Hartlepool by-election

[Smokeandsteam]

It's been argued here before that the working class is no longer fit for purpose for the left. Need a new working class or failing that socialism without the working class.

Yes. And a quick look at France tells us where socialism without the working class ends up.

 

[BobDavis]

In one post Bob tells us exactly why the British left is, always has been and always will be utterly fucking unfit for purpose. Sneering, superior, moralistic and pious. What a combo.

Why would despising the nasty racist xenophobic world views held by a large number of my workmates throughout my whole working life be sneering moralistic & pious ? Or should I have tried to understand & empathise with them ? Is that where I went wrong ?

 

[MickiQ]

I do not disagree at all

But!!

As I said before, voting Tory should be illegal for anyone with a minor ounce of slight intelligence

Tory voters -- scum
Along with 'their' party, leaders, candidates, Johnsons

Taking defeat gracefully I see William

It was an impressive result for the Tories, I was expecting them to win but that margin has turned Hartlepool from what was once a safe Labour seat into a solid Tory one, I foresee another Labour civil war brewing.
2 very interesting other results were the Independent who 10% of the vote keeping her deposit, clearly there is a growing "A Plague on Both Your Houses" vote and the fact that the LibDem's came 7th. Seriousy SEVENTH! More than a decade since Clegg took his 40 pieces of silver and they're still on the way down.

 

[BobDavis]

What values did the Labour candidate embody? Head chopping? Genocide in Yemen? Hacking dissidents to death? Great stuff.

Maybe Labour might be more inclined to build council houses ? We live in hope anyway.

 

[brogdale]

It's been argued here before that the working class is no longer fit for purpose for the left. Need a new working class or failing that socialism without the working class.

At this point I normally post that "Die Lösung" by Brecht...but it's getting trotted out too often, now.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Why would despising the nasty racist xenophobic world views held by a large number of my workmates throughout my whole working life be sneering moralistic & pious ? Or should I have tried to understand & empathise with them ? Is that where I went wrong ?

I guess it all depends on if your starting point is to take people as you find them and not what you expect them to be or not. Your experience of ordinary people as frothing racists and xenophobic is completely different to mine by the way

 

[BobDavis]

I guess it all depends on if your starting point is to take people as you find them and not what you expect them to be or not. Your experience of ordinary people as frothing racists and xenophobic is completely different to mine by the way

I suppose it depends where you spent your working life & what your job was. I was an hgv driver. That job around where I live which is Essex well outside London seemed to attract the sort of people I described.

 

[killer b]

incredible clip here from a Labour MP. TBF I think he's probably about right on the calculation some of the voters of Hartlepool have made, but it's weird hearing a Labour MP saying how great the tories are

 

[bimble]

What was turnout like? Would turnout give a clue as to how much people are just pissed off with labour or how much they're actively happy with Boris & co?

 

[killer b]

42% I read somewhere

 

[bimble]

42% I read somewhere

Thats quite high?
eta oh, hartlepool shows up top of the table for low turnout in the 2018 ones (at 24%)

 

[glitch hiker]

Not going to lie, the site of another Tory victory is pretty galling. Labour are shit and wont' learn fuck all from this of course, but even that schedenfreude isn't enough to justifiy giving more power to a cruel openly mendacious government that seems able to get away with murder. Dark times ahead?

 

[ska invita]

What was turnout like? Would turnout give a clue as to how much people are just pissed off with labour or how much they're actively happy with Boris & co?

57.9%

 

[killer b]

Thats quite high?

I'm not sure, I think it's a bit on the low side tbh. The last hard-fought by election I can think of is Peterborough in 2019, and they managed 48%

 

[redsquirrel]

57.9%
View attachment 267121

I think that must be wrong ska - wiki has 42.7%, which like killer b was the figure I saw mentioned

EDIT: I think 57.9% is the turnout for the 2019 GE, looks like someone made a c&p error

Hartlepool byelection results in full - Tories win with 16-point swing
Here are the Hartlepool results in full, from PA Media.
Jill Mortimer (C) 15,529 (51.88%, +22.96%)
Paul Williams (Lab) 8,589 (28.69%, -8.99%)
............)
C maj 6,940 (23.19%)
15.97% swing Lab to C
Electorate 70,768; Turnout 29,933 (42.30%, -15.62%)

And here are the 2019 general election results.
2019: Lab maj 3,595 (8.76%) - Turnout 41,037 (57.92%)
Hill (Lab) 15,464 (37.68%); Houghton (C) 11,869 (28.92%); Tice
(Brexit) 10,603 (25.84%); Hagon (LD) 1,696 (4.13%); Bousfield (Ind)
911 (2.22%); Cranney (Soc Lab) 494 (1.20%)

 

[Pickman's model]

Has it been blamed on aul corbs yet?

