Topic: UK GE and Local Elections, plus polls, and policy.

[Wabaloolah]

My local council is bankrupt, so there's that as well when it comes to funding anything.

Croydon presumably?

[Wabaloolah]

The BBC election programme is awful with Laura K at the helm, I hope she won't be hosting the general election coverage or for the first time I may have to watch the coverage elsewhere.

She's just not a very good presenter no matter whether she is a Tory stooge. She's just awful

[sheepfest]

The BBC election programme is awful with Laura K at the helm, I hope she won't be hosting the general election coverage or for the first time I may have to watch the coverage elsewhere.

She's just not a very good presenter no matter whether she is a Tory stooge. She's just awful

Channel 4 with Emily Maitlis for the general election will be my choice to watch it all unfold.

[Wabaloolah]

Channel 4 with Emily Maitlis for the general election will be my choice to watch it all unfold.

yeah I'll definitely be doing that if Laura K is on it, bring back Dimblebey I say

[sheepfest]

Sky news are saying Hartlepool council has been taken back by labour. No official confirmation.

Hope this is true and will pray that when I wake up this was the start of a truly awful night for them.

[Statto Red]

The BBC election programme is awful with Laura K at the helm, I hope she won't be hosting the general election coverage or for the first time I may have to watch the coverage elsewhere.

She's just not a very good presenter no matter whether she is a Tory stooge. She's just awful

Although it'll be fun watching her squirm when the results start coming in & the Tories are getting a pounding everywhere. 

[TSC]

Labour take Blackpool south with a 26.3% swing.  Labour on 297 at mo and Tories at 103. Early days of course

[Fromola]

They do seem to have some weird Tory fetish recently.  I know it's been the poster area for levelling up but for every pound spent on a headline grabber the Tories will have taken five back through cuts.

Houchen is a great example of it with minor achievements like Darlington being the northern base for the Treasury being championed but the ongoing Teeswork scandal overlooked by many.  I think a change of administration there and a more transparent look at the bookkeeping could see Houchen in a spot of bother with the law.

Labour taken a bit of a battering around Tyneside

[Circa1892]

Although it'll be fun watching her squirm when the results start coming in & the Tories are getting a pounding everywhere. 

When the Tories are in the low-100s and Labour have a 90 seat majority.

“Labour are running a couple of percentage behind the polls. Is tonight a disaster for Keir Starmer?”

Kuessenberg is a rare figure who is everything people say she is. Unbelievable biased. She should’ve been finished when she came out parroting Cummings lines to take on another journos post in the Barnard Castle debacle.

[TepidT2O]

The by election is the most interesting.

Reform did much better than in other by elections and they only just got beaten by the tories.

And despite a low turnout, labour now have a bigger majority than the Tories did.

[Draex]

When the Tories are in the low-100s and Labour have a 90 seat majority.

“Labour are running a couple of percentage behind the polls. Is tonight a disaster for Keir Starmer?”

Kuessenberg is a rare figure who is everything people say she is. Unbelievable biased. She should’ve been finished when she came out parroting Cummings lines to take on another journos post in the Barnard Castle debacle.

She’s defo shagged Bojo at some point, it’s also confirmed her source when she was a “journalist” was Cummings. She’s basically a Tory party pr shill (as someone beautifully put above).

[gazzalfc]

Laura Kuessenberg, can you hear me? Laura Kuessenberg ... your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!

Still 117 seats too many so far. The only good Tory politician is an unemployed one

[PaulF]

I'm not a huge follower of politics. But the distribution of seat gains looks very much like anything but the tories. Which is fine for this GE, but a lot of work to do for kier and Co?

[Riquende]

It's going to be "Good for Labour but not as good as people started hoping, and bad for the Tories but not worse than most predicted" territory overall I reckon. The Tories will squeak the mayoral elections and point to that to as a success and that "the plan is working", and Labour will point to their broad gains that the Tory support has collapsed and the nation wants that GE. Tory Rebels won't have the stones to knife Sunak and the stasis will continue throughout the summer as the Tories desparately try to send a few Rwanda flights through and cross their fingers that the economy upturns.

Dunno what's going on in London with the Tories reportedly upbeat about Hall and Labour saying it's going to be close, they must both have some exit poll information they're working on. Would be mad to see Hall get in, especially in the face of the national trend.

