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Election grump

Politics
#1

A rum affair with important issues conspicuous by their absence.

Some spiteful observations from a spoiled ballot paper…

Jeremy Corbyn retained his seat. He always seems to do well when the voters listen to him.
While the election outcome is nominally a big triumph for Keir Starmer, he polled fewer votes than Corbyn’s Labour last time.
Stark reality - people thoroughly detest the Tories, but millions of those people don’t find Starmer’s Labour much better.

Liz Truss didn’t retain hers - and immediately took responsibility for the problem, saying that they weren’t hard enough on migrants and the Tories needed to get rid of the Human Rights Act earlier on.

Ree Smog is gone. A character I would have liked if I saw him in a film, but really not suitable for ruling over real lives.

George Galloway failed by 1440 votes in Rochdale.

Results in full:

Paul Ellison - Conservatives - 4,273

George Galloway - Workers Party of Britain - 11,587

Michael Howard - Reform UK - 6,773

Andy Kelly - Liberal Democrats - 2,816

Martyn Savin - Green Party - 1,212

Paul Waugh - Labour - 1,3027

The results above are given in this ITV link, at the end. (Also here)

At the top ITV says:

“The Workers’ Party of Great Britain leader was beaten by Labour’s Paul Waugh by a little more than 2,000 votes in Rochdale.”

Perhaps there is a numeracy problem at ITV - see that 1,3027.
But I make the difference in the votes 1440.

The Labour party - also struggling with this difficult arithmetic - reported it this way:

“Workers Party of Great Britain leader Galloway secured around 11,508 votes, but Waugh, a former political journalist from the north-west town, secured more than 13,000 to win it back for Labour.”

"Around 11,508 votes. " This puts the difference as something upwards of 1500.

What reason can there be for these little lies?

Well…this result was reasonably close.
So it may be relevant that campaigners in Galloway’s workers party have been assaulted - twice. One in Rochdale itself:

In the other assault, in Sutton Coldfield, it was the son of candidate Wajad Burkey that was assaulted, causing Burkey to suspend his campaign, saying he feared for his life.
He also seemed to say there had been other attacks.

No arrests have been made.
Neither have I seen any reports of condemnation of any of the attacks.

Meanwhile a well fed Neil Kinnock is happy that there is no-one to oppose Kid Starvers Tory friendly policies:

Neil Kinnock cracks up as George Galloway loses seat

There’s a video of this which - fortunately - I can’t get to play.
But this must be something of a fruition for Kinnock, the main hope against Thatcher in the 80s. He carried a lot of hopes that he might finally ‘do it’.
We thought he was at least sympathetic to the left.
No wonder he’s laughing!

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#2

The Tories are dead!
Long live the Tories!

I expect no changes to anything important (although I’d be happy to be proved wrong). But it was nice to see so many arses lose their seats.

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#3

“The Tories are dead!
Long live the Tories!”

Lol! Except for being…true.
Yes…instead of more Care in the Community, we now have more arses in the community.
Heard one of them saying it was good that Wes Streeting just held his seat - as he has some ‘good’ ideas…

In the age of the coming biosecurity revolution, CIA asset Keir Staliner fills me with dread.

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#4

I hadn’t realised the aggregate vote for Labour was less than 2019, not that I have taken all that much notice. Reform and Libs took Tory votes I guess? Pleased for Corbyn, and for the one or two Socialists still in the Labour Party. Otherwise ho hum.

#5

Yes, Mordaunt and Rees Mogg as well as Lettuce. How long before Sunak chucks in his seat… and who will be parachuted in as candidate? Because if Mordaunt is genuinely seen as the possible new leader she is gonna need a seat lol.

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#6

Yeah. I mentioned that more people voted Corbyn than Keir to someone and they looked at me like I was nuts.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/07/election-in-britain.html

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#7

It’s very bizarre if I’m honest.

Turnout was less than 60% which means that it’s possible that just 20% put Starmer in power

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#8

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Source
https://nitter.poast.org/RichardJMurphy/status/1809074495992299786

#9

“Yeah. I mentioned that more people voted Corbyn than Keir to someone and they looked at me like I was nuts.”

Maybe an old follower of Blair, who discovered the concept of the unacceptable fact

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#10

Interesting chat on that nitter link.
“Richard” says Labour have not won, the Tories have lost.
All but one react as if it’s a ridiculous idea. It is if you take it literally.
The “one” person is…Carol Vordeman. Has a certain gravitas where numbers are concerned…he does have a point in some sense.

Oh I see someone else agreed. Weakens my post a bit…but elections aren’t about facts :stuck_out_tongue:

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#11

Yeah, the comments were pretty bad. Funny about Vordeman - I missed it. Richards point is pretty basic - there was no swing to Labour. Labour didn’t convince a whack of Tories to vote for them. There was a swing away from the conservatives, mainly to the lib dems and reform…

Throwing out all the old lefties didn’t make the labour party more popular - it didn’t really do anything except piss a bunch of lifelong labour supporters off.

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#12

Hi folks, I’ve been trying to find some stats on how many over 18 British citizens there are in the UK - this would be the maximum number of people eligible to vote in the General Election which of course is different from the number of people registered to vote and different from the actual number of people who voted - all of these will give a different slant on the “mandate” given by the “Electorate” to the party with the most seats in Parliament.

the closest I seem to get are numbers in the UK for under 15 year olds or under 20 year olds ranging between 12 and 14 million but only in relation to 2022 not 2024. If it was the higher 14m number then this would mean that of the total number eligible to vote ( around 54 million) only half cast their vote in total and the share of the total number of eligible voters going to Labour was just over 17% ( for which they got roughly 63% of the MPs ). Or in other words 83% of eligible voters in the UK did not vote Labour and so Labour has no mandate at all!

Anyone seen more accurate figures?

cheers

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#13

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#14

Thanks for that - but these numbers all relate to registered voters, they do not cover the numbers who are eligible to be registered but do not register. The data I can find does not show the current numbers for all British citizens aged 18 years and over for July 2024 - an approximate number is 54 million based on 2022 numbers for under 15 year olds and under 20 year olds - if this is right then the numbers who could have voted had they all been registered would have been around 6 million higher reducing Labour’s share of that higher number to around 17.5% and not the oft quoted number of share of turnout voters - 33.69% . see wikipedia :

cheers

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#15

Evening @CJ1

the best I can do is the following:

Total UK pop aged 16+ as of summer 2022:     55,190,347 [1]
Total deaths in England + Wales 2022+2023:    1,158,523 [2] 
Total deaths in Scotland Q3 2022- Q1 2024:      110,153 [3]

Given that the 16 year olds in 2022 are likely eligible to vote in 2024, and that most deaths will be from the electorate-age demographic, we can get a pretty good estimate for the size of the electorate in 2024:

Total electorate in summer 2024: 53,921,671

Almost exactly your 54M number.

[1] Population estimates for the UK, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland - Office for National Statistics

[2] Death registration summary statistics, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

[3] Births, Deaths and Other Vital Events - Quarterly Figures: Fourth Quarter | National Records of Scotland

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#16

Thanks for your input @admin - I hadn’t expected to be exactly in the same ballpark! :smiley:

cheers

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