Labour Wins in the Council Elections

I’ve had a look at the election results according to the I newspaper today, Saturday, 7th May 2018. The I’s attitude is that all the parties are claiming the results are good for the, with the exception of UKIP, who seem to have been decimated. The headline on the front page is ‘Everyone’s A Winner…apart from UKIP, who lose more than 100 seats’. And no bad thing either, in my opinion. Their attitude is that Labour did well, but didn’t make the spectacular gains that were expected. The lib Dems have also increased their share of the vote, and look like they may hold the balance in determining which party gets into power, just as they did at the 2010 election.

The article ‘All Three Main Parties See the Bright Side Despite Setbacks’ by Nigel Morris on page 6 states

A BBC projection of the English local election results put Labour and the Tories each on 35 per cent support, with the Liberal Democrats on 16 per cent. Repeated at a general election, the United Kingdom would be heading for another hung parliament, suggesting that public sentiment has barely shifted since Jeremy Corbyn wiped out Theresa May’s Commons majority last year.

It would also suggest the Liberal Democrats could decide which party leader was handed the keys to Downing Street, as they did in 2010.

After declarations from all but one of the 150 authorities holding elections, Labour had gained 59 seats but lost control of one council overall. The Tories recorded a net loss of 31 seats and two councils, while the Liberal Democrats gained 75 councilors and four councils. however, the night ended in disaster for the UK Independence Party which was virtually wiped off the electoral map with the loss of 123 seats.

The article then quotes a polling expert, John Curtice, who said that the Tories had gained a small swing from Labour since the seats were fought four years ago, but that it was impossible to say in this situation that one party was ahead of the other and that it was a draw.

The article also states that Labour failed to gain some target constituencies in London, such as Barnet, Wandsworth, Westminster, and Hillingdon, but still retained its dominant position in the capital. It gained Plymouth, and became the largest party in Trafford in Greater Manchester. However, it performed ‘weakly’ in Dudley, Derby and Redditch, which the I declared suggested that it did badly in pro-Brexit areas.

The I also noted that as well as gaining Plymouth and Trafford, Labour also took Kirklees in West Yorkshire, but also lost Nuneaton and Bedworth. The Tories increased their majority in Barnet, which has been blamed on the anti-Semitism allegations against Labour. (p. 7).

On page 8 there’s the election results. Labour has 73 councils, the Tories 46, Lib Dems 9, and there are 21 with no overall control.

Labour also has 2,299 councillors, the Tories 1,330, the Lib Dems 536. There are 96 independents, 39 Green, UKIP 3, and one councillor described as ‘other’.

Labour and the Tories are neck and neck at 35 per cent in the projected share of the national vote, Lib Dems at 16 per cent, and 14 per cent ‘other’.

While this isn’t the spectacular landslide people were predicting and hoping for, it’s still a good, solid election result, especially considering the massive vilification of Corbyn and the attempts to undermine his leadership and programme through the anti-Semitism smears.

There is, of course, much room for improvement, especially if the Lib Dems are expected to decide who gets into parliament through a coalition. Cable has said he won’t go into coalition with Labour. I’m not surprised. For all he cited the supposed anti-Semitism in the Labour ranks as his reason, the reality is that the Lib Dems are now a Thatcherite party little different from the Tories. They were all too keen to go into coalition with the Tories in 2010, and, despite their claims, did absolutely nothing to hold the Tories back from their extremist policies. In fact they were more extreme when it came to the tuition fee increases.

We need to smash both Tories and Lib Dems to get a Labour government we deserve and Corbyn in No. 10.

A Puppet of Theresa May to Fill in While the Real One Runs and Hides

Thanks to everyone who liked the cardboard puppets I made of Ian Duncan Smith and David Cameron to satirise them. It’s great to be appreciated. As I said in an earlier post on Saturday, I was going to have to make a similar cardboard puppet of Theresa May, as the real one seemed to be doing her best to run and hide from the media and the general public. She announced that she wasn’t going to appear on the leader debates. The Beeb decided instead that they’d simply keep an open seat for her. She also made it clear that she would not be talking to the press, or the public except in very carefully stage managed conditions.

Just how far and how fast she runs away from the public is shown in a piece Mike has put up this morning over at Vox Political. Graham Mills, a senior citizen in Dudley, said he was very disappointed with her when he met her campaigning in his street. He’d been cutting his lawn, but she wanted to cut across it to talk to him. He didn’t allow her, because he’d only just cut it. Talking to her, he found her nervous and evasive. She did not give him a clear answer why she was avoiding debating with the other party leaders. She also didn’t answer him properly when he asked her why she was still repeating the lie that Labour would go into coalition with the SNP, when this had been shown to be false. Again, no proper answer. When she did answer, it was simply to give stock Tory answers.

Just how pathetic she is at campaigning publicly is shown in a list produced by Scott Nelson on Twitter. Corbyn has spoken publicly in eleven cities, including my own fair town of Bristol. May has only spoken in four, and these were all private premises. There were two factories, a golf club and a private club.

Needless to say, Laura Kuenssberg, the extremely biased reporter for the Beeb, has been trying to give this some positive spin. She said that May was being content to let Labour stew in its own juice.

See Mike’s article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/04/25/theresa-may-is-warned-get-off-my-lawn-while-labour-fires-up-the-grassroots/

Mike’s also posted up some very funny memes of people looking for May, and doctor’s looking for her brain once they’ve found her.

Actually, her reaction shows precisely why the media, the Tories and the Blairites are so afraid of Corbyn. Richard Seymour in his book on the Labour leader, Corbyn: The strange Rebirth of Radical Politics, says that they fear and despise him because he uses old-fashioned methods of campaigning. He does not use focus groups, but puts himself through the gruelling process of actually going to places, standing in front of crowds and speaking to them. And he does actually speak to them. He uses their language, and uses a fully formed argument. He doesn’t use soundbites.

And so the Tories, Blairites and their lackeys, like Laura ‘What’s Impartiality?’ Kuenssberg are desperate to smear the Labour leader. Or simply not report anything substantial he says.

Well, to make up for May’s appearance in public, I have indeed produced a cardboard puppet of her. Here it is.

I’ve put a tab in it, so that the mouth can be worked. Here it is with its mouth closed.

So I’ll be putting this in various posts to fill in for the real Prime Minister, as this ‘strong, confident leader’ does her level best to run away from the public she’s to whom she lies, and which her party is determined to impoverish and exploit.

Vox Political on Afzal Amin and the EDL March against the Megamosque

Mike over at Vox Political adds a few more details to the scandal about the Tory MP, Afzal Amin, and his connections with the EDL. According to the Mail on Sunday, Amin was hoping to use the EDL to boost his own electoral success by bizarrely posing as an anti-racist. In his piece Conspiracy claim will drive voters away from the Tories , Mike reports that

According to the Mail on Sunday, Mr Amin encouraged the English Defence League (EDL) to announce a march against a new “mega-mosque”. The paper said he planned for the march to be scrapped so he could take credit for defusing the situation.

Mr Amin denies the claims, but the Conservative Party has stated that it is a matter of serious concern and has suspended him as a candidate.

Like Broxtowe, the seat- Dudley North – is another Tory marginal, though Mike reports that it probably won’t be for long. Voters will see this as yet more evidence that sleaze is coming back into Cameron’s party. Especially coming after Cameron won’t release the new honours list, in case even more Tories are revealed to have been crooks.

Mike’s article is at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/03/22/conspiracy-claim-will-drive-voters-away-from-the-tories/.