UK voters are angry at the Tories for not being conservative enough, so they give the left total power in a landslide
I understand being angry. But this doesn’t appear to be the remedy. Then again, British politics is different from ours.
The polls indicated it was going to happen, and it did. Keir Starmer, the new PM, presented the party as a kinder, gentler version of itself:
“Is surely clear to everyone that our country needs a bigger reset, a rediscovery of who we are, because no matter how fierce the storms of history, one of the great strengths of this nation has always been our ability to navigate away to calmer waters.”
“This depends upon politicians, particularly those who stand for stability and moderation, as I do.”
“Whether you voted Labour or not, in fact, especially if you did not, I say to you directly, my government will serve you. Politics can be a force for good. We will show that.”
“My government will fight every day until you believe again.
I can see how that rhetoric would be appealing.
not so much
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-wef-wins-again-translating-keirnorr
I’ve heard that voter turnout was very low.
A lot of conservatives are hoping that the this debacle results in Farage’s party taking the place of the Tories.
Turnout was very low. This outcome may very well be disgust with non-conservative Conservatives than an endorsement of socialism. Nigel Farage has a seat in Parliament. This could be fun!
New Gov’t will be very anti-Israel, and maybe anti-Ukraine. And pro Iran.
To add to the low turnout comment I made above, the Spectator says that Labour got 64% of the vote, with a turnout of 33%. That means that 22% of the eligible voters voted for Labour.
That’s not impressive.
Look for Labour to blaze ahead as if the entire country voted for them, of course.
Hopefully the conservatives can get their act together for the next election.
the likely foreign minister, hilary benn, is the daughter of that Soviet Agent, and one time Labourite leader, Tony Benn, so I’m not impressed,
Perhaps getting the train to the bottom of the gorge as quickly as possible is the first step to recovery.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/07/05/farage-gets-another-mp-as-close-recount-finds-in-reforms-favour/
Actually the British electorate is very similar to the US electorate. They sent a signal, if I was a Labourite I’d better listen.
Watch France, what has happened there and what will happen there will happen in Britain and the US.
What other option did conservative British voters have? The only realistic alternative was returning to power the leftist Tory Party they were unhappy with.
}}} “My government will
fightignore your wishes every day until you believe again.I believe someone made an obvious error in committing the speech to paper and teleprompter.
😛
To begin with, their party system is much stronger than ours. The central party organizations decide which candidates to run where, and there’s only one thing to vote for, which is Members of Parliament: they don’t get to elect the Prime Minister or anyone in his cabinet. So in their system the only way the electorate can express that there needs to be a change is to repudiate the party in the government. And they can have elections at any time, unlike here where you are stuck with someone for two, four, or six years, so they can repudiate Labour in three months if they want.
Secondly, which applies here as well as there, if you’ll never risk your party losing seats because you are so afraid of the other one being worse, then you are on the plantation, and you are incentivizing your own party to do the bare minimum of being slightly less bad than the other. And that’s how we get the leftward ratchet we’ve had in place since at least the 1950s.
The people we elect to represent us have to have our interests aligned with theirs or they will simply follow their own interests. Individual officeholders need to feel that their phoney baloney job is at stake if they don’t deliver the outcomes we send them to deliver. We in the US have done a poor job of holding our parties accountable, and especially on the conservative side of things.
We mock Dems for their fearmongering about Republicans taking away Social Security or banning birth control or bringing back slavery(!), but we follow the same pattern ourselves, and until we get more strategic about holding “our” politicians responsible for outcomes that roll back the Left (not process or trying hard) we will continue the leftward slide.
In our system it is only necessary to make an example of a few in order to encourage the others to get their minds right. They can’t direct our tax money to their friends if they are not in office. It has to cost them personally when they disregard conservatives, or else they will continue to collude with Dems to appropriate for their friends instead of working with us.
“. . . the Spectator says that Labour got 64% of the vote, with a turnout of 33%.”
No, Labour won 63% of the seats in Parliament, but they only got 34% of the popular vote, about the same as in the previous election. The Labour “landslide” was the result of voters switching from Tory to Reform.
If the Tories had won, would they have changed any policies that displease genuine conservatives? Reform voters decided, correctly, that the answer was no.
