In the end it wasn’t even that tight. Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election with 54% of the vote, beating the combined right-wing Reform-Restore-Tory vote by over 5,000 votes.

Even though Reform won every Wigan council seat that was up for grabs in the local elections in May, they didn’t really come close to beating Burnham.

When given the direct choice between the prestige of being the home constituency of the probable future Prime Minister, or backing the perverted, riot-stoking weirdo that Reform selected as their candidate, the choice was obvious for the majority of the 58% of people who voted in the by-election.

Even though it wasn’t that close in the end, Makerfield was absolutely crucial for Labour. If they hadn’t managed to win with the most popular Labour politician in the country as their candidate, standing in his home turf, where could they ever have won an election again?

It was also crucial to get Keir Starmer’s main challenger back into parliament, because the man needs to be deposed as soon as possible.

Starmer’s team want him to cling on for as long as possible, so that he can railroad through as many of his deeply unpopular authoritarian policies as possible.

If Burnham has any sense whatever, he’d launch his challenge quickly, and make scrapping Starmer’s plan to erase our right to trial by jury one of his key pledges.

The fact that Starmer’s plot to revoke our right to trial by jury wasn’t even mentioned in Labour’s 2024 manifesto makes it a very easy target.

Burnham should also develop a policy platform based squarely on improving living standards for ordinary people, and ordinary communities, and make as much noise as possible about it, in the style of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

It’s an absolute no-brainer that Burnham should go down the road of clearly positioning Labour on the side of ordinary people, but whether he will or not is up for debate.

He won a lot of credit with the Labour left for remaining in post while 172 of his Labour colleagues stabbed Jeremy Corbyn in the back during the spectacularly failed Anyone But Corbyn coup in 2016, and he’s won more plaudits for his successful time as Mayor of Manchester.

On the other hand, he was handed the Makerfield constituency by one of the worst of Keir Starmer’s Labour-right henchmen. A guy called Josh Simons, who was forced to resign from Starmer’s government over his harassment of journalists who uncovered Labour Together’s unlawfully undeclared donations.

Labour Together have now sneakily rebranded themselves as ThinkLabour, to distance themselves from their dodgy undeclared donations, and their disgraceful hounding of journalists, but you’d be a fool to imagine that this powerful right-wing faction of the Labour Party hasn’t sought concessions from Andy Burnham, in return for standing down one of their key guys so he could return to parliament.

What seems obvious is that the Labour leadership election will be a cake walk for Burnham compared to the Makerfield by-election, given that he’ll be up against a historically unpopular haircut in a suit if Starmer tries to make a fight of it, and probably the deeply unlikeable figure of Wes Streeting if Starmer sees sense and calls it quits.

Burnham does seem to know the score, judging by his victory speech in which he said stuff like wanting to "bring about a country that works fairly for everywhere and for everybody".

"I say to my own party: this is a final chance to change. This is what people said directly to me on the hundreds of doorsteps that I stood on. We must hear it, we must act upon it and we must get it right".

"People here have voted for change. They have voted for more power for the North and everywhere forgotten by Westminster. They have voted for hope. Now, let’s give that back to them".

It is inspiring stuff, and he does seem to have captured the public mood, but it all depends on whether he has the desire and the strength of will to face down the Labour-right ghouls in his own party. The ones who want to serve the interests of capital, and landlordism, and genocidal Israelis, and crush ordinary British people under continued austerity and mountains of repressive legislation.

The saboteurs who spent years wrecking the party from within under Corbyn’s leadership, plus the huge number of right-wing Labour Together MPs that Starmer flooded the Labour ranks with in 2024.

If Burnham sticks to his word, he’s going to have a massive fight on his hands, not just in beating the billionaire-bankrolled faragists at the next general election, but also in quelling the internal sabotage of the Labour-right wreckers within his own party.

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Jeremy Johnson has sentenced four of the Filton 6 Palestine Action protesters to massive prison sentences for "terrorism", despite having deliberately kept the terrorism charges secret from the media, the public, and even the jury in the trial.

The jury thought that they were finding the defendants guilty of criminal damage, and one case of causing grievous bodily harm without intent, only for Johnson to reveal the fact that he’d kept the "terrorism enhancement" secret for the entire process.

This is the first time in UK legal history that defendants have been sentenced on charges that were kept secret from the jury, and it’s the first time in UK legal history that a "terrorism designation" has been added to sentences in a case where none of the defendants were convicted of causing intentional violence.

It doesn’t matter what your opinion on direct action against weapons facilities is, it should be absolutely obvious that keeping charges secret from defendants; the public; and the jury undermines open justice, and sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

How can anyone believe that justice has been done, when the jury didn’t even know what they were convicting the defendants of?

How can anyone facing trial have faith that they’re being charged with what the prosecution say they’re being charged with, if the judge can just add more stuff once the verdict is reached?

How can anyone feel comfortable with the idea of politically motivated judges hiding information from the jury?

The deliberately hidden "terrorism designation" isn’t the only deeply concerning behaviour from this rogue judge.

He also banned the defendants from explaining their motivations for their actions (opposition to Israel’s ongoing genocide and war crimes against Palestinian civilians); and he also abused the law to accuse the defendants’ lawyer of "contempt of court" for telling the jury about their legally established right to "acquit on conscience".

The right to acquit on conscience has existed since 1670 when a judge tried to bully the jury into finding two Quakers guilty of unlawful assembly, but Johnson wants to abolish this ancient British legal right, by banning defendants from explaining their motivations, and seeking retribution against their lawyer for informing the jury of their rights.

Thankfully Johnson’s effort to punish the defendants’ lawyer for telling the jurors of their rights was found unlawful, but that he even attempted this unlawful and unprecedented move is still illustrative of his biased and incompetent handling of the case.

Johnson’s explanation for adding the "terrorism designation" is also deeply problematic.

According to his reasoning the actions of the defendants were conceived as an attempt to "influence the government, or an international governmental organisation", namely the government of Israel.

Practically all non-violent protest and civil disobedience is intended to "influence governments", so according to Johnson’s biased reasoning, any time anyone attempts to change government policy through direct action, they’re guilty of "terrorism", even though no violence was committed, and nobody was actually terrorised!

It’s hardly difficult to see how such powers could be misused by politically motivated judges under a far-right authoritarian government.

Reform have already spoken about firing experienced judges, and replacing them with Reform-loyalists, and Johnson is laying the groundwork for Reform-loyalist judges to add after-the-fact "terrorism designations" to any kind of resistance against Reform government policy.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that Keir Starmer and David Lammy are attempting to scrap the ancient British right to trial by jury in cases with sentencing guidelines of below three years, meaning that if they get their way, biased judges like Johnson could remove the right to trial by jury by saying charges like obstruction or criminal damage don’t warrant a jury trial, find them guilty of the lesser offences, then sentence them to much longer than three years by adding terrorism designations after the fact.

In order for justice to be seen to be done, it’s absolutely obvious that the public; the defendants; the defendants’ legal team; and the jury should all know what the charges actually are.

Biased judges like Jeremy Johnson should not be allowed to ban defendants from explaining their motivations for their actions; and they should not be allowed to seek unlawful against lawyers who tell jurors of their legally established right to acquit on conscience.

The ongoing misuse of terrorism legislation in order to deter protest against British complicity in genocide and war crimes is also an absolute affront to fair justice, and to common sense.

It’s extraordinary that we’ve just seen a blatantly biased judge trying to scrap centuries-old British legal precedents; seek unlawful retribution against a lawyer for explaining jurors’ legal rights; deliberately keep the jury in a state of ignorance about what they’re actually convicting people of; and misuse terrorism designations on behalf of the government of Israel, and the Starmer government that is complicit in Israel’s genocidal actions.

Hopefully Jeremy Johnson’s rampage of biased legal vandalism can be overturned on appeal, because if it isn’t, it sets deeply worrying legal precedents that should bother literally everyone, not just those who oppose Israeli genocide.

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Rioters who used the sentencing of Henry Nowak’s killer as an excuse to riot and attack the police in Southampton are beginning to be sentenced. Most of them have obviously been advised to plead guilty by their legal representatives in order to secure shorter prison sentences for the violence they were filmed committing.

