green pol blather
So after all my grumbling about the increasing presence of Right Wing parties in power across the Western world, I woke up to the news that a properly Left Wing party has won a Parliamentary by-election in Manchester.
The Green Party soundly defeated the right wing Reform plc, and the Labour Party (who had been in control of that constituency since NINETEEN THIRTY FLIPPING ONE) came a distant third. The Conservatives did so badly they lost their electoral deposit. Sir Oink A Lot of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party unfortunately came last.
Professor Sir John Curtice, a veteran political analyst who know his onions wrote a piece for the BBC pointing out this is the first by-election where neither Labour nor Conservatives were the top two parties. It's a properly historic win.
However, the cry babies at Reform Limited are using racist dogwhistles to explain their loss, blaming "Family Voting" (i.e. Muslim voters all voting the same way) for losing, which Sir Prof Curtice kind of agrees with:
...according to two polls that correctly anticipated the close three-way battle that emerged from the ballot boxes, the Reform party led the field in the predominantly white working class Denton half of the constituency.
Meanwhile, Labour lost ground heavily in 2024 in seats with substantial Muslim-identifying populations, largely as a result of Labour's initial stance at least on Israel's actions in Gaza.
Now... the Greens were able to forge ahead among the many Muslim voters in the Gorton half of the constituency.
Although Manchester Council are disputing the claims of rigged elections plus no-one is saying exactly who these "election observers" were observing the election for... is it an echo of Trump's "fake votes/stolen election" bullshit?
Anyway. So well done, the Muslim community of Gorton & Denton, for kicking the fascists squarely in the bollocks. More of this, please.
It's heartening to see a political party that want to fix things actually do well in an election. It's been more of the same austerity and "there's no money to fix anything but here's several billion pounds for some project nobody wants" policies for 16 years now.
Labour have taken a massive kicking. It's a strong indication of how disillusioned the public are with this Labour government. Maybe without Jeremy Corbyn's handling of the Brexit hot potato we might have gotten rid of the Conservatives earlier in their 14 year reign; but even so, Labour have burned through all the goodwill of their 2024 election result in 2 years. Questions need to be asked of their leader - the most bland man in history, hopefully it will start a change in direction for them.
I'm still pessimistic about how things are going, but today there's a small ray of sunshine poking through the clouds.