Saturday, February 25, 2017

Goverments Decide on Sustainability So Politics Matters

Those Feb 2017 UK by-elections. Check the data. Not the spin.

Copeland                                             Stoke Central
Con gain from Labour                         Labour hold

%vote Change from 2015 General Election:
* = ELECTED
Con*        +8.5%                                  Con         +1.8%
Lab          -4.9%                                   Lab*        -2.2%
Lib-Dem  +3.8%                                  LIB-Dem +5.7%
UKIP        -9.0%                                  UKIP        +2.1%
Green      -1.3%                                  Green      -2.2%

Turn-out (ie % of registered electors that voted):

51.33%   ( -12.5% cf GE2015)         38.2%  (-11.7% cf GE2015)

My commentary follows references to data.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_by-election,_2017

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke-on-Trent_Central_by-election,_2017

http://www.ukpolitical.info/by-election-turnout.htm

http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout15.htm

Commentary

1) The  Labour vote did not evaporate in either case, contrary to the propaganda by the capitalists

2) The Tories played a blinder again by selecting a woman candidate who had worked in the local industry: nuclear power and reprocessing. And by pointing out the long-held anti-nuclear credentials of Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

3) To finish the Copeland remarks, the UKIP vote looks mostly to have switched back to its traditional home ,the Conservatives (ie UKIP -9.0% ,Conservatives +8.5%) with the prresently-typical protest vote going to the Lib-Dems and not the Greens).

And the turn-out moved down by 12.5%, to 51.33%,  from the 2015 General Election level (which, at 63.83% was almost the same as the turn-out average in England of 65.8%).

4) In Stoke Central (which was a much  more 'high prrofile' election due to the presence of a well-publicised UKIP candidate and a re-standing Muslim candidate for the Lib-Dems). the turn out at both the 2015 General Election (only 51.26%, then) and this by-election (36.7%, down, therefore, from 2015 by 11.7%) reflected/es the run-down economic status of many ex-industrial, mostly northern and midlands Constituences, that were used and deserted by the New Labour project of Tony Blair, Peter Madelson, Gordon Brown, JohnPrescott, Neil Kinnock, etc.

5) To round-out the Stoke Central commentary, the UKIP efforts mostly  failed despite the media coverage, etc. The two protest votes moved as in Copeland (LD up, Green down: neither by much).

6) The bigger picture:

The two by-elections were  caused by resignations of two anti-Corbyn, pro-Remain, Blair/Mandelson-promoted New Labour MPs (whether they are members of The Labour Friends of Israel I don't know: that pro-Zionist group has along-standing hatred of Jeremy Corbyn's pro-Palestinian position).

Their resignations certainly appear to have been coordinated by the pro-Remain, pro-capitalist factions (which likely the involvement, if not coordination, of the Chatham House pro-capitalist network).

As such it was a failed attempt to 'get rid of' the Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell project for democratic and co-operative socialist.

A project that is heartened by the outcome.

Not least that the Blairite candidate in Copeland was defeated.

One step back, but two steps forward (at least!)

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