Wipeout for Labour in Hartlepool

[EmbarrassingAdmissions]

Given the landslide in Hartlepool, will anything make Labour think again about the way in which they've alienated their core voters (including women)?

R4 good atm with Peter M

Two Cs - Covid and still Corbyn big issue

Learn from Blair winning that’s all that had

I was at a CLP meeting in January 20, dissecting the general election defeat, where the visiting speaker (from another CLP) was analysing “why people voted wrongly”. People voted wrongly!!! Says a lot doesn’t it.

Labour MP on BBC Breakfast (didn’t catch his name but shadow local govt sec) saying the problem is not Starmer, the problem is “the Labour Party itself” which “hasn’t changed enough”. I interpret that as code for “there’s still a lot of momentum/Corbynite/sanctimonious wokebros amongst us, alienating people who would otherwise vote Labour”.

Hartlepool voted for brexit so Labour parachuted in a remain supporting candidate.
I hadn’t realised that - that’s clearly quite a stupid thing to do! Hartlepool was 70% leave!

Oh - and first female MP to ever be elected there - that is worth a cheer, even if I do vehemently disagree with her politics.

First female MP in Hartlepool, yet another female first for the Conservatives.

I love this from The Mirror:
MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle appeared to mock the party's attempts to change its image. He said: "Good to see valueless flag waving and suit wearing working so well... or not?''
He’s so bloody blind that it’s idiots like him who are losing Labour support.

There are real shifts in politics and this feels like one. It's reached the point for me where if someone says they are 'left' 'leftish' 'Labour' I don't really know what that is likely to mean, and I say it about myself. What it does tend to mean in reality is a lot of negative groaning about lots of apparently insoluble problems (again, speaking about myself here) - most people feel that women and minorities are now equal in law and the problems people talk about in that arena are personal ones that the government can't or shouldn't interfere with, that Brexit has been quite bearable compared with Coronavirus, that 'left' voices are suddenly demanding closed borders for the pandemic having insisted that open borders are essential for decades except for other countries,, and that climate change is frightening but also impossible to deal with apparently and when people actually ask what they can do, it seems to boil down to stone faced people who've bought a new car recently lecturing them about which bin to use. Even I laughed occasionally at a couple of Johnson's one-liners this year, and felt for him when he was ill, and thought the vaccination programme was good, and was pleased about the Hong Kong passports promise, and was also pleased to see a much less white and male Cabinet, and I despise the fucker.

The Conservatives led by Johnson also appear to be presenting an unclear identity to the voters and are putting out contradictory messages. However, they seem to be flexible and able to respond to massive changes in events. At the moment the Conservatives appear less ideological than they have been for years, while the opposite looks true for Labour, and I think in this way the Conservatives are more catching the current public mood.

Depressing to see Diane Abbott et al calling for a return to Corbyn's policies. They really don't get it, do they?

I get the impression that a lot of people long for a steady centre-left government and only vote Tory because Labour seems a long way from offering that. Labour also seems to be oblivious to the fact that for a lot of ordinary people the furlough scheme was a life-saver and more generous than they might have expected. That'll have been a vote-winner.

If they move left again they’ll be lost for years.

So frustrating to see

The Conservatives are certainly presenting an unclear identity with contradictory messages. But the electorate seem to have a choice between bumbling, dishonest, confused but at least basically sane and competent with cloud cuckoo land Orwellian batshit.

I don't want any of the current parties on offer, but will choose incompetent every time over insane and dangerous.

Really? I hope when you typed incompetent you actually meant competent...

if someone says they are 'left' 'leftish' 'Labour' I don't really know what that is likely to mean, and I say it about myself. What it does tend to mean in reality is a lot of negative groaning about lots of apparently insoluble problems

Labour need positive policies to win votes. Right now, I have no idea what they stand for.

The comment that Labour don’t seem to like the people they want votes from really struck a chord

Lots of Labour activists on twitter saying things like “ppl who vote Tory don’t care about decency or fairness” or the more straightforward “Tory bigots” and you know really?