The right-wing narrative is that these people are merely "patriotic citizens" with "legitimate concerns" about issues like policing and immigration.

So let’s meet four of these "patriots" …

1. Daniel Frost

Frost pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years and four months in jail for his part in the riots, which included riling up the crowd; attacking and insulting police; and using a dog lead with a metal carabiner as a makeshift knuckle duster.

Frost has 25 previous convictions for 55 offences, including a six year sentence for robbery and GBH after fracturing an 80 year old woman’s hip during a mugging. He’s also been sentenced for possession of weapons; burglary; public disorder; and threatening and abusive behaviour.

Despite his lawyer’s attempts to paint Frost as some kind of harmless bystander who got a bit carried away, the guy is an inveterate criminal who saw an opportunity to attack and abuse police, behaviour he later described as "today's fun" and a "big party".

2. Darren Medhurst

Medhurst pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years and three months in jail.

He was caught on film committing multiple offences, most famously the lamentable flaming wheelie bin attack on police lines filmed by Young Bob, whose viral videos of the Southampton riots have featured in numerous cases already.

Medhurst has 51 previous convictions for 96 offences, including handling stolen goods, burglary and shoplifting.

A "patriot" according to the right, but a career criminal with a litany of previous offences to anyone with a grain of common sense.

3. Dillon Crawford

Crawford was sentenced to three years in jail after pleading guilty to violent disorder. He pushed to the front of the crowd, where he threw multiple items at the police, including a bin, metal objects, and part of a chair.

Crawford has 19 previous convictions for 33 offences, the most disturbing one being an attack on his girlfriend in which he broke her front teeth, punched her unconscious, then told her he’d put bleach in her hair once she regained consciousness.

4. Callum Darch

Darch pleaded guilty and was jailed for two and a half years. He has has 10 previous convictions for 24 offences including theft, criminal damage, and a string of driving offences.

He was sentenced to 14 months in jail for dangerous driving, driving while disqualified, and drink-driving, and another 24 months for a hit-and-run involving a 61-year-old grandmother, who suffered broken legs and ankle injuries. Despite hearing the victim screaming, he drove away, crashed into two parked cars, then went back to his girlfriend’s house to take cocaine.

These people aren’t "patriots"

Just like the 2024 Farage riots, where 41% of the people convicted for rioting were found to have previous convictions for domestic violence, the Southampton rioters were led by a bunch of violent habitual criminals too.

These are people who mug 80 year olds; knock their girlfriend’s teeth out; do hit and runs; and wheel burning bins at the police.

"Protect our women" is absolutely meaningless when the people saying it align with those who mug 80 year olds; run women down in the street and drive away; and punch their girlfriends unconscious.

The right-wing cover story of "legitimate concerns" over immigrants coming over here and committing crimes is completely undermined when the people leading these "protests" are the kind of habitual criminals who clog up our courts and jails.

They’re angry, violent, irresponsible, and dangerous. And the likes of Nigel Farage; Rupert Lowe; Elon Musk; Tommy Ten Names; Laurence Fox; Turning Point UK; and GB News riled them up, and unleashed them.

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The details of Henry Nowak’s killing from the court case were deeply disturbing. The bodycam footage that was released after the guilty verdict was even more disturbing.

The behaviour of Vikrum Digwa’s family was utterly outrageous. They arrived on the scene and presented their murdering son as the victim of a racist attack, while the real victim lay dying in handcuffs on the ground. Meanwhile his mother tried to hide the murder weapon.

The murderer has been sentenced to a minimum of 21 years in jail, and Henry’s father spoke outside court to condemn the appalling circumstances of his son’s death, and to say "we want to use Henry’s heart-breaking story to make change for the better. We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We want his story to help make our streets safer for everyone".

The far-right had other ideas.

Nigel Farage took a few moments away from his main task of hiding from media scrutiny over his undeclared £5 million bung from an overseas billionaire, to use the sentencing of Novak’s murderer to rant about immigration, and call for "pure cold rage".

Farage got the "rage" he wanted later the same day, when Tommy Ten Names raised a mob to head down to Southampton, where he gave a brief speech attacking Muslims (who had absolutely nothing to do with the murder), then fled the scene before the violence kicked off.

The mob were so dumb that they filmed themselves throwing bricks; broken chairs, and wheelie bins at the police, and doing Nazi salutes.

One of the most easily identifiable figures at the front of the riots was some Peaky Blinders looking cosplayer, who turns out to be Luke Jahn of the neo-Nazi National Rebirth Party.

During the Blitz the Nazis repeatedly bombed Southampton, killing 691 people, and destroyed 12.5% of Southampton's housing stock (the highest destruction rate of any British city during WWII).

And now, thanks to the deliberate incitement of right-wing politicians and media (Nigel Farage, Darren Grimes, Rupert Lowe, Tommy Ten Names, Laurence Fox, GB News …) the descendants of the Southampton Blitz survivors are using the tragic murder of a teenager to throw Nazi salutes, and riot alongside avowed neo-Nazis!

There are likely to be arrests and jail terms for several of the rioters, especially the ones filmed on live streams hurling bricks, bins, and broken chairs at the police.

Farage and his ilk won’t care who ends up in jail. They got the "rage" they were inciting, and they’ll be sitting pretty while the gullible fools they incited end up in court.

It’s classic stochastic terrorism: Incite riots with incendiary rhetoric, then sit back and pretend they had nothing to do with the violence when it happens.

We saw it in 2024 (Reform’s "Pervy Plumber" candidate in Makerfield used his now-deleted Twitter accounts to incite the riots), and it’s the same thing all over again.

It’s hard to know what the rioters even wanted. The killer is in jail, and the cops who let down the victim so badly will be investigated by IPCO.

What does smashing up Southampton; doing Nazi salutes; and hurling projectiles at the police achieve, other than giving Farage, Tommy Ten Names, and their ilk the social unrest they were trying to ferment?

Do the rioters really want the "racist police" to treat them like the police treat black and Asian people? I’m not sure they’d actually like the reality of that very much.

The only sure thing is that neither the rioters, nor the right-wing figures who deliberately stoked the unrest, give the slightest damn about Mark Nowak’s plea for his son’s tragic death not to be used to "create further division, hatred or tension".

Nigel Farage sat next to the pervy plumber and announced a new policy of removing Income Tax on overtime for workers earning less than £75,000 per year.

It's a good policy in terms of grabbing headlines, but it's an absolute bin fire of a policy from an economic perspective.

Here are just some of the problems:

Unfairness 1 (self-employed)
If you're self-employed then you don't have set hours and overtime, so this policy won't benefit self-employed workers at all, while salaried workers doing the same long hours, in the same industry, will make all the gains.

Unfairness 2 (the cut-off)
Having a cut-off at £75k, rather than a taper, means that a worker on £74,999 after overtime might benefit to the tune of a £6,000 tax reduction through this policy, while a worker on £75,000 would lose it all. Six grand in extra taxes for one pound of extra income!

This would immediately become the UK’s biggest tax "cliff edge".

Unfairness 3 (contract variations)
If you're a plumber who is contracted to work 50 hours a week and work a few hours more than that, you'll feel almost no benefit from this policy, if you're a plumber on a 40-hour contract and work the exact same hours, you'd benefit to the tune of thousands per year.

Unfairness 4 (multiple jobs)
This policy favours people who work one single salaried job, and discriminates against anyone who works various different jobs to make ends meet.

Perverse incentives 1 (contract fixing)
Why earn £25 per hour, when you could have a contract that pays Minimum Wage (£12.71) for 40 contracted hours, then £516.60 for the first hour of overtime? It'd cost your boss exactly the same, but you'd save thousands of pounds per year in tax.

Reform would be creating an incentive for huge numbers of workers to redefine their contract hours in order to maximise the tax they can avoid, while those who don’t fiddle their contracts get economically penalised. We used to be known as “a nation of shopkeepers”, Farage wants to turn us into “a nation of tax-fiddlers” (which is actually quite fitting given where Reform get so many of their donations from).

Perverse incentives 2 (Personal Service Companies)
What if a whole load of the self-employed people who would be getting absolutely shafted by this unfair policy decide to set up Personal Service Companies, so they can pay themselves salaries, and maximise what they can claim via this tax break? You can't really blame people for setting up tax fiddling vehicles if the government actively incentivises them to do it, right?

