Local elections
Labour’s vote-share projection falls on today’s local results – and is lower than Corbyns/Miliband’s
Electoral expert says Labour overall has gone backward, despite Starmeroid spin
Keir Starmer and his spokespeople are spinning like crazy that today’s local election results are a sign of how well the public is receiving Starmer’s policy blancmange of nothingness (well, maybe they’re not using quite that terminology), while they point to a few areas where Labour had good results – such as in the Blackpool South by-election.
But Labour also did disastrously in other areas, such as on Teesside, where it failed to oust Tory Ben Houchen despite Houchen facing allegations of deeply dodgy land deals, in North Tyneside, where it lost control of the council, and in the West Midlands, where it expects to lose to the Tories.
And according to expert electoral analysts, Labour has gone backwards compared to last year, like the Tories:
Compared to polling claiming Labour’s Westminster vote share is as high as 47%, a 34% performance is disastrous – and is considerably lower that the shares achieved by Starmer’s predecessors Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband. Corbyn managed higher in 2018 and Miliband in 2012-13:
Independents, meanwhile, performed strongly, beating the LibDems in vote share and seat gains. The Greens also performed well.
With outrage continuing to grow over Starmer’s lockstep with the Tories in backing Israel’s genocidal regime, a nine percent lead does not look guaranteed to hand Starmer a parliamentary majority – and today’s results confirm it.
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Questions raised over pro-Trump, anti-BLM, anti-Labour comments of Labour candidate
Joe Johnson’s social media record includes defence of racist comedy, admiration of Thatcher and Trump, support for far-right views and opposition to Labour – yet he has been selected to stand for the party
Sefton council candidate Joe Johnson, from his Facebook profile
A Labour candidate’s social media output has raised serious questions about his suitability to stand – yet he was apparently waved through by Keir Starmer’s party, either without vetting or in disregard of his record, to stand for the party in the St Oswald ward in Bootle, near Liverpool.
Locals have raised flags about what they say are:
- Historic racist views
- Support of Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party
- Admiration of Margaret Thatcher
- Support of Donald Trump
- Support of far right views on social media (TwitterlX: @joejbsg)
- Public opposition to the Labour Party
In 2020, the BBC reported that a Dover footballer, who was racially abused by Hartlepool fans, said that Johnson had implied he earned the abuse by celebrating his goal:
The ref was saying that I sparked it all off with my celebration. As a ref, you shouldn’t really be saying … it’s sort of saying that, because I did a celebration, I should now be receiving racial abuse.
In the same month the BBC was reporting the Hartlepool incident, Johnson was commenting on his social media that police should be baton-beating and tasing Black Lives Matter protesters:
Johnson also defended the police after video emerged of a Black man being kneed in the face – commenting that the police ‘should be allowed to do their jobs’:
Johnson also commented that ‘blackface’ was ‘comedy at its best’:
In 2019, he supported Boris Johnson over Brexit and in 2020 he defended Johnson’s appalling handling of the pandemic and his wilful ignoring of the advice of government scientists:
And on Brexit he went further, supporting a far-right account’s recommendation that Johnson should invoke emergency legislation to force through a hard Brexit:
Johnson needn’t have bothered: the sabotage by Keir Starmer and the Labour right handed Johnson the hardest of Brexits anyway. He was also apparently a fan of the hated Margaret Thatcher, ‘liking’ a post calling her an ‘inspiration’:
Johnson praised far-right former US president Donald Trump more than once:
And his ‘likes’ included an anti-refugee post by far-right political figures Nigel Farage and former Home Secretary Priti Patel:
Johnson’s likes and comments also indicate a deep distaste for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn – and approval for a video mocking Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP:
Johnson’s ‘like’ of a post about Abbott
Contacted for comment about his posts an locals’ concerns, Johnson replied:
I am not surprised, although disappointed by putting myself up for local election to help the area that some people would try and shoot me down for past views, beliefs and opinions.
Labour’s regional director for the north-west, Liam Didsbury, did not respond to a request to confirm whether Labour did any vetting before allowing Johnson to become a candidate.
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Gorst launches campaign to oust Eagle in Garston
Supporters gather at famous Casa socialist bar in Liverpool
Liverpool Community Independent councillor Sam Gorst – who, with colleague Lucy Williams trounced Labour in last year’s local elections in the previously die-hard Labour seat despite a sewer-level smear-filled Labour campaign against him – formally launched his campaign to take the parliamentary seat on Wednesday evening. Gorst, a Garston resident, was selected in a democratic process last month.