 

[Pickman's model]

I think that must be wrong ska - wiki has 42.7%

Sounds more what I'd expect

 

[Sprocket.]

Has it been blamed on aul corbs yet?

And Miliband apparently.

 

[brogdale]

Has it been blamed on aul corbs yet?

Them canny folks of Hartlepool hated him so much they lured him into a false sense of security by voting for his party (twice) then, when he'd been kicked out of the PLP, deftly delivered their killer blow.

 

[bimble]

Why would almost twice as many people in Hartlepool have voted in this local election compared to the 2018 one?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I suppose it depends where you spent your working life & what your job was. I was an hgv driver. That job around where I live which is Essex well outside London seemed to attract the sort of people I described.

Can’t say I’ve ever been to Essex but I can’t imagine working class people there are much different to those in Birmingham or anywhere else. Worried about the future for them, their families and mates. Want a decent job and a home. Depressed about the state of their local community and sick of the lockdown. Do some of them hold some views that some on the left find distasteful? Yup. Is that what defines them and means they should be written off? If you are waiting for a perfect working class to emerge, fully formed, immune from alienation and capitalist realism then you are in for a long wait.

 

[BobDavis]

Has it been blamed on aul corbs yet?

Well I was ok with Corbyn as were the rest of us sneery lefty snobs apparently.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Has it been blamed on aul corbs yet?

Now you come to mention it.....


Shadow cabinet minister says Labour must 'speed up movement back towards British people'
Steve Reed, the shadow communities secretary, was also interviewed about the Hartlepool result on the Today programme by Nick Robinson and he struggled to explain what the party meant when it said the result showed it needed to change more. (See 7.36pm.)
Reed argued that the party was still recovering from a historic defeat at the general election. He said people thought the party was “inward-looking” and not focused on aspiration. He said the pandemic meant that, as leader, Sir Keir Starmer had never been able to deliver a speech to a live audience.
When Robinson put it to him that he was blaming Jeremy Corbyn, Reed replied: “I haven’t specifically said that.” But Reed repeated the argument that the 2019 result meant Labour had a “mountain to climb”.
Robinson then said that, when Labour said it had to change, people did not know what that meant. All they got was “waffle”, Robinson said. What did change mean?
Reed replied:

One of the things that happened in the long breakdown in trust between the British people and the Labour party is that we talked to ourselves too much. I don’t want us to do that right now. I want us to get out there and I want us to speak to the British people.

 

[MickiQ]

Why would almost twice as many people in Hartlepool have voted in this local election compared to the 2018 one?

Because there was a by-election? If you're going to turn out for the by-election then you might as well cast a vote in the LE whilst you're there even if you wouldn't have made a special trip for just the LE

 

[bimble]

Because there was a by-election? If you're going to turn out for the by-election then you might as well cast a vote in the LE whilst you're there even if you wouldn't have made a special trip for just the LE

oh. i had to google what that even means.

 

[redsquirrel]

that socialism without the working class.

That is exactly what they want, a 'socialism' based on 'progressive' values rather than on class interests.

I don't agree with everything in it but this piece by Matt Karb is definitely worth reading

November’s third major winner, filling out the picture, was America’s headlong march toward a party system entirely decoupledfrom the politics of class. To be sure, the class-aligned politics of the long New Deal era — which happened to produce virtually every worthwhile national law, from Social Security to the Voting Rights Act — began to erode decades ago. But the last four years have seen a rapid acceleration of this trend, with Republicans winning larger and larger chunks of the non-college-educated working class, while Democrats gain more and more votes from affluent professionals and managers.

 

[A380]

Despite what we tell kids, British elections are mostly about getting your vote out whilst the other side don’t.
Labour seem to have lost the ability to do that at the moment.

 

[bellaozzydog]

Despite what we tell kids, British elections are mostly about getting your vote out whilst the other side don’t.
Labour seem to have list the ability to do that at the moment.

boots on the ground all voted with their feet over the last year and a half as this flags and pints, socialism free, friends of Israel dog and pony show developed

 

[The39thStep]

Just read that the Tories have taken Dudley Council so that's another area for Bob's list of places to avoid.

 

[BobDavis]

Can’t say I’ve ever been to Essex but I can’t imagine working class people there are much different to those in Birmingham or anywhere else. Worried about the future for them, their families and mates. Want a decent job and a home. Depressed about the state of their local community and sick of the lockdown. Do some of them hold some views that some on the left find distasteful? Yup. Is that what defines them and means they should be written off? If you are waiting for a perfect working class to emerge, fully formed, immune from alienation and capitalist realism then you are in for a long wait.

I would think the demographic of Birmingham is very different from the more rural parts of Essex. You have Labour MPs. None around here. I think many people have expectations that are irrational. I heard Johnson make a remark in Hartlepool the other day that was not even picked up on & should have been. “What the voters of Hartlepool want is less council tax & better social services”. How will that work then ?