The true cost
Reform have come up with an estimate of £5 billion for what this would cost, but they've not bothered to factor in how people's behaviour would change. They've not factored in re-labelling of previously contracted hours as overtime or other forms of contract fiddling, and they've not factored in the mass creation of Personal Service Companies. It's as if they're so economically naive that they imagine the economy as a static thing that doesn't change once they create large financial incentives for people to change their behaviour!

This refusal to consider people's changing behaviour is the difference between their £5 billion estimate, and a likely £14 billion cost.

Enforcement
It is theoretically possible to try to police this policy, but it would be complex. There's not even tax definition of "overtime" today, so all the rules would have to be drawn up from scratch. And how much would it cost to enforce these new rules? Reform have no answers, because they haven't bothered to think through the actual consequences of their policy before announcing it.

Poor priorities
According to Tax Policy Associates the economic benefit of this policy would be a paltry £0.07 for every £1 it costs. That's an abysmal return on investment. Reform say they're going to pay for the policy with another savage round of cuts to the welfare budget, which is almost entirely composed of pensions, in-work benefits, and disability benefits for people who simply cannot work.

What are the economic returns on the unspecified social security payments Reform say they're going to slash to pay for this policy? Reform haven't done the calculations, but it seems highly unlikely they could be as low as 0.07.

Evasiveness
Reform have refused to say exactly which social security programmes will be slashed to make up the £5 billion they say this policy will cost. They're not likely to go after pensioners, given that the over-65s are way more likely to vote Reform than working age people, so that leaves disabled people and in-work benefits.

Assuming they're planning to cut in-work benefits, how many workers are going to gain a bit from the Income Tax cut on their overtime, only to have more taken away because of cuts to in-work benefits?

It's impossible to say, because Reform won't tell us where they're planning to make these cuts.

Alternatives
There are countess other adjustments that could be made to the tax system to benefit ordinary workers, without creating such a mess of unfairness; perverse incentives; and hidden costs.

Raise the Income Tax threshold; cut Income Tax; cut National Insurance; increase Child Benefit … all of which would cost less, and generate more economic benefit.

Conclusion
It's back of a fag packet economics from Reform, which is hardly surprising since they poached the Tory pillock Robert Jenrick to be their economics guy.

Instead of just giving a tax cut that benefits everyone, like raising the threshold before Income Tax kicks in, they're intent on creating a deeply unfair system that privileges some workers; disadvantages others; and creates perverse incentives for people to start fiddling with their contracts and employment statuses to avoid paying tax.

Reform haven't done their sums properly; they haven't considered all of the unfairness and perverse incentives they'd be creating; and they're outright refusing to be honest about who they're going to economically sanction with social security cuts to pay for their severe under-estimate of what this policy would cost.

Unfortunately though, some people will be inclined to vote for this economically incoherent nonsense anyway, because they'll imagine themselves better off because of it, without considering that stuff like raising the Income Tax threshold, or an Income Tax cut, could make them better off too, without being so grossly unfair about it.

It's populist politics in a nutshell. Lazy, economically illiterate policy that is designed purely to win votes from the very particular demographics who stand to benefit from it.

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Reform didn’t win a majority in Kirklees, but around 30% of people from this part of West Yorkshire decided to vote in 29 Reform councillors, which now makes them the biggest political group in the council, despite having had zero councillors previously.

Things have not got off to a great start for the Reform group, with several of them admitting that they didn’t have a clue what was going on.

They managed to sabotage their own efforts to get one of their own elected as council leader by voting no to proportional voting on the council, then they cried that they didn’t understand what they were voting for.

They also voted down having a council debate on the new council leader.

After two failed votes to elect a new council leader, an experienced Tory councillor called Martin Bolt tried to break the deadlock by calling for a suspension of orders, to prevent councillors from abstaining on the vote, which was shot down by the Reform group and branded "undemocratic" by the Reform councillor and wannabe council leader Sarah Wood.

Wood’s extraordinary contributions to the proceedings included the following:

"We don’t understand the rules"

"We voted against it because we don’t understand what is going on"

"I don’t know what standing orders are, nor do I know what an amendment is"

"We might vote for something we don’t understand"

"We are at a disadvantage because we don’t necessarily know what we are voting for"

"We don’t understand the constitution"

And this is the woman that Reform want to lead Kirklees Council!

Other Reform councillors voted against their own party’s interests; spoke to say that they also didn’t understand what was going on; and repeatedly made the claim that they are "new" to excuse their incompetence and unpreparedness.

There was also constant victimhood posturing from the Reform contingent, who repeatedly tried to claim that the procedures were "unfair", "unconstitutional", and "undemocratic" because they hadn’t bothered to read the standing orders, or do the most basic research on how council procedures work!

If people had bothered to even slightly inform themselves about the chaos going in the councils that Reform won last year (especially Kent, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire) it’s hard to believe that they’d have voted to bring this brand of incompetence and mayhem into their own council too.

But unfortunately that’s exactly what’s happened in Kirklees.

Loads of people voted to boot out more than two dozen experienced Labour, Tory, Lib-Dem, and independent councillors, to replace them with a lazy and incompetent rabble who couldn’t even be bothered to research how council procedures work before trying to get one of their clueless ilk installed as council leader.

Kirklees Council has an annual budget of £465 million, and around 30% of the people there decided to put this clueless "stop the boats" rabble in charge of their landlocked part of West Yorkshire!

If Britain had embraced more modern and proportional voting systems, then the worst of this chaos could have been avoided, but such as things are, a minority of voters can inflict unprecedented damage on their own council’s affairs.

Interestingly, Reform used to be heavily in favour of modern proportional voting, but now they’re winning control of councils, and leading the Westminster polls under the old-fashioned disproportional system, they’re suddenly in favour of it, now that it stands to advantage them.

Given the cringeworthy incompetence Reform have displayed in Kirklees, it’s actually quite terrifying to think of the scale of chaos, were they to win a parliamentary majority in 2029, with only around 25% of the national vote.

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Last week Richard Tice went on the BBC to make utterly absurd excuses about the Sunderland Reform councillor who said that Nigerian people should be melted down and used to fill potholes.

Millions of people saw Tice demonstrating the hierarchy of racism by pivoting from the anti-black racism of one of his own party’s members, into allegations of antisemitism against others.

This hierarchy of racism pivot would have been marginally less disgraceful if Reform wasn’t itself infested with antisemites; Holocaust deniers; and Nazis.

This week the Sheffield Star revealed a load of depraved extreme-right social media posts by the new Reform councillor for Woodhouse in Sheffield, Nathanial Menday,

Menday posed with swastika flags; Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf; and the fascist sonnenrad.

He stated that "dictatorship with the right man in charge will always be a better way of governing than democracy" and described the Nazis as "visionaries".

He referred to himself as an "ethnonationalist" and claimed that Jewish people in the west are responsible for the antisemitic abuse they suffer because they "overwhelmingly favour open borders".

When ITV asked Menday about whether he wanted to "clear up that Nazi stuff" on the day he was elected as a Reform councillor, he responded "no, no I don’t". The Sheffield Star’s revelations demonstrate why he was so keen to avoid the subject.

It would obviously have been difficult for Tice to try and shut down criticism of this Reform Nazi fanboy by pivoting to antisemitism again, because even Reform voters would probably be able to spot the hypocrisy of blurting "but antisemitism" when the guy they’re trying to defend is a Nazi-enthusiast who spread antisemitic conspiracies.

So what did Richard Tice say when confronted about Menday’s disturbing social media history?

"Have many people in their private lives [have] occasionally sworn, thought something dark, said something dark? Yes, we're all human."

To be clear, Menday didn’t say any of these things in his "private life", he posted them all publicly on social media.

It’s more than a bit insulting to compare sharing Nazi material and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories to swearing or having dark private thoughts.

Is me saying "Richard Tice is a fucking arsehole" really comparably offensive to Menday’s public glorification of the Nazis and his recycling of the antisemitic great replacement theory?

The conclusion of Tice’s defence seems to be that 'Nazis and antisemites are human too'.