Supporters gathered at Liverpool’s famous Casa bar, founded by socialist dockers, to discuss campaign strategy and the need to give hope to local people in a political landscape where the two biggest political parties are in lockstep and the Labour-run city council is in thrall to Tory-imposed commissioners welcomed by Keir Starmer – and heard that the campaign has already raised about forty percent of the funding it anticipates needing for election.
Supporters can donate to the campaign crowdfund here.
Liverpool Community Independents announce Gorst to stand vs Eagle in crowdfunded parliamentary election campaign
Local councillor who trounced Labour in last year’s local elections will contest Commons seat against Labour
The Liverpool Community Independents (LCI) party of left-wing former Labour members who quit the party in disgust at the local council’s cuts to services for the city’s most vulnerable, has selected local councillor Sam Gorst to stand against Labour right MP Maria Eagle in the next parliamentary election.
Gorst is the former Labour councillor who trounced Labour in the previously strong Labour Garston ward last May, along with LCI colleague Lucy Williams, despite a disgusting sewer-campaign by Labour targeting him. Both Gorst and Williams have gained even more popularity with Garstonians for leading the fight against a literal ‘time bomb’ chemical processing works the Labour-run council has rubber-stamped to be built right next to houses in Liverpool village.
The newly-configured Garston constituency will replace the existing Garston and Halewood seat in which Eagle is the incumbent.
LCI has launched a crowdfunder to raise money for the costs of its campaign. Labour is said to be rightly worried given the scale of Garston’s rejection of the Starmeroid party in the locals.
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Exclusive: how the Poplar and Limehouse trigger ballot was rigged against Apsana Begum
Allegations of irregularities become concrete example of branch fix that prevented Muslim woman MP being automatically selected to stand again
In 2022, Poplar and Limehouse’s left-wing Muslim woman MP Apsana Begum faced a ‘vicious and misogynistic’ campaign to deselect her that had left campaigners and women’s groups horrified.
The campaign followed a party attempt to remove Begum as the London constituency’s MP by prosecuting her for housing fraud. The stitch-up fell apart when a court threw out the charges brought by allies of her allegedly-abusive ex-husband – forcing Labour party vultures, who had been at the court in anticipation of a guilty verdict to announce a contest to replace her, to slink away disappointed and unable to install a favoured right-winger in the overwhelmingly Labour-voting seat.
After the ‘lawfare’ failed, Begum’s many supporters accused the party of gross abuse of process, of bullying and intimidation, and even of outright rigging in its determination to ‘trigger’ Begum and force her into a selection contest – and Begum was even threatened with ‘serious abuse’ by a relative of her ex.
Now Skwawkbox has received details from local members of one of the selection meetings demonstrating how the trigger vote was rigged – a vote that both exemplifies the stitch-up tactics and would have ensured Begum was selected again automatically had the party reacted and investigated properly. These can now be exposed and they corroborate earlier evidence at the time of the process.
Begum’s trigger ballot process started in May 2022, just after the local council elections – and from the start, locals say it was marred by blatant breaking of party rules.
Only an MP and her supporters are allowed to campaign during the process, and no-one is allowed to campaign as if they were an alternative candidate. Opponents of Begum who supported her being triggered completely ignored these rules. Many complaints were made to the party but were ignored.
The trigger ballot meeting for Lansbury and Poplar – a branch consisting of two wards combined – was the first of the CLP’s votes to be held, on 31st May 2022. A large group of people vocally supporting a vote to trigger Begum gathered outside the hall, telling people to vote for the trigger and giving out slips of paper with marked up dummy ballot papers to guide any unsure of the process, acts completely against party rules. Branch officials told these agitators that what they were doing was completely against the rules, but they refused to stop.
Inside the hall, the meeting was in uproar before it even began, with aggression and abuse by Begum’s opponents, who were even ‘yelling and jumping up and down and waving fists in the faces of branch officers’. Some went as far as openly demanding that Labour’s official protocol for the meeting be abandoned and to go straight to a vote, so they could – in as many words – ‘vote for the trigger and go home!’
At this point, a senior officer of the constituency-wide party (CLP) turned up at the meeting, despite having no official role there – Skwawkbox understands that several CLP officers are close to Begum’s ex-husband and determined to oust her.
As people were being ticked off the eligible voter list to ensure only those entitled to vote took part, several people arrived who were not on the list, fuelling the aggressive and intimidatory atmosphere as they demanded to be let in.
