The Tories have been catastrophic for the UK, vote them all out
Another reminder for the Tories of their impending defeat. They’ve been squatting in Downing Street too long. Get them out
This is just foreshadowing the inevitable, the 2024 GE is going to be an astronomical landslide victory for Labour.
Labour beat the Tories by 2000 votes. That would indicate that a lot of Tory voters are voting third parties
Wellingborough is the real test, Kingswood was expected to fall.
FYI, the Reform vote wouldn’t have gone entirely to the tories, so it’s not correct to say that they scuppered the torie party’s chance of getting in. It would only have meant a closer result.
Them getting 10.4% IS significant however, as it more closely matches their polling. If the Wellingborough vote goes roughly the same way then this could signify a bigger issue for the tories going into a general, because I’m sure there WILL be some constituencies where their vote would make the difference at that percentage.
EDIT: Wellingborough just got called, a huuuge win for Labour. Reform got 13%, which is even larger, obviously. However, the swing to Labour was so large that Reform couldn’t have saved the tories, so I am hereby saying I’m probably wrong about their effect in like, 99% of the general’s constituencies. People are MAD yo.
As much as I’m overjoyed that the Tories are dying… Labour are going to inherit such a shit show that it’s just going to flipflop back in another ten years
Just some context on this; I canvased for Labour in that constituency a few years back… Kingswood is a low income, working class constituency overall, and it was solidly Tory/Brexit in the last few years; it was, to be frank, home to *a lot* of racism and resentment. When I did street fundraising there maybe a decade ago, I got a tonne of direct abuse about “funding N words” outside of what used to be the nightclub on the highstreet.
Kingswood hasn’t taken quite the visible beating that nearby Bristol has, but a few of the banks pulled out of the highstreet (The Labour candidate had his offices in one of them I think, the former Co-Op) and the Wilcos went bust, but the arrival of one of the largest Lidls in the city area has helped keep it as economically active as it always has been. So much of the anger is coming from national and cultural issues, and it’s unsurprising there’s been a big break towards the Reform party.
That there’s an equal swing towards Labour is I think more because of the terrible despair that the Tories are giving even the most dedicated Weatherspoons eating, Mail reading former voters… One thing in particular I recall is tending to an alcoholic outside the Greggs who fell and split open his head, and waiting an hour and a half for an ambulance to get there; it wasn’t even the one we called in, but one passing by we flagged down; and all the people who stopped to help over that hour+ were disgusted by the collapse in public services. They weren’t left wing by any means, but the breaking of the social contract was an insult too far.
The Tories are then, I think, going to get absolutely hammered in the General. But god help us if Labour don’t understand that to lance the boil of simmering resentment, they have to offer actual improvement, actual *hope* for the future.
I didn’t have a vote in this election by the way, it’s not my home constituency. And most of Bristol is far more left wing; it’ll be interesting to see where the split vote goes, if not to Reform, because elsewhere there really *isn’t* any love for Labour. Most of us *loathe* Starmer and his Tory-lite behaviour. And turning a blind eye to the Palestinian genocide isn’t winning him any favours with multi-cultural Bristol either. And it’s not a sign of healthy democracy when the choice is between absolutely fucking-terrible-awful-useless and absolutely-fucking-terrible-awful-untested.
I can’t say that I’m surprised. Rishi Sunak must cry every time a by-election comes up.
Misunderstanding of the night (again) goes to Rees-Mogg….
Conservative MP and former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, who represents the nearby seat of North East Somerset, says the result in Kingswood is “not as bad as I’d expected”.
He points out that if you add together the Reform UK and Conservative vote it is more than Labour’s – and that the Labour Party previously held the seat from 1997 to 2010.
​
So if you add together people who didn’t vote for us and instead voted for someone else, really we won lol. Just goes to show a posh voice doesn’t equal intelligence…
10 comments
The Tories have been catastrophic for the UK, vote them all out
Another reminder for the Tories of their impending defeat. They’ve been squatting in Downing Street too long. Get them out
This is just foreshadowing the inevitable, the 2024 GE is going to be an astronomical landslide victory for Labour.
Labour beat the Tories by 2000 votes. That would indicate that a lot of Tory voters are voting third parties
Wellingborough is the real test, Kingswood was expected to fall.
FYI, the Reform vote wouldn’t have gone entirely to the tories, so it’s not correct to say that they scuppered the torie party’s chance of getting in. It would only have meant a closer result.
Them getting 10.4% IS significant however, as it more closely matches their polling. If the Wellingborough vote goes roughly the same way then this could signify a bigger issue for the tories going into a general, because I’m sure there WILL be some constituencies where their vote would make the difference at that percentage.
EDIT: Wellingborough just got called, a huuuge win for Labour. Reform got 13%, which is even larger, obviously. However, the swing to Labour was so large that Reform couldn’t have saved the tories, so I am hereby saying I’m probably wrong about their effect in like, 99% of the general’s constituencies. People are MAD yo.
As much as I’m overjoyed that the Tories are dying… Labour are going to inherit such a shit show that it’s just going to flipflop back in another ten years
Just some context on this; I canvased for Labour in that constituency a few years back… Kingswood is a low income, working class constituency overall, and it was solidly Tory/Brexit in the last few years; it was, to be frank, home to *a lot* of racism and resentment. When I did street fundraising there maybe a decade ago, I got a tonne of direct abuse about “funding N words” outside of what used to be the nightclub on the highstreet.
Kingswood hasn’t taken quite the visible beating that nearby Bristol has, but a few of the banks pulled out of the highstreet (The Labour candidate had his offices in one of them I think, the former Co-Op) and the Wilcos went bust, but the arrival of one of the largest Lidls in the city area has helped keep it as economically active as it always has been. So much of the anger is coming from national and cultural issues, and it’s unsurprising there’s been a big break towards the Reform party.
That there’s an equal swing towards Labour is I think more because of the terrible despair that the Tories are giving even the most dedicated Weatherspoons eating, Mail reading former voters… One thing in particular I recall is tending to an alcoholic outside the Greggs who fell and split open his head, and waiting an hour and a half for an ambulance to get there; it wasn’t even the one we called in, but one passing by we flagged down; and all the people who stopped to help over that hour+ were disgusted by the collapse in public services. They weren’t left wing by any means, but the breaking of the social contract was an insult too far.
The Tories are then, I think, going to get absolutely hammered in the General. But god help us if Labour don’t understand that to lance the boil of simmering resentment, they have to offer actual improvement, actual *hope* for the future.
I didn’t have a vote in this election by the way, it’s not my home constituency. And most of Bristol is far more left wing; it’ll be interesting to see where the split vote goes, if not to Reform, because elsewhere there really *isn’t* any love for Labour. Most of us *loathe* Starmer and his Tory-lite behaviour. And turning a blind eye to the Palestinian genocide isn’t winning him any favours with multi-cultural Bristol either. And it’s not a sign of healthy democracy when the choice is between absolutely fucking-terrible-awful-useless and absolutely-fucking-terrible-awful-untested.
I can’t say that I’m surprised. Rishi Sunak must cry every time a by-election comes up.
Misunderstanding of the night (again) goes to Rees-Mogg….
Conservative MP and former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, who represents the nearby seat of North East Somerset, says the result in Kingswood is “not as bad as I’d expected”.
He points out that if you add together the Reform UK and Conservative vote it is more than Labour’s – and that the Labour Party previously held the seat from 1997 to 2010.
​
So if you add together people who didn’t vote for us and instead voted for someone else, really we won lol. Just goes to show a posh voice doesn’t equal intelligence…