General British politics discussion thread

First results coming in, Labour hold Sunderland and the big news is Reform take second place ahead of the Tories.

This could be absolute annihilation for the Tories if Reform overtake them across the country.

Tories also predicted to lose Blackpool South to Labour in the by election.

Man, the Tories are screwed

The general election will be soon anyway, and Sunak will go either before or after the general election; it doesn't greatly matter which.

As for the Conservatives losing seats because of voters shifting to Reform, we'll have to see. These results from Sunderland refer to a council in which the Tories were already the opposition; it was a Labour Council, so it's not a Tory loss, never mind a loss due to voters shifting to Reform.

At the level of individual wards, you might find Tory candidates losing out to Labour when the Tory+Reform vote was higher than the Labour vote. Or, you might not find a lot of that; you'd have to do a fairly deep dive into the figures.

Tl;dr: a protest vote for Reform in an election which neither the Tories nor Reform are likely to win is not at all the same thing as Tory voters switching to Reform in a seat that is winnable for the Tories.

2 councils so far have gone straight from blue to red. Redditch in the West Midlands and Rushmoor in Surrey.

The scale of swing in Redditch is huge but it was a Labour are for years. But Rushmoor has taken 10 councillors from the Tories and the council for the first time ever.

Really. I thought he was very unpopular going from what I see online

Where exactly are you looking?

Probably. When in doubt, ditch the leader.

Of course, the previous three leadership changes have not fixed any of the Tories' problems; they have made them worse each time. The honours students will have worked out by now that the problem is not actually the leader; it's the party, its policies and its performance. But facing up to that would be scary, so they'll probably have a putsch instead.

They are bent on ruin at the next election. Nothing will divert them from that course at this point.

Same people often claim that Labour have abandoned the working class and are full of private school educated poshos.

But is there any doubt that Rishi has been truly awful? And that a more competent person could at least save a few percentage points and maybe save a few seats.

Or maybe anybody that could do anything has already left the party or thinks that a few seats here or there is of no consequence and thus the only fight left now is that with Reform UK

I don't know how old you are, but some people remember when Labour were an actual Labour party and adhered to the principles that were laid down by people like Keir Hardie. But since Tony Blair the party has moved toward the right of the spectrum and has led to the creation of Blairite factions within it too, who are actually quite destructive. Rwanda and Brexit may not be "Labour policy" - I don't think anyone's ever made that claim - but that doesn't mean that the likes of Blair et al aren't further to the right of the political aisle than a lot of traditional Labour voters.

Blair and the Blairites are more wedded to the likes of privatisation, including within the NHS (a pillar of Labour achievement) and are willing to water down policy to curry favour with business. The latter may not sound that bad on first blush, but it often has a bad effect on employees. The former should be against the politics of anyone who considers themselves a Labour voter.

And, as far as Blair and his cohort are concerned, I'd need not mention Iraq. An illegal war which saw a, supposed, Labour leader saddle themselves for an American Conservative party that were further to the right than the Tories were at the time.

So, "Tory-lite" may sound cynical, but it isn't that for from the truth for a lot of folk.

Blair for all his many wrongs (and I can't stand the man) was far more of a pragmatist than Starmer is, he allowed dissenting voices and actual Socialists in his party. It was a far broader church than what it's become.