May 2023 Local Elections

Don't worry Sunak has reflected on the results so far and has heard the message of massive tory losses loud and clear.

He says:

"the message I am hearing from people tonight is that they want us to focus on their priorities, and they want us to deliver for them."

So there you are.

 

The bells are ringing out across Borehamwood as the Tories lose control of the Council. Rejoice!

 

Isn’t Charlie a hate figure for the Right? He and Naga seem to piss them off daily, especially after this terse exchange.

 

Did we win or lose?

 

I *think* a lot of the mechanics behind this are local election results (as well as opinion polls) be interesting to see what the effects of last night's vote is....

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/seatdetails.py?seat=Hertsmere

 

WTF is wrong with these people? The Tory council managed to get themselves into debt for the trifling amount of £1.5BN (yes, that's billion).

 

Go East Herts!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Before:



After:

 

It’s cos of them Wokey Wokes innit? I’d rather be in colossal debt than have a Council run by people that can’t tell a bird from a fella. #handsoffourgollies

 

Parody account finds it hard to add much to Greg Hands’ bizarre defence.

https://twitter.com/michaeltakemp/status/1654397213517266944?s=46&t=oqOMSJXE_g7J5C7kNPG9LA

 

Trouble is only 6 Tory seats were up for election in Thurrock this time around. Would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the whole lot were being contested.

 

But voters in 4 of 'em thought to themselves - they're doing a good job so I'M VOTING TORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Look, they didn't even have a Thurrock Council to squander billions of pounds before 1936.

 

Political views are ingrained in a significant percentage of people (on both sides – a rare example of appropriate both sides-ism). There'll be people round my way who would vote for a garbage can full of manure if it had a blue rosette on it.

And let's face it, the small boats policy, the rubbish about who can use which toilets, some of the absolutely barmpot stuff that the Tories allow to fly around among the right people because they know it works, works. But it works on fewer people than they think.

Even a very staunch Tory of my acquaintance has started to see behind the curtain and recognise that he's being ripped off left, right and centre.

The message is starting to become apparent that the barmpots are outnumbered by normal people who don't want their health outcomes determined by the algorithms of an insurance company with a billion dollar turnover, they just want to see a doctor. They don't want to be told that inflation falling from 10 per cent to 5 per cent is a jolly good outcome because they know it's not true and that prices will STILL be going up while their pay stands still. They don't want to be made poorer while politicians and corporations rob them blind. They don't want squalid little culture wars and pathetic arguments about trivial matters that excite people on GB News. They don't want to pay 40% more for their food than they paid last year and then be told it's because of Ukraine. They don't want their mortgages going up so they face paying 300 quid a month more in interest when their current deal expires. They don't want to look at their energy bills one minute and then hear BP have made gazilions in profit the next. They don't want to look at boarded up shops, closed pubs and restaurants, broken playground equipment, roads full of holes and be told that they've never had it so good and that Britain is great. In short, they're not as stupid as the average Conservative MP thinks they are.

And they are starting to see in greater numbers these are not faults in the system to be fixed by the Conservative government, they are design features deliberately implemented by the Conservative government. And because they can read things and look at how other countries are doing they can see that there is a different way.

 

Hear hear. It’s high time Labour had another chance to not fix the Country’s problems.

 

I see the favoured line from Tory Party HQ to be parroted by all loyal subjects the length and breadth of England is that this is all Johnson and Truss' fault and that the current dear leader can only be expected to clear up so much mess in such a short time. If only he'd been part of the Johnson ministry, especially in very high office at his right hand, he could have stopped all this. Um...wait... scrap the last bit.

 

It may have been mentioned already but whilst there have been six cases of voter fraud prosecuted since 2019 the number of actual instances of voter fraud since 2019 will certainly be higher.

That's my opinion rather than a provable fact, and I have no way of knowing if the true number is 7 or 70,000. A modicum of common sense tells me its somewhere in between but also that the figure is not significant enough to have had a decisive say in any actual result. If it had the fraud would have been obvious statistically.

I don't disagree with the concept and believe if implemented sensibly then it is a positive given the previous openness, real or theoretical, to abuse. Similarly I would welcome opening up the process for voting digitally. I do question if this was a priority for legislation in 2022 given the other tremendous priorities the government is facing, many of which are of their own making. I am left wondering "why now"?