Nobody is disputing that they’re human. Humanity produces terrible people who are capable of appalling atrocities, like Nazis.

What people are complaining about is that Reform keeps getting terrible humans like Menday elected.

Menday has now been suspended from Reform, and the suspicion is that it’s actually got more to do with his decision to retweet an Elon Musk post that said Farage should be replaced as Reform leader because "he doesn’t have what it takes", than the Nazism and antisemitism stuff.

Whenever Reform announce that their latest Nazi; antisemite; anti-black racist; violent criminal thug; ex-BNP; or whatever has been "suspended" it’s important to know what that means.

It doesn’t mean they’ve been thrown out of the council, it just means they’ve been dropped from the Reform group in the local council.

It means that Reform; and Reform activists; and Reform voters worked to get a Nazi or whatever elected, and that Nazi or whatever is remaining a local councillor.

It’s quite something to see a party that repeatedly tries to paint itself as a patriotic outfit (despite being almost entirely bankrolled by an overseas crypto billionaire), working to get Nazi fanboys elected, and making excuses for them when they get found out.

Our forefathers made enormous sacrifices during WWII in the fight against fascism, and it’s a grave insult to all of them that Reform don’t just get swastika-displaying Nazis elected into local government, but that they then try to downplay the seriousness by claiming that parading Nazism and antisemitism on social media is akin to merely "swearing" or having "dark thoughts".

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Josh Simons is standing down as the MP for Makerfield, after serving just two years as an MP, in order to allow Andy Burnham the chance to return to parliament, and enter the race to succeed Keir Starmer (more details on the Simons resignation here).

It’s an absolute "must win" by election for Burnham, and for Labour, because Burnham is Labour’s most popular politician nationwide, and he’s standing in his own home territory.

Furthermore the people of Makerfield will know that they’ll have the prestige of being the home constituency of the probable future Prime Minister if they back Burnham.

If Labour can’t win a by-election under these circumstances, it’s hard to see how they could win a significant election anywhere, ever again.

Reform came second in Makerfield at the 2024 general election with 31% of the vote, so they’re the obvious main rivals, especially since the Greens came in 5th with so few votes they lost their deposit.

The Greens are in a much stronger position now though, especially after winning the Gorton and Denton by-election that the Starmer factionalists blocked Burnham from standing in.

If the Greens do put up a fight in Makerfield, there is the risk of splitting the anti-Reform vote, and letting the faragist lunatics in by default.

The former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has publicly stated that she hopes the Greens don’t put up a strong fight in the by-election, in the hope that Burnham delivers the fairer and more representative voting system he’s long claimed to support.

It is possible for the Greens to seek assurances from Burnham, should they stand down in the by-election.

Aside from an agreement to modernise the voting system (perhaps with a referendum to pick which particular form of modern proportional representation the public wants), abandonment of the deeply unpopular digital ID agenda, and ending Keir Starmer’s sinister efforts to revoke the historic British right to trial by jury would also prove popular.

Would Burnham agree to such a trade-off though?

And after all of Starmer’s lies and betrayals since 2020, could the Labour Party - who backed all of his dishonesty - really be trusted to deliver on what they’ve agreed to?

If Burnham does agree to deliver much needed electoral modernisation - to avoid absurdities like Labour winning 63% of parliamentary seats on just 34% of the vote from ever happening again - it would make sense for the Greens to stand aside, or soft-pedal the Makerfield by-election, and direct all of their efforts at winning the Mayor of Manchester position that Burnham would have to vacate in order to become an MP and stand to become Prime Minister.

Opinion within the Green Party is certain to be divided, with some arguing that it would be a fair trade-off, and others saying it would amount to abandonment of the stated aim of "replacing Labour" as the party of choice for democratic socialists and social progressives.

The Green Party is a much more democratic organisation than Labour, the Tories, Lib-Dems, or Reform. In light of this, it seems likely that the local Green Party group in Makerfield would have at least some say in whether they stand, and if so, how much effort they put into their campaign, rather than the whole issue being decided in top-down manner by the party leadership.

If standing aside did result in the introduction of a fair and modern voting system, the rewards would be enormous for the Green Party. They wouldn’t just be looking at a handful of extra MPs in return for the recent surge in support they’ve experienced, they’d be looking at somewhere around 100 MPs if polling numbers just stay where they are.

If a modern voting system allows people to vote for the party they actually want, rather than holding their nose and doing the "lesser of two evils" tactical voting thing we’ve all become so accustomed to, it’s fair to imagine that support for the Greens could increase dramatically too.

As with all major decisions, it’s a risks vs rewards situation.

The potential rewards are massive, if a fair and modern voting system does come out of it.

It’s highly debatable that fatal damage would be done to the Green Party’s position as a long-term alternative to Labour, just because they co-operated with Labour in one particular by-election, in order to secure fair votes.

I’d argue that the much bigger risk to consider is whether Labour can be trusted.

Even if Burnham was to win, and become Prime Minister, and put forward proposals to modernise the voting system, the Parliamentary Labour Party is still crammed full of right-wing factionalists, and you wouldn’t put it past them to deliberately sabotage the process, especially given their atrocious history of sabotaging leaders and policies they don’t like.

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In the wake of the revelation that Nigel Farage received an undisclosed political donation of £5 million from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, the former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib has made extraordinary allegations of corruption.

Habib claims that there was a deal between Nigel Farage, Christopher Harborne, and Boris Johnson to rig the 2019 general election.

Habib points to a £1 million donation from Harborne to Boris Johnson in November 2022, and alleges there was another undisclosed £1 million donation to Nigel Farage at the same time.

To quote him exactly "Harborne paid a million quid to Boris Johnson in November 2022, after Boris Johnson had screwed the country, after Boris Johnson had screwed up Brexit. And I have it on good authority that he also paid Nigel Farage a million quid in November 2022".

Habib’s exact claim is that "the 2019 general election was sewn up between Nigel Farage, Cristopher Harborne, and Boris Johnson, and it was a monetary deal".

Habib calls Farage a "grifter" who regularly went missing, and always prioritised his own self-enrichment over Brexit.

He stated that without the £14 million in donations from Christopher Harborne "there was no Brexit Party".

He slammed Farage and Harborne for concocting the plan to stand down 317 Brexit Party candidates, which meant "every single Tory MP had no Brexit Party opposition" which "killed the Brexit Party’s prospects in that general election, and ensured a Boris Johnson government in one move".

Another allegation Habib makes is that there’s an evidence trail demonstrating that Christopher Harborne sought to break electoral law by hiding his identity as a Brexit Party donor (this hardly seems unlikely given Harborne’s statement that he intends to bypass the new electoral rules banning overseas donations).

Habib publicly invited Nigel Farage and Christopher Harborne to sue him if what he’s saying is untrue, but boldly predicted that "they will not sue me, because what I’m telling you is the truth".

It remains to be seen whether Farage and Harborne choose to take legal action. I’d guess not, because there are potentially even more secrets that could come out in disclosure.

The allegation that Boris Johnson was involved in a "monetary deal" to rig the 2019 general election also seems actionable, if there’s no truth to it.

My guess is that none of them will sue, in the hope that the story of them rigging the 2019 general election eventually blows over.

The toothless and incompetent Electoral Commission seem reticent to do anything about Farage’s undeclared £5 million donation from Harborne, so it seems unlikely they’ll properly investigate this bombshell allegation that Harborne, Farage, and Johnson had a monetary deal to rig the 2019 election too.

Will capitalist media and the lobby hacks do anything to delve into these extraordinary allegations, or will they be too busy speculating about Starmer’s future, and/or dirt-digging on Zack Polanski?

It’ll be interesting to see whether any of them dare to ask Farage, Harborne, or Johnson to their faces, whether they had a deal to rig the 2019 general election, and whether they intend to sue Ben Habib for his allegations.

Here’s a clip of the interview where Habib makes all of these extraordinary allegations:

After all of the fuss over foreign interference in British politics and elections, usually aimed at Russia and Vlad Putin, it’s quite something to have an integral member of the Brexit Party’s top team claim that Farage and Johnson cooked up a deal with a Thailand-based crypto billionaire to rig a general election.

