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?

Also I do watch PM questions occasionally and I disagree starmer runs rings round Boris . He should do with his background , but sorry I have only seen a few occasions where he has . Very disappointing.

@Xenia - Spot on

In addition, calling people stupid for voting conservative, will just alienate them even more. Maybe, the people voting Labour are the stupid thick gullible fools!
People need to understand, that a persons vote is personal to them, the reasons and logic behind it matter to them. Berating them for their choices is counter productive, showing them a more desirable and opportune way to vote would be far more powerful.
If the elite, liberal socialist left, continue to look down on the working class of the country they will continue to lose seats. The ‘woke’ movement of Labour, gains no traction or engagement with their old voting base, quite the opposite.
Start representing the working class of the country again, and stop pandering to the needs and demands of predominantly white liberal graduates.

1. Brexit (and a bit of perfectly timed distractive gunboat diplomacy against the French). Leave still believes it's being frustrated by Remain and that it wasn't fundamentally flawed from the start.
2. The working class of old isn't the current working class. Labour isn't the party your grandfather voted for, but dead grandfathers don't vote. The working class isn't the working class that people who refer to things as Working Class with a sense of nostalgia thinks it is.
3. No one wants to pay higher taxes, and everyone believes that given the opportunity they'd be in the higher tax bracket next week.
4. No one wants to be a 'Centrist'. Both extremes want the Blair/Brown years remembered for the Iraq war, they want everyone to forget about the every day improvements and progressive achievements that were made.
5. We have a really terrible electoral system, but no one in power wants to change it - because it supports the two-party system as it is.

@EdwinPootsLovesArchaeology

Why isn’t the Guardian an alternative anymore?

It's very American focused, especially towards Silicon Valley wokeness. Some of the reporting too is very biased and inaccurate. It's all a bit concerning tbh.

Thank you for your reply. I’ve heard or read that it loses a lot of money but it’s owned by some trust with very deep pockets that props it up so I suppose it can go on writing bollocks without worrying if anyone reads it or not.

Take your pick:

Labour hates women - even though they are not quite sure how to define them.

Labour is obsessed with woke identity theory.

Labour fetishises working class poverty and people staying in their place.

Labour doesn’t represent anyone except a handful of Uber woke leftys from the upper middle class.

Labour is still controlled by momentum (see above).

Labour is still trying to undo the referendum result.

Labour hates Jews.

Keir Starmer is not the problem. His failure to move the party back to centre left is the problem. The ghost of Corbyn haunts all his (in)action.

I believe the Labour Party needs to split. There needs to be one party who represent the old views, support the working class etc etc
And another party, a new champagne socialist woke brigade.
The current Labour Party cannot continue while these two ideologies are trying to run concurrently.

@CervixSampler

Labour don't know what a woman is. Neither do LibDems. Or the Greens. It's a problem. I suspect the brexit effect is the driver though.

OFGS. It's not about bloody trans people. You "suspect" Brexit? Of course it is.

I have retired now but am an ex trade union activist who went as far as regional committee level and was involved with the equal pay for work of equal value campaign when it was still in it’s infancy, cheered when men could be at last be prosecuted for raping their wives and suffered virulent public attacks when I ran the first women’s group for members of my union branch.

The Labour Party and Unions have always been dominated by extremists pushing their own political agenda. Thirty years ago NALGO and then UNISON was dominated by members of the SWP. They pushed their Marxist agenda from within. I had a few run ins with them as I was a reformist and not a revolutionary which was a dirty word to them.

The transgender agenda is dominating the Labour Party. I had an enormous doorstep debate with a young woman who was canvassing who thought that letting intact men work in DV refuges was fine. Has she ever stepped foot in one? I have, I talked to a woman who had survived an attack that left her on life support for days and it was a miracle she was alive. She was someone that needed personal care from women only and who the hell are the Labour Party to dictate that she is transphobic for requesting that.

I abstained from voting in the local elections for the first time in my life yesterday. I felt terrible as women fought for our right to vote. I got so stressed out it made me cry and I would consider myself incredibly tough.

I said to that canvasser if a lifelong trade unionist who has voted Labour forever and a day refuses to vote for you anymore can you not see your doing something very wrong. She just huffed and puffed and I knew she thought I was incredibly unenlightened.

@HeadNorth

Are you for real? Yes, *@SunsetBeetch* - why do you think Hartlepool voted Tory? Do you not think it was linked to Boris supposedly 'getting Brexit done.'? Is there not a history of xenophobia in Hartlepool? Are these 2 things not, possibly, linked?

I'm from Hartlepool. Can we have some evidence of our history of xenophobia please?

The biggest mistake they have made in recent years is selecting the wrong milliband, going with the bacon buttie eating Mc Clusky's lap dog was a huge mistake, and a missed opportunity to realign the party to the broader audience.

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.

