OFFICIAL: The Worst Local Election Results for Labour EVER!

Right, so Keir Starmer reckons his Labour Party will learn the lessons in light of the drubbing they got during these local elections does he? No he won’t and the damage has already been done too, because this set of results, coming just 10 months after that landslide General Election win, is an indictment of all of the broken promises he got away with in opposition having very real consequences once in power. This has been Labour’s worst local election result in recorded local election history. Nationwide, Labour picked up just 19% of the vote and on a night where the Tories were defending by far the most seats and had the most to lose, the fact Labour lost almost two thirds of the seats they were defending, not flatlining, not making small gains, but huge losses alongside the Tories shows the public is rejecting the old, tired two parties, but at a much greater cost, as the populist Farage and Reform UK, propped up by a gushing client media, has made massive gains, though it was a successful night for the Lib Dems as well as the Green Party, who for the eighth year running increased their numbers of councillors, effectively doubling their representation across the councils being defended. Combined with a massive by-election loss, council control losses and handing so much victory to Farage, Starmer very much is, as many have been warning for some time, ushering in fascism and I have zero faith he’ll change course, so Labour look set for even more damage to come.
Right, so that was Keir Starmer there following the defeat to Reform UK in the Runcorn & Helsby by-election, which Reform won by just 6 votes, saying that he gets it, that the change isn’t being seen yet, one main reason for that being there hasn’t been any, and even his own re-elected Doncaster mayor pointed this out and Starmer came back with incomes are flatlining or down, fiscal drag has pulled more people into paying income tax on low wages, stabilised the economy, but hasn’t because it is hamstrung by Rachel Reeves fiscal rules, which are actually prioritised over the economy, they have to work before the economy can in their heads, which is unhinged, the triple lock is being debated as to whether Labour will actually break it and saying the right decisions were made regarding hiking National Insurance on employers which have resulted in unemployment rising, attacking disability benefits and attacking the winter fuel allowance were the right decisions still, when a message has clearly been sent that the general public disagree with you. All he could do was say we need to go further and faster. That is not the message the public is asking for or wanting to hear. Frankly it’s a miracle he didn’t refer to the stuff he really cares about like defence spending or more cash going to Ukraine, you might be thinking, but he didn’t have to, because to underline just how tin-eared Starmer is in light of the worst local election results for Labour since local election results began to be recorded, Starmer gave that interview and a speech beforehand where he very much did bleat on about Ukraine and military drones, from a defence contractor in Bedfordshire. No lessons learned, not listening, Labour will only continue to crumble.
Let’s start with that Runcorn & Helsby by-election though, Labour were already facing an uphill struggle because of the nature of this by-election being triggered, the thug passing for the former MP Mike Amesbury having a late night punch up, which saw him convicted, but even so, this was Labour’s 16th safest seat, a majority of nearly 15,000 and only 10 months into power, surely Labour couldn’t lose it? Well by 6 votes they did, to Reform UK, who’s candidate was a former Tory, so people still aren’t actually voting for change, just populism. People talk as if it was a close run thing, but it wasn’t, Labour should never have been in any danger already, less than a year into power where they could lose a seat this safe, but they did. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, after all Starmer lost Hartlepool in 2021 to the populist Boris Johnson, the opposition losing ground to the incumbent government of 11 years at that time. What makes this loss worse, is that due to the rise of Reform, who barely existed in 2021, the right of British politics has split and Starmer is still losing to them as he incessantly attempts to copy them. He is ushering in fascism at this point. Farage telling those in Durham on that council that if they work on climate change projects, or diversity or inclusion, they’d better start looking for new jobs, showing the demonisation of migrants, of the disabled and binning green commitments is his politics and Starmer has been copying it, he fought this election based on much of this and will no doubt just carry on with it. To those people in Durham, I say if you’re not in a trade union already, then bloody well join one. Farage isn’t on the side of workers, never has been, never will be, more fool you if you think otherwise.