Anyway what I find interesting about the Blackpool result is that is looks uncannily like the Yougov tracker for the 3 parties.





With every month showing another 1% drop for the Tories and increase for Reform, it might end up the case that Sunak punting the GE into the back half of the year goes down as one of the great strategic electoral blunders ever as the Tories go from ~150 likely seats to closer to ~50, with Reform's slice handing Starmer or Davey seats they'd never dreamed would be competitive.

[cornishscouser92]

With the local results you want to concentrate less on how many seats and more on where the seats are. For example, Labour winning in Hampshire and Plymouth shows they’re on course for a big, big GE win.

They don’t want to vote stack in Lpool, MCR, Sheffield, London etc like the Corbyn years.

[spen71]

The Tory spokesman on BBC just, was amusing and infuriating in equal measures.    Every question he just fell back
On the Rwanda line.

I’m sure when Johnson was PM, the French wanted to sort a system out to process immigrants.   The Tories weren’t interested so the French have just said “have em”.   Can anyone else remember this ?

[redbyrdz]

I was laughing about this at first, but now I think he did it on purpose, to draw attention to "must bring ID" in his typical "likeable idiot" way and to get on the news on an election day.

[TepidT2O]

That Blackpool defeat is even worse the more you look at it.  The swing was 7% bigger than even the latest MRP polls. Polls which none of us really believed would come to fruition?
And that’s before you even start looking at the swing to deform as well.

[Wabaloolah]

With the local results you want to concentrate less on how many seats and more on where the seats are. For example, Labour winning in Hampshire and Plymouth shows they’re on course for a big, big GE win.

They don’t want to vote stack in Lpool, MCR, Sheffield, London etc like the Corbyn years.

yes that's very true, Labour appear to be doing very well in the South outside of London and in areas where the Tories were the largest party, not so well in places like North East and North West where Labour were the largest party but the vote held up in Newcastle and increased in Sunderland and Hartlepool, big losses in South Tyneside though and some losers in Gateshead but not enough in either to lose control of the council.

The Muslim vote does appear to have had an effect in Oldham although the council leader says there are other local issues in play there.

[Wabaloolah]

I was laughing about this at first, but now I think he did it on purpose, to draw attention to "must bring ID" in his typical "likeable idiot" way and to get on the news on an election day.

he's really not that clever enough

[Wabaloolah]

That Blackpool defeat is even worse the more you look at it.  The swing was 7% bigger than even the latest MRP polls. Polls which none of us really believed would come to fruition?
And that’s before you even start looking at the swing to deform as well.

100%, it's an awful result, a 26% swing repeated countywide would be seismic.

Deform that should be an autocorrect!

[ToneLa]

Labour doing well, not as seismic as 1997
Don't care, Tories getting slaughtered

The mind boggles at areas that STAY conservative

he's really not that clever enough

Remember years ago when the moron got trapped on a zipwire in London

My old director at work, said he knew the lad who worked on that wire, and that it was 100% planned and posed for media

I have no reason to doubt this

But I do think Alexander is a thick fuck

[Draex]

Labour doing well, not as seismic as 1997
Don't care, Tories getting slaughtered

The mind boggles at areas that STAY conservative

Remember years ago when the moron got trapped on a zipwire in London

My old director at work, said he knew the lad who worked on that wire, and that it was 100% planned and posed for media

I have no reason to doubt this

But I do think Alexander is a thick fuck

The ruffled hair and disheveled look was put on for the cameras, he’s an odious fuck.

[ToneLa]

The Muslim vote does appear to have had an effect in Oldham although the council leader says there are other local issues in play there.

Opposition leaflets in Oldham were scaremongering about Starmer's admittedly shite LBC interview re: Israel withholding water and food

Dirty politics

well, it worked

[Crosby Nick]

Is it just a case of the more extreme Tory voters lurching to Reform? And is that a concern in the longer term? Or are they another flash in the pan for knobhead to get behind?

[ToneLa]

The ruffled hair and disheveled look was put on for the cameras, he’s an odious fuck.

plus another lie was told

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3613116/Ask-to-see-my-ID-card-and-Ill-eat-it.html

Quoting as don't want to subject anyone to that rag

If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God's fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.