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Keir Starmer’s tenuous position as Prime Minister is understandably the story of the moment, and other politicians have been taking bizarre positions on it, that expose themselves as absolute hypocrites.

Robert Jenrick

Reform’s economic spokesperson Robert Jenrick has insisted that the country needs a general election if there’s a Labour leadership election to replace Keir Starmer.

Before joining the anti-immigration rabble-rousing faragists, Jenrick used to be a Tory (where he was the party’s immigration minister during the massive post-Brexit immigration surge) and in 2016 he insisted that the last thing the country needed after David Cameron’s resignation was a general election!

What a coincidence that what the country "needs" always seems to align precisely with what’s best for Robert Jenrick’s political interests!

Maybe what the country actually "needs" is a political class that isn’t full of hypocritical self-serving political charlatans like Robert Jenrick?

Kemi Badenoch

Just like her former Tory colleague Robert Jenrick, the current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is agitating for a general election if Keir Starmer is deposed.

Just like Jenrick, Badenoch didn’t call for a general election when David Cameron resigned in 2016 after gambling away the nations future for a bit of short-term political advantage; she didn’t call for a general election when Theresa May was deposed in 2019; she didn’t call for a general election when Boris Johnson resigned in disgrace in 2022; and she didn’t call for a general election when the Tories rapidly recognised the absolute folly of appointing Liz Truss as Prime Minister a few weeks later.

In fact, Badenoch actually stood in the Tory leadership election to become Boris Johnson’s successor!

If she’s in opposition, she sees a mid-term Prime Ministerial departure as a reason to call for a general election, so she can try and get her hands on power.

If she’s in the party of government, she sees a mid-term Prime Ministerial departure as an opportunity to take over as Prime Minister without a general election!

The hypocrisy is unbelievably brazen.

Starmtroopers

Keir Starmer’s backers within the Labour Party have been trying to push the narrative that it would be damaging to the party for disillusioned Labour MPs to initiate a leadership contest.

The problem of course is that most of the people defending Starmer now, were the ones who leapt into the spectacularly failed Anyone But Corbyn coup in the wake of the Brexit referendum result in 2016.

Angela Eagle was one of Corbyn’s loudest and most hypocritical critics at the time, and famously launched her own leadership bid (which looked like the launch of a new perfume called "Argh").

Eagle is far from the only Labour-right figure calling for loyalty to the leader, despite having gleefully participated in the failed 2016 coup plot against Corbyn.

Starmer himself

There are many reasons for Starmer’s profound unpopularity with the British public, and stuff like "nobody knows what he stands for" and "you can’t trust a word he says" comes up repeatedly.

Starmer’s desperate last ditch speech to save himself included a glaring example of this, when he said "I will never stop fighting for the decent, respectful, diverse country that I love".

In isolation it’s a noble sentiment. However it’s entirely contradictory to what he said in his notorious "Island of Strangers" speech, in which he channelled Britain’s most notorious racist Enoch Powell, and accused immigrants of having done "incalculable damage" to Britain.

Does he love and defend diversity? Or does he believe diversity has wrecked Britain and turned us into an island of strangers? Or does he just mindlessly read out whatever is put in front of him, even if it’s mutually contradictory?

Just like Angela Eagle, Starmer was an enthusiastic participant in the failed 2016 Anyone But Corbyn coup plot, in which he was one of the ministers to performatively resign in a programmed sequence of hourly resignations designed to inflict as much damage on their own party as possible.

The "Keir Starmer has resigned" Tweet from 2016 has suddenly found a new lease of life now that his own leadership is under threat, and he’s desperately doomsaying about how a leadership challenge would "plunge the country into chaos".

Starmer’s lack of integrity has cost him dear, yet the whole Westminster establishment cabal is riddled with similarly insincere hypocrites, who entirely reverse their positions depending on what’s most personally advantageous to them.

Whether it’s faragists like Jenrick; Tories like Badenoch; or the brazenly hypocritical Labour-right, they’re all just as crooked and self-serving as Starmer.

And they’re all guilty of demonstrating absolute contempt for the public when they take polar opposite positions, depending entirely on their own self-interest, and expect the public to simply forget all about what they said and did before.

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After Labour suffered disastrous local election results last week, Keir Starmer has given what many have described as a "make or break" speech, in a last-ditch effort to save himself from an impending leadership challenge.

Starmer chose to be introduced by the Labour MP Jade Botterill, who worked as a privatised water company lobbyist, and then for the Blairite PR company Portland Communications, before becoming an MP in 2024.

Given that a policy of renationalising England’s filthy, greedy, debt-laden private water profiteers would be the kind of thing that would appeal to Green voters and Reform voters alike, it does seem like a deliberate "fuck you" to the electorate to have chosen this particular person to do his intro.

Things deteriorated once Starmer took to the stage.

Starmer set off talking about "taking responsibility" for Labour’s losses, but was soon bragging about how he’d actually "got the big political choices right".

I’m not sure many would agree that scrapping the winter fuel allowance; dragging his heels on repealing the vile Tory two-child policy; economically sanctioning disabled people; betraying the WASPI women his party tricked into voting for them; appointing Peter 'paedophile pal' Mandelson; and wilfully collaborating with Israel’s genocide and war crimes would amount to "getting the big political choices right".

He did point out a few of things Labour have been doing well, like getting NHS waiting lists down from the appalling state they were in under the Tories, and eventually scrapping the child poverty exacerbating two-child policy.

One of the big issues with Starmer’s leadership is that perhaps people might have paid more attention to Labour success stories like this, had it not been for the party’s repeated self-inflicted wounds under his leadership?

Starmer once again fell back on his doomsaying assertion that stepping down would "plunge our country into chaos".

It’s bizarre and delusional to keep repeating this claim, as if the sky is going to fall down if he quits.

It seems more likely that people across the country would breathe a big sigh of relief that he’s gone, including a lot of Labour’s own supporters, voters, and MPs. He’s clearly out of his depth, and the only people really hoping for him to stay on seem to be political rivals who expect that they can lure away even more Labour voters for as long as he stays.

Throughout the speech Starmer conflated the Green Party and Green voters with Reform and people who voted for the crypto billionaire bankrolled far-right.

Labour are delusional if they think they’re going to win back support from the millions of people who have switched to the Greens after Starmer told them to "leave if you don’t like it" by portraying them as dangerous ideological extremists.

Starmer went on to assert that "I've spent too much time talking about what I'm doing for working people, and not enough time talking about why or who I stand for".

I wouldn’t have thought it possible to have read the room so badly, if I hadn’t heard it come out of the guy’s mouth.

Nobody cares that you’re the son of a toolmaker mate, and everybody knows that you spent your first year in power hoovering up cash and freebies from mega-rich donors.

The speech was extremely thin on actual policy, with only an announcement that the shattered remnants of British Steel will be renationalised to fill it out a bit.

It’s not a bad policy, but it’s so far from what’s required.

How can he stand there and talk about Britain’s energy security without acknowledging that the rip-off privatised energy profiteers are the biggest obstacle to British energy security?

One of the most egregious parts came when he said "I will never stop fighting for the decent, respectful, diverse country that I love" which is quite something from the guy who channelled Enoch Powell in his "Island of Strangers" speech, in which he accused immigration of causing "incalculable damage" to Britain.

One minute he’s trying to make out that he’s slipped up by not properly explaining who he is, and what he stands for, and the next he’s proving that he just reads out speeches that have been written for him, even though what he’s saying is absolutely the opposite of previous speeches he’s mindlessly read out.

Towards the end Starmer said "this is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation … we cannot win as a weaker version of Reform or the Greens, we can only win as a stronger version of Labour, a mainstream party of power, not protest".

It’s such an odd thing for a leader who has been in power for nearly two years to say.

It’s the rhetoric of an opposition party seeking political power, not a party that’s being slammed for not having done anything like enough with the massive parliamentary majority they’ve had for almost two years.

Yes mate. You’re the government, You’re not there to protest against the government, because that’s you!

What we care about is whether your exercising power on behalf of the people who elected you, and whether you respect people’s long-standing British right to engage in non-violent protest if they don’t like what you’re doing. And on both measures you’re demonstrably failing.

One of the worst aspects of the speech was the continued dishonesty.