Labour was defending just one council, Doncaster and they lost it, to Reform UK. Labour started with 40 councillors and ended the night with just 12. The Tories had half of their representation wiped out and all independents went too. Reform now run the council with 37 councillors. Labour’s only saving grace was just managing to hold onto the mayoralty there, but Ros Jones the mayor blasted Starmer for not listening and, well, if you’re going to agree with anyone in Labour right now on anything, then having seen that footage of Starmer at the start, then this is pretty much it. She drew particular attention to the winter fuel allowance cut, where she used the household support fund to mitigate Starmer’s cruel cuts to pensioners in her area, but even so, she nearly lost her job due to Starmer too.
Another council that was under no overall control, but was being run by a Labour minority administration since 2021, again Starmer’s doing, was Durham. Durham County Council had been run by Labour for the last 100 years and now it Reform UK are running it. Amongst its new crop of councillors is former GBeebies berk, the every so crafty Darren Grimes, so that’s bound to go well. Labour went from 42 councillors to just 4. The Tories were reduced from 16 councillors to just 1. The Independent grouping was slashed in half and where both the Lib Dems and Greens both made gains too, Reform took 65 council seats in one fell swoop. This is the home of the Durham Miners Gala, the capital of trade unionism and working class struggle and its fallen to Farage’s posh boys. One wit on Twitter that I saw opined that Luke Akehurst, the massively pro Israel former Labour NEC fixer, who essentially awarded himself a safe Labour seat in Durham despite being from Oxford, had only been the local MP for 10 months and Labour have lost control of a council they’d held for 100 years already, but really its on Starmer. On this basis alone, on the basis of these results in Durham alone, you would imagine big questions need asking of the strategy here, the strategy being that of course of Starmer’s handler, though officially titled Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney, the architect of Corbyn’s downfall is now apparently the architect of Starmer’s too. If McSweeney isn’t dumped after these appalling results, then it will prove to me in no uncertain terms that Starmer is the sort of politician who would be out of his depth in a birdbath and is totally reliant on others to tell him what to do. Reinforcing this notion further has come an excerpt from the Financial Times, basically confirming McSweeney is going nowhere, reading:
‘Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, will pore over the results on Friday and is likely to conclude that he is right to pursue a ‘Blue Labour’ strategy to address the populist threat – a policy which is already starting to be deployed.’
Where? Populism is clearly winning, but Labour is staying its current deeply unpopular course.
Labour last almost two thirds of their councillors. The Tories lost roughly the same proportion, though defending many more seats, the numbers are bigger. The Lib Dems increased their vote share by around a third and the Greens doubled their representation, but Reform gained 677 councillors and took control of 10 councils. Now of course they have to run them, now of course we’ll see how so many inexperienced councillors get to grips with power, but with so many Reform councillors being former Tories, we can imagine how it’ll go and a bit of exposure of the realities of Reform amidst all of the mainstream media gushing will do the country some good hopefully. The BBC for example wouldn’t give Oswald Moseley a microphone on principle for some 30 years, yet the way some in the media have been behaving, they may as well have been waving flags.
The one message I’d take away from this is whether you backed Labour to see off a challenge by Reform, or you backed Reform because you’re sick of the Tories and Labour, what you voted for in either case is absolutely no change, but if you didn’t vote at all because you see no point, I’d say that Reform just won a parliamentary seat by 6 votes, so even under the archaic and undemocratic first past the post, your vote can very much make all the difference.
After all of that I fancy a bit of anti-establishment news would be welcome though, and as such the attempts to gag Northern Irish hip hop band Kneecap for daring to be pro Palestine and anti Israel have been backfiring somewhat as more and more people come out in support for them as detailed in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch. Please do also hit like, share and subscribe if you haven’t done so already, so as to ensure you don’t miss out on all new daily content as well as supporting the channel at the same time which is very much appreciated, holding power to account for ordinary working class people and I will hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.