Anyone in Hartlepool - what on earth is going on

[Purplecatshopaholic]

Genuine question. (Apologies if this is in the wrong place, I don’t post much). I’m Scottish and in Scotland, and I am constantly aware these days of how different the views are of Westminster up here, to across the border sometimes. We also have our own Labour Party leader up here. But really? Is Keir Starmer that bad? Are other parties not available? Who on earth is still voting for Boris…? Any WHY?

In answer to your question op, labour need to stop relying on getting votes just because “the conservatives are terrible “ or “Boris is a buffoon” and stop insulting the intelligence of their main voter base.

All of the above is so negative and doesn’t inspire anyone to vote for them. Oh and all of the woke stuff too, which is a complete turn off to most of the silent majority. They need to stop assuming people on Twitter speak for the uk population.

"and have had a small insight into what it's like being on the 'wrong' side of an argument according to the liberal left" I have plenty of these insights, not via Brexit but various social issues and this still hasn't put me off voting Labour tbh. Maybe I'm the strange one here but I fundamentally think the Tories' vision of economics is bad enough that I don't care if some arsehole on twitter is telling me I'm a frothing bigot. I know they're very good at branding themselves as caring about the left-behind but I don't think their record actually demonstrates that they do, at all. But somehow if you point out that maybe the lack of investment (which I know continued through New Labour, a strand of Labour I do not like) is related to the central government and not local councillors, that proves you're a toff who thinks everyone is thick. You can't win, and my tendency within Labour (Blue Labour) is even MORE doomed.

It's fairly insulting to treat the small trades working in skilled manual trades as 'belonging' to Labour's natural working class constituency. The skilled tradesmen of my acquaintance view themselves as hardworking middle class, who aspire to do better for their family.

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought yesterday's Election was to appoint a Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner?

@Marmite27 Not all of Yorkshire!!

[quote MmeLaraque]@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

“We” are the women you are referring to in this:

“ If you really think a trans person would go to all that trouble just so they could plan some devious attack in a toilet block, you really don't have a clue what trans people are experiencing."

I support trans people. They experience aggression and attacks already. Quite why you'd be so convinced they'd inflict that on another person is beyond me. Your prejudice is clear.[/quote]
Can you state your response to my actual points, rather than your pathetic and depressingly predicable “prejudice” accusations?
I’ll give you a simple one:
If a woman has been raped, should she be able to request a female medical examiner and expect that to not be a trans woman?

“ If you really think a trans person would go to all that trouble just so they could plan some devious attack in a toilet block, you really don't have a clue what trans people are experiencing.”

No, we do not think a transperson would do that. We think a sexual predator posing as a transperson would do that.
After all this time, men still have no idea what women are experiencing......

[quote MmeLaraque]@AllTheUsernamesAreAlreadyTaken

“We” are the women you are referring to in this:

“ If you really think a trans person would go to all that trouble just so they could plan some devious attack in a toilet block, you really don't have a clue what trans people are experiencing."

I support trans people. They experience aggression and attacks already. Quite why you'd be so convinced they'd inflict that on another person is beyond me. Your prejudice is clear.[/quote]
Its not about trans people. Its about men. Males. Most violence is committed by men. And nearly all sexual violence is committed
by men (97%). This is why we have sex segregated spaces when women are vulnerable. If you create a safeguarding loophole that lets males into these spaces you inevitably create a way for violent males to attack women men, or for sexually predatory men to access women.

@CervixHaver

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought yesterday's Election was to appoint a Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner?

Different places were voting on different things.

Penwerris in Falmouth, where DS is a student (in Penwerris) has a high percentage of students, who are not loved. I suspect it was student votes who elected Labour.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

They also had quite a hand from the working classes around the world whose countries Britain colonized and enriched itself from their gruelling labour

This is true, but I'm not sure it'll have been at the forefront of voters' minds in Hartlepool or anywhere else

IME - especially given the disaters of the last year - people tend to focus on the here and now rather than engaging in self-flagellation over historical injustices. I don't say this is right, only that it is, and it's something else Labour would do well to remember

This! The idea that working class people should not be proud of their contribution to the nation unless they couch it in terms that show an appropriate level of self flagellation about colonialism is a pretty good example of the wokeness that people are fed up of.