Starmer repeated his pretence that Britain isn’t involved in the US/Israeli attacks on Iran when he’s been allowing the US to use British RAF bases to lauch their attacks.

Towards the end of the speech he claimed that Britain is now "free from austerity" when Rachel Reeves has not revered the ruinous Tory austerity cuts, and is just as obsessed with austerity penny-pinching and absurd, arbitrary fiscal rules as any of Cameron and Osborne’s lot were.

This was billed as Starmer’s rousing speech to save his job, but it was more of the same bland, scripted filler that’s characterised his leadership.

It is however fitting that the guy who lied his way into the Labour leadership, still can’t bring himself to be honest with the public, even as he’s going down in flames.

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Here are some of the key issues around the May local, Scottish, and Welsh elections.

To keep things from getting overly long I’m going to try to limit myself to discussion of (just) 13 main themes.

England’s embrace of the extreme-right

It’s hardly surprising that Reform have made massive gains given the fact they’re the Thailand-based crypto billionaire who is bankrolling their operation has turned them into by far the richest party in Britain, that’s before we even get the tens of millions of pounds in losses that GB News are making each year, on pumping out what is essentially just Reform TV now.

Do Reform voters care about Reform policies beyond anti-immigrant rabble rousing? From all of my interactions with them so far, the answer is a resounding no.

Their stock responses are parroting "stop the boats" and overtly stating "I don’t care" when pressed on policy issues.

Do they care they’ve just elected a bunch of absolute vermin, including a guy who celebrates race-rapists; calls white people "the master race"; and denies genocide?

It really doesn’t seem so.

It’s deeply dispiriting to see poor working class communities like Hartlepool, that have been eviscerated by Thatcherism, turning to Farage’s brand of Thatcherism on steroids because they’re so enchanted by xenophobic blame-shifting.

Labour shellacking

Keir Starmer has led Labour into their worst local election shellacking in living memory, yet he still insists that he’s staying on. Apparently the country will be "plunged into chaos" without his wise and wonderful leadership!

This is the guy who spurned the chance to use a historic 170 seat majority to deliver something good for the British people; decided to performatively beat up pensioners instead; then goaded his own party’s traditional voters into leaving if they didn’t like it!

People have abandoned Labour in their droves, exactly like he instructed them to, yet he’s surrounded himself with such vacuous and cowardly sycophants, that they’re still not pushing him to go before the damage is irrecoverable!

Continued Tory collapse

The Tories were the ones to take the absolute electoral battering last year, but they clearly haven’t reached their nadir yet. Kemi Badenoch can, and will, drive them lower.

It’s remarkable watching Badenoch trying so hard to out-Reform Reform.

Okay, the Tories successfully absorbed the extreme-right ultranationalist vote in 2017 and 2019, when the faragists tactically stood aside to let them win in Tory-held constituencies across the country, but Farage and his billionaire crypto backer have got their eyes on the main prize now, so it’s never going to work again.

If the Tories hadn’t ideologically purged their liberal conservative wing, maybe they’d be able to appeal to them. You know, the kind of right-winger who sees themselves as sensible and pragmatic, rather than rabid and extremist?

The Tories are never going to win standing on the exact same territory as the faragists, because what kind of far-right extremist votes for ersatz fascism, when they can have the genuine thing?

Greens on the rise

The Greens are a few years behind Reform in establishing themselves as a party that can potentially win a huge amount of seats, and they’re tens of £millions behind them in funding, as they’re not bankrolled by a shady offshore crypto billionaire.

The Greens have won big though, with Zoe Garbett winning their first ever mayoral contest in Hackney, and Green councillors picking up more new seats so far than any party except Reform.

Given the furious intensity of the anti-Green propaganda war during election week, in which a single Retweet by Zack Polanski was given more airtime and column inches than Farage’s undeclared £5 million handout from his overseas backer, they’ve done reasonably well.

Lib-Dems holding firm

The Lib-Dems have held every council they’re defending so far, and they’ve won control of Stockport Council, bringing to an end the No Overall Control stalemate that’s existed there since 2011.

Nobody can say the Lib-Dems have done badly, but it’s surprising that they’re not doing far better under the circumstances.

The liberal conservatives were purged by Boris Johnson in 2019, and they’re still clearly unwelcome under Kemi Badenoch’s deranged leadership, so their Lib-Dem bedfellows from the 2010-15 austerity coalition should make an appealing new home for them, right?

It’s not just the left that Keir Starmer has driven away with his shenanigans. Liberally-minded Labour voters are aghast at stuff like abolishing jury trials; misusing terrorism legislation to repress criticism of British genocide complicity; Internet anonymity crackdowns; and Starmer’s reanimation of the Blairite zombie policy of mandatory ID cards.

You have to imagine the Lib-Dems would be doing significantly better if they were led by a real conviction politician, who stood up for real liberal values, rather than an austerity coalition compromised clown like Ed Davey.

Scotland

The results aren’t in yet, but it’s looking terrible for Labour and the Tories, who have tag-teamed the role of 'leading voice of unionism' for years.

The SNP will win. The Greens will make gains. There will be a pro-independence majority in the Scottish parliament once again.

Thing may well be very different this time, with the English nationalist faragists assuming the position of unionism cheerleaders, complete with all their racism, bigotry, corruption, and undisguised contempt for Scotland.

Having that unappealing rabble as the main ideological opponents to the SNP-led Scottish government, and to Scottish independence, is sure to be a boon for them, right?

Wales

Labour are absolutely cooked in Wales, which is remarkable since they’ve been the biggest party there ever since devolution in 1999.

Plaid Cymru and Reform will be the biggest two parties, while Labour duke it out with the also-rans for third place.

Plaid will form the Welsh government, because there simply won’t be enough far-right seats between Reform and the Tories to make up the numbers.

It’s quite remarkable that Reform are going to win so many Welsh seats, even though they won’t actually win, given their leader mocked Welsh people as "foreign speakers", and they were the only party in the Senedd to vote in favour of allowing politicians to lie to the public earlier this year.

Who do we want? English nationalists who ridicule us, and insist that they should be allowed to lie to us!

When do we want them? Now!

Multi-party politics

The general election of 2017 seems a long time ago now, when the combined Tory-Labour vote was 82%.

The two-party system is completely done, and the combined Tory-Labour vote share in the local elections is set to be below 40% when the counting is done!

England is now a five party system, and it’s even more complicated in Scotland and Wales, where the strong performances of the SNP and Plaid Cymru make them six party systems.

Proportional representation

Britain’s archaic and profoundly unrepresentative voting system hardly worked well when it was a two party system. It’s completely unworkable now that it’s splitting into five/six party contests.

2024 was bonkers enough, when Labour won a mega-majority of 63% of the MPs on 34% of the vote, despite losing half a million voters since they lost loads of seats in 2019!

The UK need proportional representation, not just in Westminster politics, but in local elections too.

Inaction on this will deliver absolute chaos.

Foreign influence

There have been many complaints of foreign influence in British politics in recent years, often aimed at the Russians.

We’ve just seen a Thailand-based crypto billionaire bankroll a political party into control of hundreds of council seats, and full control of even more councils.

Public dissatisfaction with Keir Starmer is being exacerbated by Donald Trump’s economic assaults on the UK, and by Starmer’s slavish subservience to the interests of the genocidal racist apartheid state of Israel.

Add in the mass privatisation of core UK infrastructure and services into the hands of overseas corporations and foreign governments; the role of US tech companies in the disemination of news and information; and Elon Musk’s overt threats to interfere in British politics, and it’s obvious that British sovereignty is under greater threat now than it has been in centuries.

So much for Brexit winning us our sovereignty back, eh?

Ruling the ashes

Keir Starmer has been quick to insist that he’s not going to resign. His loyalty is to himself and his right-wing faction of the Labour Party; not to the Labour Party in general; not to Britain; and not to the British people.

His faction would rather burn the Labour Party to the ground and then rule over the ashes, and let the faragists take over the country in the process, than relinquish power and give someone else a shot of doing a better job, before it’s too late.

Swing analysis

There’s a lot of talk about where Labour voters have gone. Whether they’ve mainly deserted the party for the Greens and Lib-Dems, or directly switched to Reform.

