Off Topic Politics Thread

Same here, first time labour voter and our seat went Labour by 15 votes! Some of these were much tighter than anticipated.

 

Was there much tactical voting Joey?

 

Not from what I can see. A brand new tory candidate who seems to have done better than expected and a highly conflicted Jewish population who, I don't think, knew who to vote for until the last moment.

 

Well well, Tunbridge wells falls to the Lib Dems. Not a surprise really, they have a majority for the Borough, and it was the only place in Kent to vote remain. You can see the demographic has changed too over the years.

 

Lib Dems with their biggest-ever number of seats - 71

They fought a good and precise campaign

 

They won all but 2 of the seats in Somerset, incredible.

 

A victory for positive and focused campaigning, hopefully some others follow their suit in future.

 

They won in Melksham & Devizes - quite a bit of tactical voting going on by Labour voters but it's a new constituency so demographic may have changed too. Very pleased we're not blue though, even if I did have to vote tactically

 

4 Green MP’s is quite incredible too, and they won all their target seats. Beating Thangam Debbonaire in Bristol Central is a massive achievement for them.

 

Build them a new stadium?

 

I am interested by the “Gaza” impact on the Labour vote. I know they lost at least one seat as a result but I think there were more

Surely this won’t be as big a factor next time around

My Twitter feed was flooded with people yesterday not voting Labour due to the “stance on Gaza”. And I found it utterly pathetic and depressing. Labour could do nothing about it in opposition and still can’t really do anything about that situation now. The U.K. is not powerful enough to make an impact and the sorts of people posting about this are quite likely to be the sorts of people who hated what it meant for the world when we did that power and sway (British Empire and all)

I note that lots of people further to the right were trying to scare out votes by saying a vote for Labour would be a “pro Muslim” vote. But that doesn’t seem to be true anymore. At least some Muslims have proven themselves to be prepared to ditch labour over one issue that they can’t really do anything about. Do these people who switched go back? Do Labour try to win them back?

I’m trying to not paint all Muslim voters as a monolithic block as that is (as I alluded to already) is what some reform supporters do. Do we actually get approx breakdowns like this in the U.K.? Will we really know how the Muslim vote is split?

 

Superb performance tbh, I had them down for 'maybe 3'
Bristol C was a great scalp though. I was actually surprised that they risked putting a co-leader in there because it was certainly not an obvious target seat (to me, anyway)
Am hoping that a green presence will continue to grow in the Hoc, and I don't mean Yoda.

 

I’m not convinced it’s a big deal they beat a shadow cabinet member. Weren’t there boundary changes and Bristol is probably one of the most left wing “hipster” type areas in the entire country

It’s big that they won of course but not actually a massive shock given Labour tacking more to the centre

Somehow I bet that the Greens getting 4 MPs gets discussed far less than Reform getting 4 MPs

 

Couple of seats I think Greg, where labour candidates had to stand against ex Labour turned independent on a single issue and lost to a Tory candidate when the vote was split. I think there was also one that split the Tory vote on the same issue and Labour won it (I might be wrong as I was pretty tired)

 

A mandate for Somerset independence then*.
Arthur will rise in Glastonbury brandishing his sword of truth and a flagon of cider.

* © N. Sturgeon

 

Thangam was a very popular MP, but Bristol is a pretty Green city these days, they have a big presence on the city council.

 

Reform surprised me, but I can see exactly why they won when you looked at where they won. All areas that need huge investment with large numbers of disaffected voters who see nothing for them from the more major parties.
I still think it was more of a protest vote than an idealogical shift, and I think that if Labour start trying to fix some of society's problems, there may well be a swing away from Reform again

 

I was going to say “including Ian Duncan Smith”. But that was the one where Labour deselected someone late and she carried on standing as an independent when she could never win

Owen Jones and that sort *solely* blame Starmer and Labour for IDS being returned due to that deselection. At odds with reality of course

I just wonder whether Labour winning a massive majority without those votes makes any difference to what they do

 

I was going to mention this too. The BBC says there were 4 "pro-Gaza" independents elected. Sounds like Jess Phillips narrowly beat someone from Galloway's party as well and was then abused. Like you I find it a very odd single issue to vote on.

I don't think you can really find out how people voted but ONS will have information about the demographics in constituencies so you can get some idea from that. Some claim Muslim voters are more prone to voting as a block than others because local religious leaders tell people how to vote and there are also claims the head of a Muslim household will sometimes apply for postal votes for all voters in a house and he (because it's usually a he) will then fill in all the ballot papers. I've no idea if that's true or how widespread it might be but I spent two years working in Tower Hamlets with a lot of Muslims and based on what I saw and heard I don't think it's a ridiculous suggestion.

 

I guess when you've already got a huge majority, surplus majority as it were, it doesn't really make something more or less likely to happen.
Let's see the real Kier Starmer stand up and work towards fixing our broken country now. I think of this in some ways as like a new football season. Blank slate, last season doesn't matter any more, optimistic it might be OK.
I'll certainly not start writing him off till he actually starts changing things as I can judge a bit better then.

I was always for Corbyn so obviously Kier isn't my choice for PM, but I'll give him a go because politics has to be pragmatic and I'd never see the political package on offer that I'd wish for if I could