A lot more students in Falmouth these days than fishermen.

Are the students actually back in Falmouth or still expected to study from home? If the later, I strongly suspect that not all that many would bother to organise a postal vote. I could be wrong, of course.

@pucelleauxblanchesmains : What is the outcome though if "blue" labour is doomed?
It's where I guess I once belonged politically, hence the interest.

Some of this thread is hilarious.

I'm not in Hartlepool but I am in another previously red wall northern area.

One of the big problems is that Labour don't understand, and don't represent, the values and wishes of traditional working class northerners any more. They just don't.

As an example I was speaking to a London born colleague a few weeks ago about the upcoming elections and what might happen with Labour - he's a party member and keen support of Starmer.

He told me he thought Angela Rayner being so senior in the shadow cabinet would be a boost and that we northerners would relate to her!

If I told him that a lot of northerners I know are embarrassed to be seen as like her - poorly educated, loudmouthed, and a grandmother at 37 - he would have been stunned. People like Rayner are simply NOT what hardworking, traditional working class people aspire to, and it's frankly abysmal that Labour are so out of touch that they think they are.

Falmouth Arwenack and Falmouth Penwerris went Con to Lab.

(lovely place names they have in Cornwall)

@AnnPerkins

The Conservative message is all about optimism for the future, whether you think they should be believed or not. And with the vaccination programme going so well this by-election came at just the right time for them.

Kier Starmer is right about Johnsons' character, and Tory sleaze and all the rest of it, but it's not what people want to hear right now. People want to be optimistic after the horrific year we have all lived through and Labour haven't sensed the national mood.

Exactly this, people want optimism and aspiration. If Labour want to recover, they need to do the same. Labour need to learn that negative campaigning does not work, Blair became PM by focusing on optimism for the future and aspiration for a better life.

The identity politics isn't helping Labour either.

What a bloody mess.I wish we could be rid of this hateful, binary approach to politics.
I think people vote Tory because of many reasons...but I fear 'not letting foreigners take our jobs' may be part of it.

The Labour candidate in Hartlepool is a remainer, who supported a second referendum. Hartlepool voted 70% leave, so Labour wasn't really on the same page, which have had some impact on the result. The big plus, she's the first woman MP there.

NRTFT, sorry if this has already been pointed out.

Well if it's the student vote which turned those two Cornish seats Labour, we could ask, what exactly have the Tories offered our young people?

Student debt. Tick
Locked out of the housing market. Tick

So some of those things may be on a future manifesto. Maybe those things were mentioned in pmqs but such is the media they don't get mentioned.
But where are those policies that hurt the w/c considering labour clearly don't care about them ?
The credible leader was damned by corbynistas and by tories alike. He clearly couldn't win. Challenge the gov and he's whingeing, back them and he's a tory in disguise.

This sort of use of statistics as a blunt force instrument sickens me tbh.

The " just parking it here without comment" grinds my gears. Tosser.

@SofiaMichelle

Some of this thread is hilarious.

I'm not in Hartlepool but I am in another previously red wall northern area.

One of the big problems is that Labour don't understand, and don't represent, the values and wishes of traditional working class northerners any more. They just don't.

As an example I was speaking to a London born colleague a few weeks ago about the upcoming elections and what might happen with Labour - he's a party member and keen support of Starmer.

He told me he thought Angela Rayner being so senior in the shadow cabinet would be a boost and that we northerners would relate to her!

If I told him that a lot of northerners I know are embarrassed to be seen as like her - poorly educated, loudmouthed, and a grandmother at 37 - he would have been stunned. People like Rayner are simply NOT what hardworking, traditional working class people aspire to, and it's frankly abysmal that Labour are so out of touch that they think they are.

Honestly, I think a lot of avid Labour members imagine we’re all “Eee up, y’off down t’pit”, “No duck, ‘am off t’look after me twenty kids, reet after ave amputated me oon gangrenous leg”.

Their romanticism of working class people is so patronising.

@BuggerBognor

Here we go...🙄

“But why won’t people do what I want??!!”

It’s like the emperor’s new clothes.

“Only clever people can see it. You must be really stupid if you can’t.”