As an aside I wasn't even asked for my ID yesterday. Passport stayed firmly in my pocket.

 

I believe the solution is relatively straightforward in such a situation when/if you return to the UK and don't rush to apply for a UK photo ID. When registering to vote also apply for a postal vote at the same time. Its the same solution for anyone without the right photo ID until we get to vote securely online.

 

Bigger Issue: I wanted to vote Pozzo Out but the option wasn't available in my ward. Nor was the option to vote Labour either.

 

The county's looking much less errr.... 'blue' (curse you Broxbourne):



Waiting on Dacorum and Snorbens.

 

Dacorum will turn Orange for sure. Is Grey John Major's new party?

 

LD win Dacorum and I'm 100% sure Snalbs will be a landslide

 

Starmer’s first question at the next PMQs should be,

People vote the way they do in local elections for a mixture of reasons, both local and national. Last week, the Tories lost hundreds of seats and dozens of councils. Can the Prime Minister say if the voters no longer trust the Tories to run councils or no longer trust them to run the Country? Which is it?

 

The trouble is that Starmer can ask what he wants. The response will be the same. Sunak will dribble on about boats and "people's priorities" and not answer the question anyway.

PMQs is pointless these days because the speaker is gutless.

 

They're all as bad as each other, Moose, all as bad as each other. [Checks box next to Conservative candidate with little pencil while tongue pokes out of corner mouth with the sheer concentration required]

 

Yep, pretty much:

 

It’s deeply suspect for any area to love the Lib Dems that much.

 

Halfway through the number of councils declaring - could a 1000+ seat loss be on the cards for the Tories...

 

For the avoidance of doubt, had Labour continued in Government I have no doubt the Country would be in a sounder place, with higher standards in public life. Many nose in the trough Tories would be a lot poorer. Nadine Dorries, Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees Mogg etc would still be bizarre nobodies, just nobodies who couldn’t do any damage. Refugees who died, may not have, we all would be much healthier and wealthier.

But let’s not forget Labour’s part in its own downfall. It made too many deals with the devil, with the US to fight its unnecessary wars, with Murdoch (who ***** on every value we hold) and with the ‘wealth creators’ who became so wealthy they demanded succession from our World. They failed to build homes and only tinkered with the wealth divide. They failed to regulate enough.

Labour again is courting both populist opinion and the wealthy in return for the chance to govern better, which it will. But unless Labour has some soul it will be found out and the dreadful cycle of Tory rule and corruption will eventually begin once more. So hell yeah, I want them to win, but they need to be kept on a leash.

 

Some do.

 

What do the disastrous Tory local election results mean for Rishi Sunak?

This comedy stuff just writes itself:

 

Don't disagree with any of that. What struck me reading it – especially the bit about Murdoch – is just how badly served our politics is because of the inability of our established parties to talk about what the world is going to look like in five years' time, let alone 25.

I mean, we live in an advanced country, one that talks a big game about creating a European Silicon Valley and yet our two main political parties are so, so far off the pace when it comes to talking about any of the things that are going to happen over the next 10 years.

Political parties are fighting old, irrelevant battles. Partly that's because it's a really hard sell to tell people what the future is going to be like with any certainty and partly because if we're honest about it, huge numbers of people simply wouldn't believe it anyway.

AI is already transforming industries. It is going to absolutely obliterate the workforce unless someone puts their hands on the steering wheel and drives the bus to a destination that benefits people. It's a different point to the one you were making but our biggest problem in this country is that we look back and go 'Yeah but what about Blair's oil wars'. Sure, let's acknowledge it but it's going to be so irrelevant to what's coming.

We're still governed by parties who know that big chunks of the population care what the Sun and the Mail think. This week The Sun ran a picture of Starmer eating an ice cream in a bit of a funny way...

Bit of a mazy dribble of an argument that, but the past few weeks have been eye-opening in terms of AI, certainly. A-Eye-opening!

 

Central Beds goes from Tory to NOC.

Not a single Tory councillor left in Leighton Buzzard, which is almost always blue.

What a great day.

 

Poor old ZZTop.

 

I can top that:



https://twitter.com/LondonEconomic/status/1654371945452822529

 

https://twitter.com/Parody_PM/status/1654518896345350153