If you "have waited 14 years for this", then you are a pure careerist, or you have a weird hobby, or you are a public sector middle-class supremacist, or you treat politics like football, "as long as our team wins." Those are overlapping categories. But the Independent Left has won as many seats as Reform UK, and more than the Green Party. By 2029, the NHS privatisation programme will have made Wes Streeting one of the most unpopular politicians that Britain had ever seen, and his constituency will be even more Muslim than it was now. Keir Starmer will by then be 66, and Streeting's main rival to succeed him was to have been Jonathan Ashworth. Think on.
I remain unique in having predicted both hung Parliaments this century; there are Fleet Street royalty with much worse records than that. Like people who predicted fewer than 100 Conservatives MPs and the Liberal Democrats as the Official Opposition, I can say that a very few votes cast differently, if at all, would have delivered a hung Parliament this time. But I stopped predicting that a while ago, because it made no difference to me. As would have applied equally to any other outcome, everything about this General Election result has made the case for my ongoing projects, most immediately my weekly magazine and my thinktank, to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. I had better get on with them.
Streeting's parachuted in boyfriend failed to win Stockton West.
ReplyDeleteLeaving it the only Conservative seat in the North East.
DeleteThis election has the biggest gap between vote shares and seats in history. Reform UK had far more votes than the Independent Left (over 4 million) and it’s a democratic disgrace that that resulted in four, possibly five, seats.
ReplyDeleteThis one runs over the long weekend after every General Election. Is it that time again?
DeletePro-Palestine candidates second in another nine seats, including Starmer's own. What did you think of his Downing Street speech?
ReplyDeleteEvery new Prime Minister gives the same speech. But your first point is well made.
DeleteOnly 5130 more votes and there would have been twice as many pro-Gaza MPs: Leanne Mohammed for Ilford North (lost by 528), Muhamad Islam for Bradford West (lost by 654), Jody McIntyre for Birmingham Yardley (lost by 693), James Giles for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (lost by1,566), Ajmal Masroor for Bethnal Green and Stepney (lost by 1,689). So only 2,259 more votes and there would have been two Workers Party MPs for Birmingham.
ReplyDeleteThe Ilford North result will go down as the great near miss, the one that fell just short of saving England's NHS.
DeleteBirmingham Hall Green and Bethnal Green & Stepney were lost due to split votes.
DeleteIndeed. But Khalid Mahmood of the Henry Jackson Society and of the Trojan Hoax is out. There is that.
DeleteHilarious that you predicted a hung parliament,
ReplyDeleteYou are very easily amused.
DeleteI stopped predicting that a while ago, because it made no difference to me. As would have applied equally to any other outcome, everything about this General Election result has made the case for my ongoing projects, most immediately my weekly magazine and my thinktank, to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. I had better get on with them.
You stopped predicting it a while ago because you knew it made you look stupid.
DeleteI stopped predicting it, although at the time it was still more likely than not, because it had stopped having anything to do with what I was about. Any outcome to this General Election would have made the case for that. And here we are.
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