imposs1904
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Phil B-C gives a full breakdown of the results on his blog:
http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2024/07/left-of-labour-general-election-results.html
A few Trots were standing as independents in the election. I don’t think they were being deliberately deceitful. I put it down to the complications of registering with the Electoral Commission. But I do think it worked to their advantage.
For example, Maxine Bowler in Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough is a longstanding prominent member of the SWP. She stood as an independent, receiving 8 per cent of the vote. I’m skeptical that she would have received as high a vote if she stood with the SWP label next to her name on the ballot paper. Maybe we’ll know at the next election, or maybe the Left of Labour groups will now look towards the ‘Independent’ tag as a long term electoral strategy.
A major reason that Labour under Corbyn got hammered in 2019 is cos Farage and his ilk stood down. The Labour Right and the usual suspects in the media crowed at the time that it was Labour’s worst performance since the 1930s.
Farage and his ilk stood up this time, resulting in decimation for the Tories and this super-majority for Starmer in 2024.
All you have to have in 2028/29 is for the Tories and Farage to have some kind of electoral arrangement more along the lines of 2019 – though Farage has the whip hand now – and that majority will vanish. There won’t be an extended honeymoon period for this incoming Labour Government. It’s going to unravel sooner than people think.
Some New Statesman journalist was trying to be all clever and smug on Twixxer, by saying we shouldn’t compare 2024 to 1997, we should be comparing it to 1906.
. . . Yep, and what happened to that Liberal Party super-majority by 1910?
Someone posted these figures on Urban 75. Kind of shocking, if true:
Corbyn in 2017 – 12,877,918
Corbyn in 2019 – 10,269,051
Starmer in 2024 – 9,650,254Labour vote, according to wiki, 9,686,329 (33.7%).
I honestly think that if the Tories and Reform come to some agreement, Labour – with its majority of 174 seats – could be ousted at the next election. I think their “super-majority” is that brittle.
This is a wild official message from a sitting Prime Minister:
https://x.com/RishiSunak/status/1808890318713954593
I’m convinced he was bored with being PM and just decided to call an early election so he could spend more time with his money.
Funny you should mentioned Project 2025. There’s a longstanding American left communist sympathizer on Urban 75 who’s currently stanning for Biden in this election cycle – especially doubling-down in the aftermath of Biden’s disastrous debate performance – specifically because of Project 2025. He’s convinced it’s a game changer for accelerating America down a road to a right wing dictatorship. He’s adamant that Biden has to defeat Trump in November, and gets very defensive when people point out Biden’s personal and political shortcomings.
Maybe ‘funny’ is the wrong word in the circumstances.
I didn’t vote but the psephological geek in me is looking forward to the 2024 equivalent of some Portillo moments tonight, and wondering if Starmer will display a hitherto hidden sense of humour by doing that St Francis of Assisi speech on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street tomorrow morning.
Thomas Piketty chimes in with some left reformism:
Fair play to all comrades involved in putting forward the real alternative during this latest election circus.
Via the Financial Times, interesting breakdown of the vote in the French parliamentary elections:
Something to bookmark for future reference. It comes via Peter Oborne, who is one of the more interesting political commentators:
Twiglet’s correct.
First prize is a mint condition 7 inch of the follow up single to the Lotus Eaters’ ‘First Picture of You’.
Billy Connolly and the SPGB is mentioned in Jim Fleming’s obituary from the April 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard:
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/05/obituary-jim-fleming-2022.html
The leader of the French Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, lost his seat to a RN candidate.
This is a seat – Nord’s 20th constituency – that had been held by the French Communist Party since the early 1960s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord%27s_20th_constituency#2024
“On the front page of his leaflet he prints “Clowns on the left, jokers on the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you”. Perhaps one of the music-lovers here can dig out the original song as a forgotten classic.”
Maybe he’s a fan of old Socialist Standard front covers?
PS – There is a Kevin Bacon like connection between the writer of that song and the SPGB. Can anyone guess, or do I send it on to Manchester Branch for their Christmas Quiz?