@fromdownwest

The biggest mistake they have made in recent years is selecting the wrong milliband, going with the bacon buttie eating Mc Clusky's lap dog was a huge mistake, and a missed opportunity to realign the party to the broader audience.

Absolutely this was the start of their rapid slide. David would have been so much better.

I was so saddened to hear this result. I grew up in Stoke which also went tory for the first time ever at the last election, I suspect for similar reasons to Hartlepool. But really, Hartlepool was Peter bloody Mandelson's constituency for 6 years so, with respect, they have shown that they can tolerate a God awful labour MP, but still voted tory this time. I think the labour candidate / outgoing MP were remain supporting though, which won't have helped. There are whole tranches of the upper midlands / north of England / south Wales etc. that still don't have jobs to replace those lost in mines / heavy industry / shop building, 30+ years later. The sad thing is that these voters seem to think that Conservatives will create them. Shall we take a bet on that now?

Politics has changed and the old generation of " if he's wearing a red rosette he gets my vote" are dying off. The new generation are more analytical and have much more information at hand so rather than believing the flyer that comes through the door they do research. Labour love the "rich and poor" "working class / upper class" divisions that many younger voter now see are largely irrelevant and trancend society.

The Conservatives and Boris listened to the Brexit vote in the Northern Labour heartlands and do not treat their vote with contempt of a "foolish, daft voter" as the other parties tried to.

Boris has delivered on many fronts with Brexit and navigating the mine field of a global pandemic. Of course it's not been without it's hiccups but when compared to other European nations the progress of vaccinations has been impressive.

Corbyn was a disaster for Labour and god only knows the mess they would have made of dealing with Covid, voters are giving Boris a chance to prove himself as quite frankly a few years of support cannot be any worse for that area than the lifetimes support Labour has enjoyed but done relatively little with to make life in tne North East better.

I think there might be more local rather than National reasons for this vote. There has been a lot of investment in the Middlesbrough area recently, with an active Tory Mayor who has used the one or two Tory MP’s in the area to help facilitate this investment. A new Freeport and the rejuvenation of the old British Steel site to mention just two. I think the people of Hartlepool saw this happening on their doorstep and saw voting Tory as a way of getting similar investment in their own area.

@Blinkingbotheration

When are the woke going to realise that their agenda is fuelling the country’s swing right? If we are left in a position where voting Tory is the only way to secure women’s rights, then Tory’s will be immovable from government. Kier is totally hamstrung by the hard left relics from Corbyn’s leadership...

Exactly.

Corbyn did for labour, him and his cronies destroyed the labour movement.

I hope Scotland do the same.

Because labour despise the people who would have voted for them once.

About the 'don't know what a woman is ' argument, are Conservative MP's asked this question ? Has Boris ever been asked ? What were their replies ?

The forgotten, nobody cares. Labour don’t care about the north east anymore, so why should people vote for them.

Having worked at that council for many years until recently I imagine a lot of the vote is against the council. Complacent, lazy, with lots of jobs for the boys. There have been heavy cuts to all the council services, buildings closed, but strangely the management tier managed to survive. Many years or promises of projects and plans to improve the town, money spent on plans, new infrastructure, all come to nothing. Money going to local building crooks.
Hartlepool is one of those towns where everyone either worked or knew someone working for the council.
And to people in Hartlepool Kier is a also toff, just like the Tories. So why not try a different toff.

I don’t think the tories will do any better. Apart from this election the people in London don’t give a shit about the place.

There’s a large proportion of the Labour Party who think everyone who doesn’t agree with them on everything is scum. After years of being told they should piss off and join the Tories, it’s not really surprising that a lot of people have done.

Specific to Hartlepool, Teesside has had a Conservative elected mayor (who is a prick but never mind) for a few years and been rewarded with extra grant funding, Freeport status, pet local projects being funded etc. that other areas with Labour politicians haven’t.

@Lawnpop

But no idea what the appeal of Boris is and why Labour are blamed when it’s the tories that have been in power for so long

Labour are ‘blamed’ because their inability to offer a viable opposition to one of the weakest governments in history is a catastrophic failure.

They might start to redress this by dropping all of the ‘identity politics’ bullshit, pulling together some workable policies, and getting back to representing the people who used to vote for them.

It wouldn’t take a huge amount of time to research the reasons why former LP members have dropped them like a hot turd in recent years.

They’re not an opposition party. They’re barely even a party.

People want optimism and a better future. Vaccines, investment and jobs are all seen as the Tory agenda.

All Labour offers is telling them they're all racists and that lockdown should go on even longer (harming working class people).

I don't agree with the SNP, but their popularity is linked to offering what they claim is a utopian future under Independence. It gives something positive to vote for, even if it's bollocks.

Because ordinary working people don't feel that the Labour Party represent them any more

This argument really makes me laugh. Do 'ordinary working people' (I'm one) think the Tories represent them then?