Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Newport West by-election

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Newport West by-election

    Depressing enough there's over 2,000 prepared to vote for the kippers.

    Even worse when you consider their candidate was Neil Hamilton


    #2
    Nearly double their vote from 2017 but less than a third of it from 2015. And in 2010 the BNP and UKIP combined got a fraction more than Hamilton yesterday. So, um, there are some bad apples in Newport or something.

    Comment


      #3
      I dunno. I mean, sure, their vote ought to be very low given that the party has so obviously moved into what used to be the BNP's space with Batten and his promotion of Yaxley- Lennon.

      But on the other hand, the conditions right now (frustration of Leave fanatics by the non-departure on 29 March) are pretty much ideal for UKIP, and a vote of around 8 per cent on a low turnout, which would be diluted down to around 5 per cent on a fuller turnout (as I reckon extremists are disproportionately represented in low turnouts) is arguably less than one might have feared.

      Comment


        #4
        Am I allowed to hazard a guess as to the platform "For Britain" campaigned on?

        Comment


          #5
          Yeah I agree with EEG I think. Given the apocalyptic "Ordinary decent people are prepared to riot against Brexit" rhetoric coming from the hard-right in recent weeks, that the Ukips could only muster a couple of thousand in an area that they've been working hard in feels comparatively reassuring.

          Not a great result or turnout, but glad Nessa out of Gavin and Stacey ensured we held onto the seat in the face of excitable babble that literally everyone in poor towns outside London had turned against Labour's metropolitan poncery.

          Comment


            #6
            Hoped Green deputy dear leaderene Bobby Womack might sneak up to 5th. Oh well, not so lush (although that might be Nessa's mate from Swansea's catchphrase)

            Comment


              #7
              So, a few things...

              There was snow and hail yesterday in South Wales. Not sure how that effects voter turnout by party but it would depress turnout overall. I would suspect disproportionately depressing the Labour vote.

              Without UKIP splitting the right wing Brexit Leave means Leave vote, the seat could quite possibly have been lost to the Tories.

              Ruth Jones was well known for being pro-Remain and still won in an area that voted Leave in 2016. Given the lack of leadership at a national level by Labour that is pretty impressive and certainly should give Jeremy and the other Islington Lexiters pause for thought. Jeremy has hailed it as a victory for people who are fed up with austerity but it seemingly hasn't prompted any reconsiderations about how Labour should be approaching Brexit. It feels like a distinctly one-eyed analysis of the factors at work here.

              Labour Leave voters might have stayed home rather than vote for an opponent, further depressing turnout. But Labour still won.

              If you've been to Newport you will know that there are bits that are perfect recruiting grounds for the hard right and the alt right. Despite that, there is little support at the ballot box for them.

              Comment


                #8
                Thanks for that. Yeah, the fact that the there are seemingly sufficient number of Newport Leavers prepared to vote for a Remain candidate to keep the seat in Labour's hands offers lessons worth learning, one of which might be that not everyone is obsessed with Brexit as the news often conveys. This trite narrative that "Brexit has split everyone's families and friendships apart" has always struck me as somewhat overcooked, and often tells us more about the outlook and lifestyle of the pundit proclaiming it than it does the nation as a whole

                Comment


                  #9
                  Well, we don't know that any Leavers voted Labour, and we can't assume that all the Tory voters are Leavers either. People tend to vote blue rosette the same way they vote red rosette. Tory voters would prefer a Tory Brexit to a Labour anything else.

                  It's fair to say the Kipper vote is definite Leave. The missing Labour voters might be Leave voters. The Tories, who knows?

                  But 9,308 people went out into the snow and the hail to vote for a notable pro-remain candidate who won the election. Which should be the thing under discussion by Labour high command imo.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    A Sensible on another forum who "knows politics having worked for a Labour minister" tried to paint it as a bad result. Until I pointed out that the swing away from Labour yesterday was less than that in 2005 and 2010.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
                      Thanks for that. Yeah, the fact that the there are seemingly sufficient number of Newport Leavers prepared to vote for a Remain candidate to keep the seat in Labour's hands offers lessons worth learning, one of which might be that not everyone is obsessed with Brexit as the news often conveys. This trite narrative that "Brexit has split everyone's families and friendships apart" has always struck me as somewhat overcooked, and often tells us more about the outlook and lifestyle of the pundit proclaiming it than it does the nation as a whole
                      Not to mention that the movement from Labour was divided virtually evenly among four pro-Remain parties.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Yes, excellent point: the combined increases in the LD, PC and Green percentages, and the Renew percentage together make up almost the whole of the Labour percentage decline, and those parties are all strongly Remain (much more so than Labour of course).