Of course many ex-Labour voters will have switched in these ways, but there’s something missing from a lot of the analysis though, which is abstainers and newcomers.

How many traditional Labour voters simply didn’t bother to turn out this time? And how many of the many new Reform and Green voters are newly motivated participants who hadn’t generally voted in local elections before?

Is the slightly over 30% who voted this time around the exact same slightly over 30% who voted at this point in the local election cycle four years ago?

I’d argue that it’s a big assumption to say that they are, and to deny the possibility that disillusionment and new political motivations have played a role in what’s happened.

Demographics

This topic always provokes fury from the "not all boomers" brigade, but it’s absolutely undeniable now.

The biggest determining factor in how people used to vote in the 20th Century was social class. The biggest determining factor in how people vote these days is age.

If only the votes of working age people were counted, the results would be very different, with the Greens, Labour, and the Lib-Dems faring dramatically better.

If only pensioners votes were counted, we’d be looking at even more massive Reform gains.

It’s been this way for a while now. In general the younger generations voted Remain, and in general the boomers ("not all boomers") voted Leave.

The working age generations would’ve given Corbyn’s Labour a shot at government, the boomers voted for Theresa May’s "strong and stable government" and for the diamond-hard Brexit shambles she concocted, then had plagiarised by Boris Johnson.

The working age population want some hope; and affordable housing; and decent wages; and workers rights; and investment economics. The boomers want a faragist demolition job on the last remnants of the post-war settlement. You know, the mixed economy economic conditions that made them the richest generation ever.

Their parents’ generation fought in WWII to stop the extreme-right, now they’re absolutely gagging for the extreme-right to tear down the last remnants of the post-war legacy that their parents’ generation left them.

It’s not all of them, but it’s a huge percentage of them. It’s hard to say what’s making them like this, but being endlessly drip-fed extreme-right populism by massive loss-making right-wing propaganda outlets like GB News and the tabloid rags can’t be discounted, can it?

Conclusion

It’s deeply depressing, but there are a few small glimmers of light.

The SNP and Plaid Cymru are providing effective shields from the extreme right for the Scottish and Welsh people, and even though the Green gains are moderate in comparison, they’re still in a much stronger position than they were before Zack Polanski took over.

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It’s well known that Reform barely bother vetting their candidates, and that they attract a load of extreme-right fanatics; online grifters; and white supremacists, like shit attracts flies.

Stuart John Prior thought he could hide his history of posting diabolical things on Twitter by deleting his presence on there, but an investigation by Hope Not Hate and the Daily Mirror found some of his old Tweets.

Reform were told about what he’d said before the local elections, but they did not suspend him, or distance themselves from his candidacy in either of the places he was standing.

Prior has subsequently been elected as a councillor in Rayleigh West in Essex, and as to Rochford District Council representing Sweyne Park and Grange.

I wonder how many of the people who voted for him to be their local councillor knew that he’d celebrated the racially motivated rapes of two women (a Punjabi and a Sikh) by responding "Good, reap it".

Echoing the language of the race-rapist John Ashby, who he was celebrating the actions of, Prior also tweeted that white people are "the master race".

The race-rapist John Ashby followed a Sikh woman home, violently barged his way into her house, raped her, forced her to call him her "master", and referred to his genitals as "white British" during the attack.

Ashby’s motivation for this savage and disgusting act was his mistaken belief that she was a Muslim.

Prior publicly stated that this race-rape was a "good" thing.

Prior also accused Muslims of being "rats" and argued that it’s impossible to commit genocide against Muslims, because killing them is always "self-defence".

Another of Prior’s theories was that "slavery was ended because black people were shit workers".

"Immigrants are cancer", black people "play the victim" and "complain about the slave trade"; Muslims are "dirt" … and on, and on, and on.

Perhaps the people of Rayleigh West and Sweyne Park and Grange in Essex voted for Prior because they liked his race pseudo-science theory about white people supposedly having the biggest brains?

Who knows?

Either the people who voted for him did know about his history of racism; genocide denial; white supremacism; Islamophobia; and celebrating race-rapists, or they didn’t bother to find out who they were actually voting for, and just voted Reform because they were told to by GB News (or whatever other far-right propaganda slop they’ve been consuming).

Putting aside whether his voters knew about all the racist bile he’s been spewing, you have to wonder whether any of them knew that he was planning a bit of double-jobbing by quietly standing in two elections at once?

Prior’s excuse for all of this racist bile is that he knew nothing about the horrific posts on his personal Twitter account, but also that his account must have been taken over by a hacker to make him look bad.

He didn’t adequately explain how the " hacker" had managed to intersperse picture of his house, and his dog, in between all the extreme-right bile and celebration of race-rape though.

Neither did he manage to explain why anyone would have gone to the effort of interspersing a load of rabid bile between his own personal Tweets, long before he had announced that he’d be standing to be two Reform councillors simultaneously.

Neither did he explain his own motivation for deleting this account after deciding to stand as Reform candidates.

If you’re wondering who Prior is, he’s described as a "Property Company Director" by the media, and on his Reform literature.

A quick check on Companies House shows that he’s the director of a dormant property company declaring no assets, and formerly a director of two struck off businesses that both did little to no actual business.

If he is the "Property Company Director" he’s claiming to be, why is his only listed company dormant?

He’s clearly not living off a single dormant company, so what is he living off? And presuming that it’s some kind of unincorporated property business, is he declaring his income from that for tax purposes?

We know tax-dodging is absolutely rife amongst the Reform top brass, so it would be remiss not to wonder about their racist, race-rape celebrating foot soldiers like Stuart Prior too, wouldn’t it?

Anyway.

Congratulations to the people of Rayleigh West and Sweyne Park and Grange in Rochford for electing this disgusting individual to represent you. You must feel that you’ve really done Essex proud.

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Nigel Farage and Reform love to dress themselves up as patriots, but behind all the flag-waving, they’re shockingly anti-British.

It’s difficult to understand why Reform voters are so blind to all the evidence that the party they adore is craven to Donald Trump; controlled and bankrolled by overseas influences; and riddled with anti-British attitudes and behaviour.

Nathan Gill

Somehow Reform are set to duke it out with Plaid Cymru to become the biggest party in the Welsh Senedd next week, despite the fact Reform’s former party leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, has been jailed for ten and a half years for taking Russian bribes.

Scottish parliament

Reform’s Scottish manifesto includes proposals to hobble the Scottish Parliament and revoke Scottish political powers, so that even more decisions about Scotland’s society, economy, and environment will be made by English MPs in London.

It’s clear that Reform doesn’t see Scotland as an equal part of the union, but rather as a colony of England to be controlled from Westminster.

Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage’s despicable behaviour on Cameo proves that he’s a rent-a-gob who can be paid to say literally anything. Promote an neo-Nazi event; celebrate a notorious paedophile; misogyny; white-supremacism; insulting Welsh people as "foreign speakers"; support Sean 'P Diddy' Combs; promoting crypto scams; even mindlessly repeating an IRA slogan!

People paid Farage to say literally anything, and yet Reform voters somehow trust him not to be bought when it comes to politics!

Trumpism

Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the United Kingdom and UK interests, yet he remains a hero to Nigel Farage.

Trump has repeatedly wielded tariff sanctions against the UK; denigrated the UK and especially London; and disparaged British services personnel who served in US wars like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump destabilised the UK economy with his attacks on Iran, and didn’t even give the UK government warning of what he was going to do (so much for the "special relationship" eh?).

Farage was quick to join Trump in disparaging Britain, and insisting that the UK should do Trump’s bidding by joining in the illegal bombing of Iran (he only backtracked from this position when he realised how unpopular Trump’s warmongering was with the British public).

Now Trump is threatening the UK with "big" tariff sanctions once again, this time over the proposed 2% Digital Services Tax that will force some tax contributions out of tax-shy US corporations that have benefited so much from operating in the UK economy.

How can Reform voters look at Farage’s long history of cosying up to a guy who repeatedly attacks and disparages the UK, and conclude that he’d protect Britain from Trump’s economic attacks on the UK, rather than colluding with them?

Dodgy Foreign donors

Reform is massively bankrolled by a Thailand-based crypto-billionaire called Christopher Harborne, who has poured £9 million into the party from overseas.