I vote(d) Labour all my life but my husband votes conservative. He is a decent kind man and Labour are hardly going to persuade him to vote for them by saying that the reason he doesn’t atm is because he’s an awful person

Great comments. I read this name for Lloyd - Lloyd the Rusty Mole

I didn't vote Tory, in the end. But for every one of my lefty liberal friends making stupid, sneery comments on social media about them, I felt more inclined to do so.

Honestly, when will we move beyond this stupid, childish point scoring bullshit?

@fishareboring

"It seems that labour just don't like the people they expect to vote for them.."

Yup.

The whole message of the liberal left: "This is who you are and what you will be called. This is what you will believe. This is what you will perceive. This is what you will say. These are the derogatory names we will call you if you try to say anything other than this. Those who don't think in the superior way we do are wrong people who just don't matter. Now vote for us."

And they're continually surprised that the message back from the majority of ordinary people living real lives in the real world is a politely muttered 'fuck off' as they walk away.

You've nailed it @fishareboring !

My twitter timeline has been full of tweets like this:

twitter.com/WTFoucault/status/1390364961570967552

for the last 48 hours. They could bring tens of thousands of women back in one fell swoop with a concerted and overt support of women (as a concept) and of women's sex based rights . Heck, loads of Conservative women would vote Labour at least the once if there was some clear blue water on this - women are begging for a party to vote for that will stop their erasure. #LabourLosingWomen

And the first reply to that tweet is from Susanna Rustin, Guardian journalist, agreeing how hard it is. LOJ will be demanding her sacking come Monday.

What I find odd (and I've rarely seen mentioned, except by Grayson Perry!) is the way this generation of Labour, both Corbyn and Starmer sides, have totally embraced Globalisation with all its insecurities and its Tebbit 'on your bike' attitude to working class jobs, when my generation of Leftists 20 years ago took to the streets to protest about it.

Agree with a lot of what is said here about Labour, but I don’t get why people think Tories are a good option on women’s rights.

The Tories want to change Judicial Review to make it harder. JR is the main way women have been fighting back.

The Tories like to bring more private sector companies into the NHS. It’s profit motive in the privatised US health system that a lot of people think has been driving the gender issue.

The only Tory MP who actually speaks out on women’s rights is Jackie Doyle-Price. As there are more Tory MPs, and they face less pushback from activists than in the other parties, where are the rest?

Baroness Nicholson does a lot but she is a very old style kind of Tory (and there are Labour peers who are also speaking out). The new Tory MPs from the Red Wall were actually in favour of GRA reform and self-id (suspect because they are younger, rather than that’s what their constituents want).

And yes, Liz Truss read the room, but that doesn’t have to mean much, there’s the conversion therapy push and plenty of ways to enable self id in practice. And there’s lots of lobbying and plenty of potential for donations … of course, the Tories won't be interested in that, will they?

The people in the centre are voting Tory, we had better move further to the left then they will definitely vote for us. Tory scum.

but I don’t get why people think Tories are a good option on women’s rights.

It is a case of 'the Torys may destroy women's rights' compares to 'Labour/Lib Dems/Greens definitely will destroy women's rights and laugh and call us bigots whilst doing so'

Destroying through neglect versus it being a mission statement.

Our friends in the north who voted for brexit and Tory told us that they did so because, why not? Nothing really changed for them from Tory to Labour to Tory.

It’s like Labour moved to London and had a 5 year conference on what they wanted people to think and just worked off that. (The heartlands used to be Hull. Now it’s Islington. In an organic pub.)

‘Why People voted wrongly’ - fucking hell!

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

In other news: One of the subplots of Labour’s bad night could be the party losing voters, and council seats, to the Greens in traditional heartlands

Greens are becoming bloody experts in the new woke gender twattery unfortunately.

It would be really good to know how much the lack of support for single-sex spaces and rights affected voter decisions beyong the FWR / GC twitter bubble.

Media talks only about the Brexit effect.