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In the election on Thursday for the replacement of Burnham as Mayor of Greater Manchester the turnout was only 25 percent. In other words, 75 percent of those eligible to vote didn’t consider the outcome important or significance enough to bother to vote. Which suggests that even in Manchester ‘Manchesterism’ is seen as not being up to much. They are right — just a bigger trough for local politicians.
When he was seeking to be elected Trump said he wouldn’t get America involved in wars like previous presidents. But his attempt to apply capitalist bully boy business tactics to relations between states has resulted in every single Arab state in Western Asia being bombed. He has set the whole area on fire.
I suspect the more intelligent members of the capitalist class will be happy to see his wings clipped in November and the back of him at the beginning of 2029. He’s been a disaster from their point of view.
To be fair, we record two measures the Burnham government has taken — he says to put money into people’s pockets but actually not to take so much out of them — to help people a “little bit” (his own words): the £2 cap on bus fares and removing VAT on electricity bills.
This, to see if and how long they last. After all, a previous Labour government in 1964 abolished prescription charges when first elected only to have to re-impose them a couple of years later when faced with a balance of payments crisis.
TM said his father had a passion for Rugby.
He was a founder member of the Grasshoppers rugby club in Twickenham. He made some SPGBers out of a few players there too.
Another comrade who was involved in this club:
But of course rugby is not the same as soccer.
As soon as I saw the hammer and sickle I switched off their website.
That was my reaction too. All Leninist groups are committed to socialism as classless, stateless, moneyless society (which they call communism) but only in some dim and distant future. In the meantime they concentrate on their “mimumum” programme of reforms as bait to try to attract a following.
New additions to the French language section of the WSM site:
Le monde dans lequel on vit
Aux écologistes
Sauver la Terre ou les profits?
Le mythe de la Russie « socialiste »
Comment le capitalisme d’Etat est arrivé en RussieLucky we didn’t decide to contest:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/record-number-candidates-sign-clacton-110207274.html
What a farce!
Mind you, the local council will be happy. They’ll recover £16,000 in lost deposits.
Five of us were at the count last night. It finished after midnight. Here’s the result:
Clapham Park:
Green – 842 (43.8%)
Labour – 799 (41.5%)
Lib Dem – 108 (5.6%)
Conservative – 85 (4.4%)
Reform UK – 71 (3.7%)
CPA – 12 (0.6%)
Socialist – 6 (0.3%)There was a low turnout. Down to 20 percent compared with the 33 percent at the full council elections in May. Only 1,952 of the 9,559 on the electoral registered bothered to vote.
The Greens held on to the seat but they lost the other Lambeth council by-election to the LibDems, a bit of a surprise but even by the standards of conventional politics it’s difficult to see the difference between the Labour, the Greens and the LibDems.
We can’t anyway in view of this 2006 Conference Resolution:
“That no more by-elections be contested as they appear to be a waste of money.”
The resolution mentions a waste of money but an additional reason was being beaten by what are now being called “novelty” candidates. In one case, by both Screaming Lord Sutch and Mr.Blobby:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Littleborough_and_Saddleworth_by-election
This by-election is known in party lore as the little and sad election.
According to this post on Urban75, we will have got a fleeting mention on the BBC’s live update about Burnham on 23 June:
“The original BBC live update named the Labour candidate Burnham was supposed to be campaigning alongside as well as all the other candidates standing. Next time I’ll remember to do a screenprint!”
Not bad for a council by-election.
Since then, the remaining election leaflets were distributed on Thursday and Saturday.
We have now only to wait to see what the Brixton Buzz will say about us. Four of us are going to count next Thursday. We are not expecting a spectacular result.
Leaflet distribution continues. Of the 3000 leaflets printed some 750 remain. Most of the immediately accessible letter boxes in four of the five polling districts have been covered. The remaining one will be on Thursday.
The Greens and Labourites are out canvassing every day. Not surprising as what’s at stake for them is which of them will have the most seats on the council. Whether the ordinary elector is that motivated remains to be seen. At the full council elections in May the turnout was only 33 percent.
The latest Green leaflet we saw being distributed on Saturday said the choice is between their “local champion” and “More of Starmer’s Labour”. Well, that’s no longer the case. It’s now between them and Labour led by a stage Northener. Not that either was a real choice.
We also came across a Green Party leaflet left over from May which promised that they would “cut bills and raise everyone’s wages”. Wages increases all round, that “eco-populism” for you!
Six new articles have been added to the French-language section on the World Socialist Movement site here:
They are:
Manifester … jusqu’à quand?
Condamnés au capitalisme à perpetuité?
“Humaniser” le capitalisme?
“Humaniser” la société … ou en changer?
Le monde dans lequel on pourrait vivre.
Liberté ou capitalisme?These are not translations but were leaflets written in French by a native French-speaker and distributed by socialists in France at the turn of the century.
This local by-election is attracting national party leaders as well as future prime ministers (though in the end he didn’t turn up):
Andy Burnham backs out of Clapham Park rally as Zack Polanski bolsters borough campaigners
We will have to step up pointing out “Labour Green, Same old scene”, especially as Polanski himself is on record as not ruling out working with Labour under Burnham (though not under Starmer).
https://www.itn.co.uk/news/polanski-greens-could-work-cooperatively-burnham
In our election campaign one of the points we are making is that the opposition between the Greens and Labour is a sham fight, “sibling rivalry”. Revealing confirmation of this is an article written by Green councillor Michael Chessum (before he was a councillor and Burnham was a prime minister in waiting) in which he holds out the possibility of a Labour-Green pact:
“Just as Sánchez formed coalitions with Podemos and Sumar, it is possible to imagine Burnham’s Labour entering a pact with an insurgent Green Party, reducing the chances of a Reform UK government.“
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/january/who-s-afraid-of-andy-burnham
The first draft of our election address for the local council by-election in Lambeth, London, stated that “the council … cannot abolish the value form.” The Party’s Executive Committee, although agreeing with this, changed it to “cannot abolish the profit motive” on the grounds that the original version might not be immediately understood by too many voters.
Pity in one sense as it would have taken the discussion from academic circles into the real world. While they talk there about it we try to spread the idea amongst the working class generally. I wonder how the academics would react to the objection we met that this amounts to advocating “universal shoplifting”. Come to think of it, that’s not entirely wrong. It’s certainly a simple way of putting it.