                        Edited cos my first reaction overlooked Renew (which I'd never heard of before)
                        Last edited by Evariste Euler Gauss; 05-04-2019, 14:04.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          This Newport Leave voters thing is completely misleading anyway. They only voted marginally to leave (53% or so, which I consider marginal, even if Theresa May does not), and Labour voters overwhelmingly pro-Remain (which I suspect might well be true in most other so-called Leave seats too.)

                          Comment


                            #14
                            26 kippers voted remain?

                            Comment


                              #15
                              That breakdown is really interesting. I'm intrigued by the high percentage of Green and Plaid Cymru voters who are Leavers, especially the latter, though I don't know much about PC's current stance on Brexit.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                That 26 kippers thing is extrapolated from poll data suggesting 2 per cent of kippers voted Remain, isn't it? Maybe they were giving sarcastic answers to the pollsters' questions. Or maybe they quite like being in the EU, but just hate cyclists, gays and the indoor smoking ban?

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Maybe it simply gives them a reason to moan. Give them what they say they want, and they've nowt to complain about any more.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Nocturnal Submission View Post
                                    That breakdown is really interesting. I'm intrigued by the high percentage of Green and Plaid Cymru voters who are Leavers, especially the latter, though I don't know much about PC's current stance on Brexit.
                                    Plaid definitely want another referendum. I like Plaid. I don't think Wales should be independent but as the first ever MP I voted for was Dafydd Wigley and as he turned out to be an excellent MP then I have a lot of time for them.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      this is a pretty good analysis

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Yes it is

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          I'm intrigued by the high percentage of Green and Plaid Cymru voters who are Leavers,
                                          The Greens have been quite Eurosceptic in the past; Europe isn't a defining issue with Greens the way it is with, say, LibDems

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            They only voted marginally to leave
                                            Well quite. One of the most tedious of the many tedious things about the Brexit debates is the way whole swathes of the country are generalised about as Leave or Remain places, when the margins were often quite small. You'd think, given the coverage, that, say, Hartlepool was 98% Leave and that London was 100% Remain, whereas more people voted Leave in London than for Sadiq Khan to be mayor.

                                            And to use another example I've dredged up a few times now, there are more Remain voters in Stoke than there are Stoke City home matchgoing regulars.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              E10, I agree your point generallly about fine margins meaning it's silly to class entire places and their populations as "Leave" or "Remain". London isn't the best example of a strong majority though. London, despite various comments I see from time to time on social media from deluded smug Londoners with the gist of "let Scotland and London stay in the EU and let provincial England go its own way", was overall nowhere near as strong for Remain as some other places in England. Sure, inner London was strongly Remain, but the outer boroughs strongly diluted the overall score. Cambridge, where I'm lucky enough to live, had a Remain score of 73.8%, which beat London's overall Remain percentage (59.9%) by miles (albeit a bit below the separate scores of seven inner London boroughs). Other English and Welsh cities (I don't list Scottish or NI cities as Scotland and NI are widely known to be majority Remain anyway) which beat London's overall score: Brighton, Bristol, Manchester, Cardiff, St Albans, Oxford.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
                                                The Greens have been quite Eurosceptic in the past
                                                True.

                                                Europe isn't a defining issue with Greens the way it is with, say, LibDems
                                                Aye, obviously there's an even bigger defining issue in Climate Change. Although Green supporters are clearly majority Remain, it's not to the extent that many of our activists assume. Also, as Lucas gets almost all the national media coverage her POV is assumed to be shared by almost everyone.

                                                Jenny Jones argues the Leave case in the Lords.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Jenny Jones is pretty rotten.

                                                  Comment

                                                  Working...
                                                  X