ALB
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For the record, the London branch member who dealt with email enquiries sent to our candidate in Clapham and Brixton Hill from members of pressure groups and single issue campaigns that are sent to all candidates at election time reports that he sent a standard reply and appropriate link to 217 such enquiries.
I don’t think you know what a landslide victory is so here’s the definition:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landslide_victory
You could say that the Conservative won a landslide victory in 2019 when he got 65.2% of the votes cast. But not that he did just now when those opposed to him totalled 64.2%.
He won because he was the first past the post, ie got a plurality of votes defined as where “the number of votes cast for a candidate who receives more than any other but does not receive an absolute majority.”
Comment from another forum about Labour’s performance:
“Only 2% vote up from last time, lost several seats, total vote share a pathetic 34%, leader loses 18,000 votes in his seat, overall turnout a near historic low. Labour’s 9,700,000 votes is clearly fewer than the 10,300,000 votes the party received under Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 election.”
If you are talking about Christchurch the Conservative Party got 16941 votes or 35.8%.
Last time in 2019 the same candidate got 33894 or 65.2%.
Their vote was halved and you call it a landslide. Typical.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001171
Result in Folkestone and Hythe:
LAB 15020 (34.7%)
CON 11291
REF 10685 (24.7%)
GREEN 3954
LIBDEM 1736
TUSC 249
FAIRER VOTING 240
SOC 71 (0.2%)Turnout 62%
Result in Clapham and Brixton Hill
LAB 24166 (56.5%)
LIBDEM 6161
GREEN 5768
CON 4360
REFORM 1758 (4.1%)
IND 406
SOC 122 (0.3%)Turnout 57%
But George III was not an “absolute monarch”. Following the “glorious revolution” of 1688 Parliament was in control though the king retained certain “prerogatives”. Even these have now all passed to the government based on a parliamentary majority. In the US these prerogatives are still exercised by the president as “executive orders”.
Starmer will be the fifteenth PM I will have served under
I make the first to be Sir Anthony Eden. Thats’s going back a bit. So you remember the Suez adventure and the petrol rationing that resulted?
I have cast a stick-on vote for socialism too. I could have voted for a pub which has formed itself into a party as a publicity stunt. I get a chance to vote again later as I have a proxy vote for a socialist in Australia. It’s in Lewisham North and East Dulwich where I get a chance not to vote for the Workers Party and the Christian Peoples Alliance as well as the usual gang of five.
“The NFP [New Popular Front] is following a similar path today [as the 1936 Popular Front], with ambitious policies to improve the purchasing power of poor and lower-middle-class people. These reforms include a substantial increase in the minimum wage, wages indexed to prices and free school lunches. Most importantly the NFP wants to prioritise investment in the future by increasing public spending on infrastructure – throughout the country, including in isolated rural areas – as well as in health, education and research.”
Oh dear! Clearly the French left has yet to realise that this type of reformism can’t work. For a start, where’s the money going to come from to increase the purchasing power of the lowest paid and to increase spending on public services and amenities? There is only one source — the profits of capitalist businesses. But profit is what drives the capitalist economy, so this would just slow down accumulation and make things worse. Mitterrand tried this in 1981 and it was a complete flop.
It’s a recipe for disaster which risks further fuelling the advance of the far right. Mind you, if that lot come into office they will of course fail too to make capitalism work in the interest of the majority class made up of those excluded from ownership and control of the means of living. That just can’t be done.
The French have a saying to describe a choice between two evils — it’s a choice between cholera and the plague.
I remember seeing a Trotskyist march in Lille during the second round of the French presidential election in 2002 when the two contenders were Jacques Chirac, the outgoing conservative president, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front (the father of Marine). One of the banners proclaimed “Cholera or the Plague? Vote Cholera”. I imagine this slogan will be brought out by the far left to justify voting for candidates of Macron’s party in the second round on Sunday.
I see the RN (as the FN has since renamed itself) are in effect arguing that, faced with a choice between their candidate and a candidate of France Debout or the Communist party, they are cholera. But I don’t think they will be so explicit as to say “Vote for us. We are only cholera”.
A lurker on this forum has dug out this article which makes the same point about the US President bring an elected version of George III:
Biden is saying that the Supreme Court ruling about the immunity of the president for certain acts means that the president is a king. But that was precisely what the Founding Fathers of the American Republic intended. Its constitution was a republicanised version of the political structure of late 18th century England, with the House of Representatives as the House of Commons, the Senate as the House of Lords, and the President an elected temporary King.
Virtually all our various election leaflets have now been distributed.
Four members distributed today the last 1100 or so of the extra 3,600 of the Clapham and Brixton Hill election communication which the printers sent us. We had ordered 48,000. 47,700 for sending to Royal Mail to distribute free, 300 for us but they sent us 3,600 (even if at no extra cost).
This was outside and around Stockwell tube station. Before then most of the others had been distributed on an almost every other day outside Brixton tube station.
Over the weekend were also distributed the last of the 8000 leaflets for distribution where we are not contesting and suggesting those who want socialism cast a write-in vote for socialism by writing “World Socialism” across their ballot paper.
These were distributed in Manchester, South Yorkshire. South Wales, the West Midlands, Portsmouth, Frome and in various parts of southwest and north London including, it so happens, Islington North where Jeremy Corbyn is standing.
Royal Mail also distributed free 47,300 of our election communication in Folkestone and Hythe and Kent & Sussex branch members there over 5,000 of a second leaflet, in council wards in Folkestone which we have consistently contested.
It was a typical hustings such as will have been happening up and down the country. Our candidate got a few chances to briefly put the socialist case on various issues such as crime, youth mental health, water pollution.
The candidate for the Trotskyist front TUSC didn’t sound or look like a Leninist insurrectionist or mass-strikist. She came across as a common or garden reformist or grass roots activist. She probably is.
