Poll Dancing

As expected, Newcastle has probably gone to no overall control, while Reform UK has taken control of Sunderland, Gateshead, and South Tyneside; they would have taken North Tyneside if, as in the other cases, every seat had been up for election, and the same would have been true in Hartlepool. The Leaders of Newcastle, Sunderland and South Tyneside Councils have all lost their seats, as has the Leader of Hartlepool, who is married to the MP. Jamie Driscoll has topped the poll in the Monument ward of Newcastle, thereby winning back as a Green the seat that he had previously held for Labour.

The Conservatives and Labour have both done better in London than in general, which says a very great deal, although so does Reform’s success in parts that were historically in Essex, and so does the onward march of the Liberal Democrats in parts that still played at The Oval. But would you vote for a party whose potential Foreign Secretary had lost his seat on the local council? Five days after the death of Shirley Porter, the Conservatives took back Westminster from the Labour administration of her nightmares. In so doing so, they took back their Abbey Road seat from Alan Mendoza, who had defected to Reform, and in the same ward they kept out one of Liz Truss’s erstwhile Assistant Whips, Damien Moore, also now of Reform. As part of the general takeover of Reform by close allies of Boris Johnson, immediately upon his defection Mendoza was given the position of Chief Advisor on Global Affairs, while he remained and remains Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society. Mendoza is sanctioned by Russia, and clearly the voters of Abbey Road agree with Vladimir Putin.

137 miles and a universe away, Rupert Lowe is turning Great Yarmouth into the Brighton of the Right. Although of course they would not all have been from the town, or at least not yet, until Thursday 4 September, 500 revellers were to have congregated there that weekend having paid £72 per head to hear Crucified, Whitelaw, Pressure 28, Last Orders, Bulldog Breed, London Breed, Combat BC, Wellington Arms, and Birthrite. The main organiser was Rob Claymore, who played in more than one of those bands, but the local pointman was Robert Bray of Blood and Honour, which last January had its assets frozen as a domestic terrorist organisation. It has not, however, been proscribed, unlike Palestine Action. Lowe had said nothing about “the biggest White Power gig in Britain in 10 years”. His supporters have just won all nine of Great Yarmouth’s seats on Norfolk County Council, leaving Reform three seats short of overall control. Reform holds several parliamentary seats with tiny majorities, and it could be denied hundreds more by handfuls of votes, so this is a sign of things to come.

The Lib Dems already led more councils than the Conservatives, this is their eighth consecutive year of net gains in local government, and they may well come out of it as the largest municipal party in England, so it really is time for a bit of scrutiny of them. But they managed five years in the Cabinet without that, so all attention will instead be on the successes of two parties for which our betters had specifically told us not to vote, plus the fact that the First Ministerships of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were all now to be held by parties that were at least theoretically opposed to the Union, and two of which had a history of at least sailing close to the wind of political violence. Notice, too, that the official media had invented a separate category of “Muslim Independents”. That designation cannot appear on a ballot paper, so it has to be imposed by reference to a candidate’s, or in many cases now a councillor’s, name. We can all see who are the racists and sectarians.