Solid Workers

This month saw 102,630 votes cast over 45 local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. Six council seats changed hands and two seats were contested for the first time. For comparison with April's results, see here . Party Number of Candidates Total Vote % +/-  April +/- May 18 Avge/ Contest +/- Seats Conservative            45  26,881     26.2% +11.6%   -13.0%     597     -3 Labour            39  29,574     28.8%   +5.6%     -8.9%     758     -3 LibDem            36  18,583     18.1%    -0.3%    +2.9%     516      0 UKIP            13   5,105    ...

While everyone loses their heads over the expulsion of Alastair Campbell, let's consider weightier matters: what Nigel Farage's Brexit Party is going to do next. After all, here we are two days after the election results and the media, including the BBC, seem to have forgotten already that the Brexit Party steamed to the top of the poll with 31% of the vote and had 29 MEPs returned. We know there is something of a bias against in-depth coverage of the Tories compared to Labour, but seeing the commentariat carry on as if the near total displacement of the mainstream right by a fringe outfit is nothing less than astonishing. Their loss. The problem facing Farage now is how to keep the bandwagon going and, unfortunately, there are forces at work making life easier for him. Having seen the wipe out coming, the Tory leadership contest is already heavily conditioned by the Faragist insurgency before Sunday night's disaster hit. For instance, it was surprising to see Jeremy Hun...

The EU election results are in, and seldom has the electorate been so sharply contrasted. 37% of voters commuted to and from the polls on Thursday, while 63% found something else to do. In other words, despite being the most hyped and talked about EU elections ever around the polarising issue of our time, a firm majority stayed put. It's difficult to say how many of those who did vote out of party loyalty/civic duty, but for the turn out to climb by one-and-a-half points is pretty pitiful. Yet, judging by the commentariat and the Twitterati, this is immediate evidence both parties need to abandon their current Brexit positions. For the Tories, as exactly how Theresa May got the Tories in this mess in the first place. And Labour? Oh Labour, Labour, Labour. Of course, seeing the party vote melt away in London and everywhere of significance was pretty grim. Even saying see ya to Gerard Batten, and the pathetic result for Yaxley-Lennon was scant consolation. But as night follows day...

On Twitter earlier, lefty comedian David Schneider wrote "Good to hear Shami Chakrabati clarifying Labour’s position on free movement which is that it will end but only as it was under the EU so it won’t end fully though it might and if it doesn’t end it won’t be totally free. Unless that’s what happens. Simples." Well then. There's something peculiar, isn't there, about a particular fraction of otherwise progressive types who seem intent on confounding us with these increasingly erratic and incomprehensible takes, in this case about a line in the last Labour manifesto declaring that upon leaving the EU free movement will end. It's peculiar because if you give the situation a few seconds thought, it isn't. If/when we leave, free movement for EU citizens as it exists now, and the rules under which it exists, will end. This is simply because those rules will not exist any more. They will cease to be. That’s what 'ending free movement' in this context me...

Get out your disco balls. And also click on this for a piece about Boris Johnson I did for the Indy .

And just like that, everything has changed. In an odd speech that was one part trolling, one part self-mockery, May announced this morning she would begin the process of the new Tory leadership contest on 7th June and remain Prime Minister until it is concluded. And there was the usual guff about leaving the country overflowing with milk and honey, a claim that refuses to stand up even if you squint at it. So May, one of the worst Prime Ministers ever is on her way out the door with the tacky polyester furs of failure draped about her shoulders. Fuckitybye. Matters could have been quite different. The most recent past tends to colour the appreciation of what went before, and so we forget she was once a formidable opponent who could have locked Labour out of power for a decade or more. And were it not for strategic blunders that opened the door for Corbynism, it would have come to pass. Some locate her errors in the wooden 2017 General Election campaign, widely derided on the right as ...

Regularly polling fourth, facing electoral catastrophe as its EU vote goes everywhere but blue, its backbenchers in open revolt, and a government in disintegration with the Prime Minister on the verge of resignation ... Yes, unprecedented is an overused word, but that's what we're seeing right now. And savour it for we may never see its like again. When the inept meets the intractable, which is one way of looking at how Theresa May has approached Brexit, there can only be one outcome. In fact, there was only ever going to be one outcome: the Tory party, its venal government of the base, the boorish, and the befuddled was always going to come undone by the very thing it brought into being. The monster to Dave's Frankenstein, it is satisfying, so very satisfying that the referendum he thought would save the Conservative Party not only did for his premiership, it's also sunk that of his successor. And, quite likely, the leadership of the fool daft enough to step into May...