Incredible that no one in Tory HQ thought, errrr this isn't going to be a great look with the public. Also, just wondering how the change in boundary to Wellinboro and Rushden will impact this vote in the GE?
They supposedly ran Harrison because Bone threatened to run as an independent if they didn't. So what? He got booted out for being a creepy, bullying weirdo. The vast majority of Tory voters are just doing it because of the party, not the individual. Just another example of their rampant incompetence.
What a bloody awful day after the positive over night news. Putin murders Navalny and Netanyahu states that Israel will never accept a Palestinian state. And the West looks on and does nothing! Tell me again, why do we have Special Forces?
Likely explains why the entire Tory vote stayed home Because that's the point: the Labour vote didn't change at all from the 2019 election, but the Tory vote dropped by nearly 25,000 - which is the sort of thing that only happens when a Tory candidate runs as an independent as happened with Zak Goldsmith in Richmond Park in 2016, or the previous incumbent is such a piece of **** that it actively puts the faithful off voting for their replacement as happened in Tiverton & Honiton in 2019, North Shropshire in 2021 and Somerset & Froome in 2023 where Owen Patterson and David Warburton's stand-ins saw them pick up 19,000, 23,000 and 26,000 fewer votes respectively as the Lib Dems strolled to all three seats
Somehow this isn't related to a Tory byelection, in spite his name sounding like the exact sort of thing that tends to see Tories have to face a byelection...
I don't think that person is real, to be honest. I could be wrong, but the picture just looks... off. The placement of the stars on the US flag don't look right, either.
Aren't those numbers relatively normal for a by-election? A lot less people tend to vote in comparison to a general.
This is the main issue with those claiming yesterday's byelection results are a sea change for Starmer's Labour: they're not, because how many times in the past twenty years have we seen colossal swings away from the incumbent party in a byelection - only for the natural order to be restored at a general election? Richmond Park's the perfect example of this: went Lib Dem at a byelection in 2016 when Goldsmith stood as an independent and lost the best part of 20,000 votes overnight, but a year later at a general election Goldsmith (with a blue rosette this time) won it back as 10,000 Tory voters remembered who he was - albeit he lost the seat again in 2019 after tactical voting got him out the door That being said, I dread what some of the candidates they'll be dredging up for those seats might look like. Probably the result of genetic experiments involving the bones of Enoch Powell and an XL Bully
I think people are just pointing out that the votes tally with the disastrous polling for the Tories. The polls are increasingly unreliable, for some reason, so the party itself could hide behind that. Getting massacred in two by-elections makes this a harder position to hold. Sunak won't believe that he's done at the moment, but the push to remove him will gain weight. They're already in chaos and the various factions are sharpening their knives. The press will increase their attacks on Starmer and Sunak in the next few weeks, in my opinion.
Actually that's something that definitely ****ed me off about the BBC's coverage: the byelection winners got a whole ten seconds of airtime on the 6 O'Clock News, meanwhile Ben Habib (who finished third on the ballot in Wellingborough, having spent the last couple of days campaigning somewhere in the Corby constituency) and that waffling gargoyle who can't even win a popularity contest where you eat kangaroo bollocks got a good couple of minutes Why yes, Robbie Gibb is back at the BBC News & Current Affairs department, returning in mid-2021. How did you guess...?
The brother of a Tory MP and both of them have a history with the Russian right-wing. Should've stuck to music...
Also Director of Communications for the political heavyweight Theresa May ...and also the bloke running Michael Portillo's campaign to become Tory leader in 2001 ...and an editorial advisor for the launch of GiraffeButthole News The fact his CV effectively alternates between the BBC and the Tories is reason enough to maybe consider him unfit to have such major posts within the BBC's news output division?
And by-elections so close to a GE don’t necessarily produce results indicative of how people may vote when they have to elect a government for another 5 years. It seems many Tory voters may have abstained as a protest, rather than lending their support to another party. When push comes to shove in the GE, they may vote Tory again. And by the time the right wing press has reached fever pitch with their scare tactics about Labour spending, immigration etc, the Tory votes will rise again, however irrational that may be to anyone who considers the Tories’ record on any issue for more than a few seconds.
I think the biggest problem for the Tories, something they can't get away from, is the state of public services being in the gutter. It affects every demographic except perhaps the very rich, the whole country seems fcked and they look completely incompetent. This idea of tax cuts is just a waste of time. Given the choice of tax cuts or improving public services - hospitals, GPs, ambulances, schools, transport, water, policing, magistrates, prisons, social services, local authority community provision - back to the levels 14 years ago, the vast majority would choose the latter.
In other news, Girl Sheldon tanking her career to be a cheerleader for a genocidal regime is starting to not be funny