Because of the difference in turnout Labour winning by a landslide this time actually gets fewer votes than Labour losing by a landslide did in 2019.
Conservatives promised an end to illegals, instead they are coming faster. They promised an end to stupid climate policies; instead they kept piling on more.
Remember, Boris Johnson won the last election. And then he proved to have no moral center at all, governing by polls, and let his wife design the climate policy. People who went to school with him were stunned; what happened to the charming but firm guy they knew?
Labour barely got more votes than 2019. But the Conservative votes dropped 24 percent. And Reform, while only winning 4 seats, got a lot of votes. They’re now a factor.
Had the Conservatives and Reform worked together to not oppose each other, it’s possible they could have elected a coalition. But the Conservatives hate Reform. So that didn’t happen.
I think Reform hate Conservatives, since Conservatives utterly failed to do what they promised, other than Brexit.
This was why andrew marr a bbc correspondent in good standing who wrote the roman a clef head of state had johnson as a transitional figure preceding the apochryphal head of state william stevenson whose staff is feaverishly trying to hide their bosses non life status while holding off the independence movement
To use the samson analogy they cut his locks carrie whatshername either before covid or right after
I was wrong its much worse than miss behn
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/special-relationship-britains-new-foreign-secretary-called-donald/
One commenter on the UK outcome says that Reform cost the Conservatives 180 seats. I’d have to see a closer breakdown. As Nigel Farage has said, a lot of Reform voters would not vote at all if Reform weren’t there. And not all of the 180 would come from Labour.
But with 180 more, the Conservatives could have formed a government. Barely.
If seats were allocated on vote totals, Labour would have about 210, Conservatives about 170, Reform about 100 and LDP about 65.
A majority is 326.
Miguel: The Brits have always been a bit cozy with commies. Labour, before Tony Blair cleaned them up, used to swear allegiance to International Socialism at every gathering.
I remember a retired female secretary was found to have been a Soviet agent all her life. She would not apologize, and everyone was just, oh, well, another one. No prosecution, no interrogation. And this was under a Conservative government.
The point of Farage’s Reform effort was that carrying on with the Tories in charge was not in Britain’s best interests. Of course Labour isn’t either, but he’s building a movement which may bear fruit sooner than some people think.
The British election reminds be of California in the 1990s. California conservatives were furious at the Republicans because Pete Wilson just “wasn’t conservative enough.” So they plotted to “burn the Republican Party to the ground” so that “a Republican can’t even be elected dogcatcher in Orange County.”
Then “a new party will emerge” “led by a True Conservative.” Then the scales would fall from the people’s eyes, and the “True Conservative” would “lead California and the United States” back to the Promised Land.
It didn’t work out that way. Instead it led to a one-party state. Once the Democrats got control they rigged things so that they’ll never lose again. And now schoolteachers can transition students without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
The British have a different system than we do. Maybe this will actually work for them. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.
They have supported suella they could given up net zero sooner and not all gone on the lockdowns coulda woulda shouda
I do remember things differently after prop 187 was killed in the courts gray davis narrowly won the race was run by dr evil them when enron hiked the electricity prices schwartzenegger run the recount and he made a hash of things then whitman ran the most pathetic race until the next one each one dropping the ball
Thats summing up 20 years in a few
moments
So at any the tories could have changsd course but they steered into the iceberg
Schwartzenegger actually gave it the good old college try. He proposed a basket of initiatives that would have moved the needle in CA. After they were defeated by a scorched-earth campaign led by the public employees’ (teachers) unions he caved and from then on was useless or worse. He was in over his head.
Back in a long time ago, I knew some who voted for Perot to “show those republicans”,
mkent:
Yes. “Democracy ” is a train the left rides to the last stop and then they get off.
The right divides itself in order to ultimately conquer, but is conquered. That is the danger.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/07/the-u-k-blowout-mark-steyns-view.php
Schwartzenegger picked on to many foes at the same time.
Miguel, the Conservatives not only steered into the iceberg, they backed off and crashed into it with the other side of the hull. Just to be sure.
The more I look at the numbers the more it seems clear that voters did not switch to Labour. They just didn’t vote for Conservatives.
So it seems but labour will take it as a reason to go all airship one
“My government will serve you.”
With a death warrant.