.
The third largest party in Parliament is the SNP; far larger than all the smaller parties combined. So a Labour administration would be an alliance with the SNP, not something to look forward to.
There’s a problem with that – SNP voting on English matters. As I understand it, the agreement was always that they would abstain on such matters, because they have no business voting on things that affect constituents who cannot vote for them.
I’ve been saying for months that it feels a lot like 1992. Not on the Tory side – there was some cautious optimism back then, before the shine came off Major – but in the sense of totally unwarranted hubris surrounding Labour. People might lend them their vote tactically, but there’s no way anyone’s actively enthusiastic about that shower of faceless grey drones. Plus, the minority they’ve been assiduously courting for decades can’t stand them right now. It’s going to be an ugly brawl, not the swift knockout the media have been trailing.
Speaking of the early ’90s, remember Canada. Farage does. The Brexit Party’s new name wasn’t chosen at random. I don’t imagine Reform will pick up many seats, if any – in truth, we’re not quite in that 1993 scenario where the main conservative force is simply and cleanly replaced overnight yet – but the tipping-point is close. Maybe the Tories will get enough of a kicking to knock some sense into them and pull them back from the brink, but I can’t see it. Would anyone believe they’d really changed their tune at this stage?
I think Galloway standing for seats across the country will dent their vote with the RoPers.
According to one report, labour got less of a percentage than they had at the election with Ed Milliband and also Jeremy Corbin. Now a lot of people don’t bother with local elections but if you are fed up with the ruling party it’s a time to tell them. So does that just mean apathy or will the general election look a lot different than Starmer thinks. Like you said interesting times.
“Now a lot of people don’t bother with local elections…”
At the last round of locals in my area I didn’t vote but it was a conscious decision. Rightly or wrongly a certain amount is read into the results regarding the national parties. So, even though our Conservative local government seem to do a pretty decent job, I didn’t want to be seen as supporting the Tory party as a whole because they hate me and I hate them.
As for the coming general election, any vote for any of the mainstream parties is a vote for the status quo, with different degrees of disastrous policies. Voting Conservative to keep Labour out used to make some sort of sense but not any more. The choice is just between two different levels of Britain hating insanity.