If I am incapable of consuming it whole, I will masticate the card to the point of illegibility. And if that fails, or if my teeth break with the effort, I will take out my penknife and cut it up in front of the officer concerned.

[Wabaloolah]

Is it just a case of the more extreme Tory voters lurching to Reform? And is that a concern in the longer term? Or are they another flash in the pan for knobhead to get behind?

who knows, it possibly depends on how bad the General Election gets for the Tories, if the latest MRP is correct and they get less than 100 seats it will be very difficult for them to come back from.

Their survival long-term will likely depend on whether they try and win back the centre ground like they did to an extent with call me Dave or lurch further to the right to compete with Deform.

[killer-heels]

Is it just a case of the more extreme Tory voters lurching to Reform? And is that a concern in the longer term? Or are they another flash in the pan for knobhead to get behind?

Flash in the pan. Their ultimate goal is to infiltrate the Tories (more than now) and get them to lurch further to the right.

[Libertine]

The Tories continue to fight a war on three fronts and are taking a pasting from all directions.

Doesn't help to have such an incompetent general in charge.

[Lisan Al Gaib]

I know he gets a lot of stick but Jonathan Ashworth saying "You'll be toast if there's a 16% swing to Labour wouldn't you" whilst looking Jon Gullis directly in the face is hilarious!

[Draex]

plus another lie was told

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3613116/Ask-to-see-my-ID-card-and-Ill-eat-it.html

Quoting as don't want to subject anyone to that rag

He's a c*nt, he is the single cause of the acceleration of destroying our country by the torys.

[Draex]

When your tory overlords are being battered and you're going to lose your job.

[Libertine]

Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden who we heard from earlier has also been speaking to BBC Breakfast.

He says his "heart goes out" to Tory colleagues who have lost their seats overnight.

"Overall a disappointing night for us but that's what you expect from parties in mid-term of government," he adds.

Stretching the definition of "mid-term" to breaking point there Rich.....

[Sangria]

Opposition leaflets in Oldham were scaremongering about Starmer's admittedly shite LBC interview re: Israel withholding water and food

Dirty politics

well, it worked

Where did the votes go?

[Red Beret]

Bozo is not a smart man. He's smarter than Trump though, and both are evil and cunning. They both know how to play to the camera, Bozo especially, who has been in the media most of his adult life.

So yeah, I can totally see him deliberately turning up at a polling station without ID to "get the message out" to Tory voters. And it was reported at a time of day when most people are finishing work and on a day that was the hottest so far of the year. He couldn't have played it any better, but it hasn't helped either.

There's no real point in drawing 1997 comparisons. Starmer isn't Blair, and this Labour isn't New Labour, backed by a slick PR machine. In 1996, the Tories were defending something like 1100 seats and lost close to 600 of them, but the voter base was a lot more rigid and defined back then.

I see posters on walls around Liverpool accusing Starmer of genocide - he's not even in charge ffs. I hate what's going on over there, and I know any number of people living in the UK will have relatives in the region, who they will be frantic with worry over. They will be furious with UK politicians, and they have every right to be. It's led to an influx of independents, and with Deform in the mix (I like it Tepid!), then voting intention is a lot more fragmented.

Overall it's the by-election that's the big indicator that things will only get worse for the Tories the longer this goes on.

[ChrisLFCKOP]

Where did the votes go?

Independents that mostly campaigned with Gaza as main issue.

[Dr. Beaker]

When your tory overlords are being battered and you're going to lose your job.

She's turning into Bette Davis.

[Libertine]

Independents that mostly campaigned with Gaza as main issue.

I'm sure they'll be effective local councillors in sorting out rubbish collections and potholes....

[kopite77]

She's turning into Bette Davis.

She looks more like Lily Savage after a very rough night! (RIP Paul O’Grady No Offence Meant)

[John C]

I was laughing about this at first, but now I think he did it on purpose, to draw attention to "must bring ID" in his typical "likeable idiot" way and to get on the news on an election day.

You give him to much credit, it happened because he is an actual idiot.
A full blown bad fucking dickhead of an idiot
I can't overstate how much I hate the idiotic c*nt.