I’ve been living in the UK for the past two years, but also have lived here on and off my whole life. So I have a pretty deep view of UK politics and can contextualize it as regards US politics as well and i have some thoughts about how these results may be a harbinger for the US. Best updates come from the guardian website.
Biggest news so far is the swing in Blackpool South (think the suburbs of Vegas, or more Reno) from the Conservatives (the “tories”) to Labour (spelling UK style, don’t blame me) of 26 points. These type of swings happen in UK politics all the time, but this level is incredibly rare and now Keir Starmer, the leader of Labour, has overseen more 20 point swings than even Blair did. We’ve seen repeated examples of swings to the Ds from the Rs these past two years with the latest being in upstate NY, so there’s clearly a movement in both populaces towards a more liberal governance. Whether the swings are big enough in the US is TBD, but it’s clear they are massive here.
second interesting point is that labour lost seats in Oldham, a local election that centered the Gaza stance of labour (it’s pretty bog standard bad, same as the tories really and the same as biden’s) in front of a majority Southeast Asian and Arab immigrant population. Very similar in many ways to parts of Michigan (Dearborn, for example). Because of Jeremy corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party resulting in many accusations of anti-Semitism starmer has over-indexed on expelling ANYONE who says anything against his policies, and thus having a pretty anodyne view of Gaza and its destruction (umm maybe stop?) has been enough to get people kicked out of the party.
I’ll update here as more results come in but it should be a terrible day for the tories, one that leads into the terrible horrible no good day they have coming when sunak calls for an election, something that will either happen in a month or in the fall.
UPDATE: per my earlier point, both the shadow home secretary Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper, an excellent MP (to the left of starmer for sure) have said that the Labour party stance on Gaza has hurt them with certain constituencies. and they are both calling for labour to clearly state that an attack on rafah would be unacceptable. we shall see.
UPDATE 2: the far right reform party, who seem to get about 50% of the BBC’s airtime (for reasons that are...unclear, to say the least) has thus far gained 1 seat. 1. 1 local seat. pathetic. it’s looking like 500 plus for labour, which would be the best showing since blair/1997.
METAUPDATE: this is going to be spun as a success for labour by even murdoch rags i’m sure. Murdoch here is much more willing to play both sides, as he did when blair won. Sunak and the tories will spin a few wins of mayoralties, but those seem to exist outside of national politics here.
COMEDIC UPDATE: Boris F-ing Johnson, britain’s very own unflushable turd (h/t james o’brien) forgot to bring his photo ID to vote, which meant he had to go back home. IT’S A LAW HE PASSED. every time you think they laugh at us because of trump, we can laugh right back at this orange-haired mendacious buffoon. wait, who am i describing?