The CLP officer said they would check eligibility through their phone – and insisted that four extra people be allowed into the meeting and given ballot papers. Requests to clarify where this information came from were ignored.
When the vote was taken, the result was 43-43 – meaning that if the four pro-trigger voters were not eligible to vote, the real result would have been a victory for Begum by 43-39. This would have meant Begum won the required ten percent in the CLP section vote – which under Labour’s rules meant she had won the trigger process and would automatically stand again as Labour’s candidate in the next parliamentary election.
Labour ignored a string of complaints about this meeting and dismissed the few it responded to. But when the membership system was finally accessible again (after being out of action because of a hacking attack), branch members were able to confirm that the one extra ‘member’ allowed in by the CLP officer – the only one known personally to other members present – was not eligible to vote, because her membership had been confirmed well before the trigger meeting to have lapsed. There was no way she could have been on the CLP officer’s ‘list’.
The names of the other three names allowed in were written at the time on the master copy of the attendee list – but the CLP observer, also an opponent of Begum – insisted on taking it away with him. But even if they were bona fide members – which they were not because they appeared on no membership list – Begum still won the vote 43-42, and so would have automatically been selected to stand again.
Members have lodged multiple complaints about this abuse of process but have been ignored. Even if the other branch votes were held in perfect propriety – which goes against reports of the way they were conducted – the real result in Lansbury and Poplar was enough to select Begum uncontested.
Labour has been accused repeatedly, up and down the country, of rigging trigger and selection processes, sometimes successfully – for example in nearby Ilford South to remove incumbent Sam Tarry – and occasionally not, as when Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne was able to fight off repeated attempts.
So bad has the party’s conduct been that even journalist Michael Crick – no left-winger – who runs the ‘tomorrowsmps’ Twitter account detailing the latest selection news has publicly voiced his own concerns about Labour’s rigging and abuse of its selection processes. Now the mechanism – or at least one of them – for rigging in Poplar and Limehouse to oust a popular left-wing MP has been laid bare by the evidence and the testimonies of locals.
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Liverpool Independents launch fundraiser to fight Eagle in next general election
Group that took both council seats in Garston is preparing to fight for parliamentary seat
The Liverpool Community Independents (LCI) group announced last week that it will stand a candidate to challenge Labour incumbent MP Maria Eagle in the Liverpool Garston constituency at the next general election, because – as a last straw – her decision to abstain on a Commons vote earlier this month calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza.
Labour has cause to worry – in May, the working-class south Liverpool community threw out Labour, which heavily lost both its council seats heavily to LCI’s Lucy Williams and Sam Gorst, despite a disgusting Labour smear campaign in the election. But the group will need an even greater influx of resources and volunteers to win the parliamentary seat.
LCI leader Alan Gibbons – who trounced Labour in May in Orrell Park in the north of the city – has said that the decision to fight Eagle for the seat is a ‘historical necessity’ after the abstention.
As a first step, the group has launched a crowdfunder with a target of £15,000 to create a campaign fund for the seat. Readers who would like to contribute toward the effort can do so here.
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Liverpool Independents announce they will stand against Labour MP Maria Eagle
MP’s collusion with Keir Starmer to defeat ceasefire motion triggers challenge in seat where independents trounced Labour in May
The Liverpool Community Independents (LCI) group has today announced that it will stand a candidate to challenge incumbent MP Maria Eagle in the Liverpool Garston constituency – currently Garston and Halewood – at the next general election.
In May, working-class south Liverpool community Garston saw Labour lose both its council seats heavily to the LCI’s Lucy Williams and Sam Gorst, despite a disgusting Labour smear campaign in the election, so Eagle has cause to worry, although the resources and volunteers needed for a constituency wide fight will be considerably greater.
LCI leader Alan Gibbons – who trounced Labour in May in Orrell Park in the north of the city – has said that the decision to fight Eagle for the seat is a ‘historical necessity’ after she abstained last week on a parliamentary amendment demanding a ceasefire in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including at least five thousand children.
Garston LCI councillor Sam Gorst added that Ms Eagle had committed ‘dereliction of duty’ in supporting the Gaza genocide as well as interventionist UK military action elsewhere. Colleague Lucy Williams has said she would be willing to stand as the group’s candidate if selected.
On the other side of the Mersey Jo Bird, a popular Jewish Birkenhead councillor hounded out of Labour by the Starmer regime, has been selected by the Greens to fight for the Birkenhead seat in which Labour is ousting left-winger Mick Whitley to stand right-winger Alison McGovern.
An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Jo Bird is contesting the Wallasey seat.
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