Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Jacob]

I've mentioned the Bad Gays podcast before which I enjoy a lot and, having become convinced that he's the gay skeleton key to everything that's gone wrong in Western politics in the last 50 years (or the rise of neo-liberalism, more neutrally), they've started a five part mini-series on Mandelson: A Homosexual History.

Also Peter Thiel.

[Sheilbh]

Also Peter Thiel.

I think Peter Thiel is maybe more the gay skeleton key for everything that's going and will go wrong in Western politics

[Sheilbh]

By the by just on the local elections - in terms of how much a damp squib Your Party has turned out to be (for so many reasons) really struck that there were no Your Party candidates in my ward.

The Greens ran a full slate, and TUSC even had a candidate - this is a borough that, at the last election, elected 100% Labour councillors and my constituency at the last election went 60% Labour (with the Greens second on 20% ). So fair to say in terms of areas where you'd expect a Jeremy Corbyn backed party of the left, this is exactly the sort of area you'd expect them to be. But absolutely nothing.

Edit: I think I posted an article about the Independent Coalition in Birmingham. Pretty extraordinary interview with two of the leading figures on this by Lewis Goodall (basically from about 15-25 minutes in this video). For context, local polling isn't really a thing in the UK because it's too expensive but I think in Birmingham there's been some polls suggesting that basically Reform, Labour, Tories, Greens and the Independents will all be on somewhere between 15-25%:

It is a really interesting phenomenon. I think Tamas was saying earlier that sectarian politics isn't really a problem and I think there are areas of the country where it is emerging in a problematic way, like Birmingham. The independents who have formed a coalition there really started as Gaza Independent campaigns in the last election. It is also democratic - their point about Labour basically relying on just weighing votes and traditional biradari/clan voting is historically true. In part this is a revolt of younger people who were born and grew up in Britain expressing themselves democratically, rather than being part of a traditional Pakistani form of machine politics, to Labour's disadvantage.

They're also not wrong on the Greens talking a lot about Gaza with Muslim voters and not about a very, very socially liberal stance on other issues (there's some pretty grim leaflets out there). Birmingham was where there were protests (instigated by outsiders) against the national curriculum mandated sex education (which includes LGBT education) by Muslim parents a couple of years ago. It was also the scene of a very, very nasty sectarian campaign by independents against a Labour MP in 2024. I think Birmingham will be a place to watch (some huge issues for the council too which was Labour won and went bust after a massively failed IT project with multi-billion cost over-runs and a huge, union-backed equal pay claim succeeded).

[Sheilbh]

Won't be many results tonight but the BBC was reporting that Labour's vote had fallen 50 points in Halton in Liverpool. David Lammy said he didn't believe that would hold up.

It has


Patrick Maguire of the Times (and, crucially, Southport) suggeting this might be the night Scouse exceptionalism ends. But Labour losing seats they previously had 80% of the vote in to Reform now on 50%+ is not great. There's been a few more seats in that area going in a similar way. This is Liverpool commuter belt territory. Across the entire council, Labour have held on - but only a third of the seats were up for election so Reform won 15 of the 18 possible:


The briefing from Number 10 yesterday was that they were going to fire Shabana Mahmood and do a "progressive" reset and I think they're going to see the challenge of that because they're losing to Reform, Greens and Independents. It's more "Manchester United must improve in a number of areas, including passing, creating chances and defending."

Again very early but Professor Sir John Curtice saying Reform look like they're about where you'd expect given the national opinion polls (but quite a lot of evidence of direct Labour-Reform swings). Labour are doing very bad (on average down 20 points) - but also on very limited evidence at this stage, even worse, in areas with significant Muslim communities. Tores doing better than expected and only seem to be down 5 points (and some evidence of Lib Dems and Labour possibly voting tactically Tory to stop Reform in some areas). Too early to say on the Greens (and the areas you'd expect the Greens to do well in won't start counting until Friday morning).

Edit: Labour also lost control of Hartlepool council (Mandelson's former seat, incidentally) - again only a third of the seats were up. But Reform won 11 of those 12. The local MP's wife (who was council leader) lost her seat. He has now been the first to come out calling for Starmer to go - "timetable for departure" is code for Burnham (as is the line about a full breadth of talent being able to stand):

It has been a terrible night for the Labour party. What I've seen here is extraordinarily good, hard-working, Hartlepool people lose their seats. I've seen canvassers working night and day in this election and it's all been for naught and the reason has absolutely nothing to do with them.

They are delivering for this town, they have been delivering for this town and the reality is we need change at the top of the Labour party.

I think the very best thing the prime minister could do now is address the nation tomorrow and set out a timetable for his departure. We can then have an orderly transition, one that, by the way, ensures the full breadth of talent within the Labour party is able to stand, should it want to.

[Valmy]

As I said back in 2024 the stakes are enormously high. Labour must save Britain.

And they are fucking it up completely.

I am not sure why Starmer needed to hang around just long enough to be slaughtered, as if we needed to see it play out.

Only three years left Labour. Clock is ticking. The time for urgency was two years ago.