Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Edit: One result for Valmy here - the Lib Dem fightback starts here!

This is just the beginning. In a few years ALL of Sunderland will be under council governments of the mighty Lib Dems.

(Although these aren't councils - they're wards of Sunderland council )

Pallion (Sunderland) council result:

LDem: 59.4% (+55.2)
Lab: 19.8% (-29.3)
Con: 16.9% (+4.7)
Grn: 3.8% (+0.5)

No UKIP (-28.0) as prev.

LDem GAIN from Lab

[Valmy]

He who controls the wards of the Sunderland Council controls...um...zoning regulations or something. And when the Liberal Democrats wisely control those zoning regulations they will show their doubters THEY WILL SHOW THEM ALL!!111

Anyway, seriously, glad to see them still going and relevant in local government which is really underrated in today's world as everybody becomes obsessed with national culture wars.

Kind of wild UKIP voters would seem to have moved to the Lib Dems considering they are polar opposites on the EU issue but I guess once you get passed that there is no reason a UKIP voter might not otherwise have liberal tendencies...still weird.

Edit: Or maybe they only vote for parties whose color is yellow.

[Sheilbh]

He who controls the wards of the Sunderland Council controls...um...zoning regulations or something. And when the Liberal Democrats wisely control those zoning regulations they will show their doubters THEY WILL SHOW THEM ALL!!111

They are the worst NIMBYs in the country and every political parties hates the Lib Dems locally because they are the dirtiest in local politics (See the Private Eye story on the Lib Dem leader campaigning for a by-election before the terminally ill sitting MP had died )

Kind of wild UKIP voters would seem to have moved to the Lib Dems considering they are polar opposites on the EU issue but I guess once you get passed that there is no reason a UKIP voter might not otherwise have liberal tendencies...still weird.

Not everything's about Brexit - despit the name of this thread Historically the Lib Dems were the main protest/none of the above party, then it became UKIP and Brexit Party - it may be some of that vote going home?

Incidentally it is very early and most councils aren't counting until tomorrow due to covid (cowards ) and it is taking a long time to verify ballots. So it is far too soon to make any sweeping judgements.

But. I think the "Red Wall" in the North-East is probably gone for Labour for the foreseeable. I think what is more important, but less emotionally gutting for Labour is that the Tories are also performing very well in the West Midlands which is an area full of swing constituencies - the classic example is Nuneaton which was, in 2010, the swing constituency everyone focused on. That council's just gone to the Tories and the local Tory MP now gets over 55% of the vote. Plus it sounds like there's going to be a very strong vote for the Tory Metro Mayor of the West Midlands (ironically a former CEO of John Lewis ). The Red Wall hurts Labour emotionally, if the West Midlands become safe Tory seats then that's devastating for Labour electorally.

The flipside of that is whether Labour can pick up votes and seats in the Tory Home County heartlands - if you will a "Blue Wall". There's signs that Labour might be doing decently in Colchester which is the sort of Essex area that hasn't gone Labour since Blair. Similarly lots of Tory seats in those heartlands came within 1 or 2k with Labour or Lib Dems in second place in 2019.

The 2019 electoral map still looks to me very much like a transitional map - and I'm not sure where we'll end up. But it may be basically Tory provinces v Labour urban areas and commuter towns...

[Valmy]

Oh are they NIMBYs? Oh dear. I might have to break with them on that point. I am very much a YIMBY.

[Sheilbh]

Oh are they NIMBYs? Oh dear. I might have to break with them on that point. I am very much a YIMBY.

Everyone in British politics is a NIMBY. It's the one unifying national political creed

A helpful guide from Alex Hern of the Guardian:

alex hern
@alexhern
party political tells on twitter:
• if an MP's bio doesn't say their party, they're a Tory
• the more they hate the leader of the Labour Party, the more likely they are a member of the Labour Party
• do they oppose:
* railways: Green
* homes: lib dems
* the English: SNP

Edit: On re-alignment - Labour have lost every seat they were defending on Redditch council. Again Tories just consolidating all of the UKIP/BP vote. This was the results in their safest ward

Lodge Park (Redditch) council result:

Con: 50.3% (+33.9)
Lab: 41.4% (-12.3)
Grn: 5.5% (+2.4)
LDem: 2.8% (-0.9)

Con GAIN from

[Valmy]

I don't understand the general hatred of building homes. I mean the population of the UK is not exactly exploding, it is not like every forest needs to be cut down just to have sufficient housing for everybody.

[Sheilbh]

I don't understand the general hatred of building homes. I mean the population of the UK is not exactly exploding, it is not like every forest needs to be cut down just to have sufficient housing for everybody.

