6 votes is an incredible margin. Just shows that every vote matters.
“My vote doesn’t matter” people, where you at?
Have Labour improved people’s lives after 1 year of power? They need to earn votes, not expect them
Starmer didn’t even visit the constituency in the run up. However Labour’s biggest issue here is that the previous MP was sacked after he got into a fight while drunk one night and was convicted of assault, which was the whole reason there was a byelection. So it was kind of a coin flip on whether anything they could have tried would have made the situation better, and it easily could have backfired.
I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come
I think it’s uncertain for now. A majority of 6 votes is still a win but it’s also an incredibly unconfident win.
Runcorn is supposed to be the kind of place Reform keep being tipped to sweep but even in a byelection they’ve only managed a win by a hair’s breadth.
Reform seem to have a lot more work to do to win over voters to reliably take seats at a general election.
Of course, there’s still 4+ plus years for Labour to lose more voters also.
4 years for Labour to lose more voters, but hopefully four years for Reform to show off their incompetence and ruin any election chances, with any luck.
Unfortunately I don’t think their incompetence puts people off. As long as they keep making a noise about immigration, people are going to vote for them.
As long as they keep making noises about immigration they’re going to continue to split the right-wing vote and draw Tories further to the right.
What’ll end up happening is either they will do something mind-numbingly stupid which gets even their own supporters mad at them or they’ll just become the nasty party 2.0.
It feels like both are waiting, or even relying on, for the other to implode.
Historically that’s not how that works.
Reform have a big problem and that problem is that all of the undecided voters see them as basically extremists (to a greater or lesser extent), and Farage knows this which is why he is trying to distance himself from the likes Tommy Robson. The problem is that the party in general don’t seem to be behind that idea. They really like being unapologetically right-wing fanatics, especially Anderson who has probably worked out that if he fails here he’s finished in politics, and they really don’t care about anything else, even if it limits the growth of the party.
We can’t help but follow Americans culturally. To the bottom we go my friend :D
You just saw us repudiate Trump in Canada. Did you need an illustrated pamphlet or other visual aides or something? How was this a challenge?
Canada’s recent election also had a handful of ridings won by just a handful of people. I hope everyone that can does vote.
I bet there were more than seven votes for the Greens and Lib Dems combined.
I bet there was more than 7 people who’d claim to be labour supporters who just stayed home.
100%. Point is that if Labour had appealed to their left flank, they’d have held the seat!
Yeah that’s true. I think the way a lot of people (myself included) read your original comment was that it was blaming those 7 people for voting wrong.
Objectively, both things are true! But I tend to think Labour is the one with the power and so they’re the ones who should be changing, not the relatively powerless seven voters.
I don’t think you can say someone voted wrong if they voted for what they believe in. As you say it lies with the parties to win people over (and potentially to reform voting systems so that people can vote for that they want rather than being forced to vote against what they don’t want)
I blame the Labour voters for clinging to the party Thatcher is proud of and not being willing to vote Green.
If every Labour voter had just compromised a little and voted Green instead, we wouldn’t have all of these problems.