So there's actually loads of research that indicates that in principle most people support building houses (55-60%). It's just they also hate every individual proposal because of where it is or what it looks like (and there have been some very ugly developments in the past) - and in fairness do have legitimate issues with housing estates being built but no new infrastructure really being built to go with it, which is quite common in non-urban areas.

Edit: Results declared in Sunderland I think. Labour still have a majority with 15 (down from 24), Tories up to 8 (from 2) and the Lib Dems up to 5 (from 1). The fightback:

[alfred russel]

God it is grim just thinking about this. Tories have been in government for 11 years - the equivalent point for Maggie was 1990 and for Blair/Brown 2008. By then things were clearly looking bad.

Instead they've increased their vote share and number of MPs in every election since 2010 - which is not meant to happen to incumbent governments

Struggling center left parties are kind of a trend.

It can help explain Trump. He is an absolute trainwreck in terms of corruption and results, and he almost wins reelection. By contrast, the tories are only a trainwreck in terms of results.

[Valmy]

I mean you can pass regulations about what new builds can look like. Like if you want to build something in Santa Fe, New Mexico it has to be that adobe stuff.

[Sheilbh]

Struggling center left parties are kind of a trend.

Yeah - and it's the same picture almost everywhere (Scandinavia and Iberia are slight exceptions for some reason). Former industrial heartlands going to the right and in some cases far-right, centre-left parties instead becoming increasingly centred in liberal, progressive urban centres (and associated suburbs/commuter towns) where they face a challenge from Greens and in some cases the far-left.

I think a lot of that is going on within the Democratic coalition - in Europe it's happening a multi-party context.

[Sheilbh]

I mean you can pass regulations about what new builds can look like. Like if you want to build something in Santa Fe, New Mexico it has to be that adobe stuff.

We don't really have laws like that or zoning rules at all, in fact.

Planning is discretionary and planners and planning committees vote on a case-by-case basis (though a new development is, I thnk, treated as a single plan). But I think the government are proposing a move to more of a zoning system with presumed consent if you meet the requirements of the zone.

The expert would be Gups though.

[Richard Hakluyt]

England has 56 million people and 50,000 square miles. So, in defence of nimbyism, if we were not careful the entire country would be one vast building site...as it is it is still an attractive land in general.

But there are areas that can be developed with little or no loss; that strip of land either side of the M25 (London orbital motorway) for example, put up sound barriers and make it urban....there would be little loss of amenity.

[Jacob]

Yeah - and it's the same picture almost everywhere (Scandinavia and Iberia are slight exceptions for some reason). Former industrial heartlands going to the right and in some cases far-right, centre-left parties instead becoming increasingly centred in liberal, progressive urban centres (and associated suburbs/commuter towns) where they face a challenge from Greens and in some cases the far-left.

I think a lot of that is going on within the Democratic coalition - in Europe it's happening a multi-party context.

In Denmark at least (can't speak to the rest of Scandinavia), the centre-left basically ate a bunch of the populist right's lunch by taking a hard line on immigration and Muslims and Danish culture and stuff like that.

This is helped, I think, by the number of parties and the (required) culture of negotiation between parties. There are ten parties in parliament, so you can typically find something relatively closeish to your preferences. And that has made it harder to mortally wound the centre-left with culture-war/ national identity type issues, which has happened elsewhere.

[Josquius]

 :nelson:A friend of a friend was campaigning for labour down Hartlepool.
One stand out report from them: middle aged man remarked he was going to vote tories because of the lockdown.
.... Wut?

It's really amazing how they're managing to spin things.

Edit: Results declared in Sunderland I think. Labour still have a majority with 15 (down from 24), Tories up to 8 (from 2) and the Lib Dems up to 5 (from 1). The fightback:

Interesting to see the lib dems back again. Last GE Labour seemed to do well to finally adopt a sane brexit policy and stop losing so many votes to them.

This needs more examination as at a glance its interesting which parts have gone tory. Those north east bits are quite nice. The truly shitty bits may have stayed labour. Need to check but it looks like it may go quite against the typical narrative.

The 2019 electoral map still looks to me very much like a transitional map - and I'm not sure where we'll end up. But it may be basically Tory provinces v Labour urban areas and commuter towns...

Yes. But a key point there is the tories are cracking small towns by promising to make them commuter towns.
If they achieve this then the demographic there will shift back to its natural state as young people are no longer forced to leave enmasse.
All being logical it's a no win situation for the tories in the long term.
But considering how very 1984 the country has become....

[celedhring]

Gotta say I'm very surprised the Scottish election is getting so little attention over here in Catalonia, given the, let's say, shared interests of both regional governments.