The Labour government bought in new rules to prevent overseas individuals from interfering in British politics like this, provoking fury and hissy fits from Farage and his mob.

Labour also banned cryptocurrency political donations, because they’re useful in hiding the actual source of the funds. Once again Reform are far from happy.

If you want overseas billionaires buying political influence in Britain, or hiding their influence via crypto donations, Reform are the party to vote for.

Reform TV

One of Reform’s biggest sources of support is GB News, which is so biased in their favour that they’ve been labelled "Reform TV".

GB News is jointly owned by hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall and Dubai-based investment firm Legatum via an umbrella company that has pumped £131 million into the channel since its launch.

£131 million is an awful lot of cash to pump into far-right, pro-Reform propaganda, and a significant chunk of "Reform TV" propaganda is being bankrolled from Dubai.

Kamikazi Kwasi

Earlier this year Nigel Farage made a £215,000 investment in Kwasi Kwarteng’s crypto company.

For those who don’t remember, Kwarteng was Liz Truss’s Chancellor when she decided to trash the UK economy with her disastrous radically right-wing mini-budget.

Kamikaze Kwasi wrecks the UK economy, then Farage queues up to give the guy a load of cash?

Farage loves Britain so much he’s financially backing the guy who wrecked the UK economy and delivered the cost of living crisis?

Nadhim Zahawi

Nigel Farage was so pleased with poaching Nadhim Zahawi from the Tories that he held an hour long press conference with the guy in London.

Zahawi was caught red-handed dodging £3.7 million in tax via an offshore trust fund.

The fact that Farage and Reform have embraced him with open arms demonstrates that they’re absolutely cool with people who steal from the UK via dodgy offshore tax dodging scams.

Robert Jenrick

Jenrick is another one of the spate of former Tory cabinet ministers poached by Reform. Farage quickly decided to make him Reform’s treasury spokesman.

Jenrick is now under police investigation for unlawful £40,000 donation from convicted US wire fraudster Gary Klopfenstein, before he was poached by Reform from the Tories.

You want a guy who is accused of illegally taking cash from an overseas fraudster to run the UK economy? Well, vote Reform I guess.

Lucy Connolly

Lucy Connolly has been a star guest at various Reform events, where she has received cheers and standing ovations.

She was jailed in 2024 for her public calls for rioters to burn down hotels.

What kind of party elevates criminals like this to hero status, and celebrates people who have displayed absolute contempt for law and order in Britain?

People who supported the 2024 summer riots, and enjoyed seeing extreme-right thugs smashing up our communities; looting and burning shops and public facilities; enforcing racist road blocks; and attempting to burn people alive in hotels?

People who hate Britain as it is, and would prefer to live in a lawless society where public calls to commit murder go unpunished?

Political lies

When the Welsh Senedd voted to ban politicians from lying to the public, only one party objected, and you can already guess which one.

Reform believe that it’s their right to lie to the British public in order to steal elections.

It’s pretty anti-British to view the British public with such contempt right?

Brexit

As a final point, it’s worth pointing out that these anti-British Reform extremists were all champions of Brexit.

Brexit as it was delivered has been a disaster for the UK which has amounted to little more than the UK imposing dire economic and social sanctions on itself.

Their promises of cheaper food; cheaper energy bills; and more money for the NHS all evaporated, and what we’re left with is severely curtailed travel and residency rights in Europe; cumbersome and expensive Brexit paperwork for British businesses that trade with Europe; barriers to British cultural exports to the continent; a 6-8% loss in per capita GDP; lower productivity; lower employment; and lower investment.

These fanatics harmed Britain, and Reform voters clearly want to hand this horrible overseas-bankrolled bunch another opportunity to damage Britain again.

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The attacks on Iran have been going really well for the United States.

Donald Trump hasn’t made himself look like a senile old fool who can be goaded into war by Benjamin Netanyahu at all.

Okay, his Secretary of State and Speaker both publicly stated that the US was goaded into war by the Israelis, but they retracted what they said the next day, and everyone forgot about it, so it’s okay.

The real reason for attacking Iran was to destroy the nuclear weapons facilities Iran were supposedly building. The nuclear weapons facilities that Trump proudly boasted about having destroyed already in 2025, because that makes loads of sense.

Yes, Trump also said that the reason for attacking Iran was "regime change", which is only an open admission of international war crimes, but since the regime change failed, and the Ayatollah was replaced by his son, maybe that doesn’t actually make it a war crime?

The United States’ allies are clearly delighted with what’s been done.

Launching a war without bothering to talk to anyone apart from Netanyahu about it in advance was a real big-brained move.

It’s clear the Europeans are well pleased that the Iran war is driving up oil, energy, and transportation prices, which is causing inflation, and threatening their economies with recession. The way they’re refusing to get involved is a clear sign that they’re well chuffed.

The United States’ allies in the Middle East are even happier than the Europeans, since it’s them losing $billions in oil revenue and capital flight, and them in the firing line of Iran’s reprisal attacks.

Who could have imagined that countries that host US military bases like Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE, might have come under attack if the United States attacked Iran?

The American public are delighted that Trump has dragged them into a war that he promised he wouldn’t, and that it’s going to cost vastly more than Elon Musk managed to save with his doge vandalism of US jobs, welfare programmes, scientific research, education, and environmental protections.

Who needs jobs, social security, an advanced economy, education, or a clean environment, when you could spend all that money, and much more, on bombing the crap out of a country most Americans couldn’t even find on a map?

The American public should be celebrating this bonfire of American cash in order to serve the interests of Israel, and the prospect of sacrificing American lives in a ground invasion, because the Israelis are too cowardly to do it themselves.

We all know the Israelis are only any good at killing civilians; destroying hospitals; murdering journalists; starving children; massacring aid workers; and the like, so it makes perfect sense that Donald Trump is doing all the expensive and dangerous heavy lifting for them.

A ground invasion of Iran isn’t delusional at all. It’s not like the US and their proxies (Saudi Arabia, UK) have spent over a decade attacking the Houthis in Yemen without risking American troops on the ground in one of the poorest countries in the world, so it makes so much sense to think that invading a much more powerful, populous, and mountainous country like Iran would be a cake walk.

It’s excellent that Trump has retroactively defined his main war objective as re-opening the Strait of Hormuz to get the global oil supply flowing again. It makes perfect sense that the primary objective of the war has become returning the Strait of Hormuz to the state it was in before Trump started it.

Attacking a country in the middle of negotiations is superb for US diplomatic relations. It makes them look such reliable and trustworthy negotiating partners. So trustworthy.

It’s excellent that people with insider knowledge about the timing of the war put bets on it, and people with insider knowledge about Trump’s plan to rescind his 48 hour threats against Iran put massive bets on that too.

Massively destabilising the global economy, infuriating US allies, and blasting £200 billion on a war without defined objectives is definitely worth it, if a few of Trump’s cronies can rake in personal profits by using their insider knowledge to loot the stock market, right?

Trump’s declaration that European countries should just go out looting oil too is so smart. That’s what Americans love about their President. He says the quiet parts out loud.

It’s all about looting oil, and other advanced economies should just loot oil from other countries too.

No matter that China, Japan, and several of the major European economies are making leaps and bounds in renewable energy infrastructure. They should be ideologically gutting their renewable energy programmes like Trump has, and looting other countries’ oil instead. Because it makes perfect sense to keep their economies so heavily reliant on fossil fuels which can be driven up in price by the war-mongering antics of one demented old man who wants to distract attention away from the Epstein Files he features so heavily in.

It’s superb that in the middle of a war that they swore they wouldn’t start, Trump keeps rambling on about the garish $400 million ballroom he’s trying to cobble onto the White House, and even better that the Vice President JD Vance is babbling on about aliens being demons from outer space.

These people are perfectly sane.

It’s fabulous that US troops are being told that attacking Iran is part of "God’s divine plan" to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ. Great "separation of church and state" they’ve got going on there!

The United States hasn’t shat itself on the international stage. That isn’t what’s happening. It’s all perfectly sensible and normal. It’s all going so well.

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Labour are facing a historic electoral defeat in the May elections.

Everyone knows it. Even Keir Starmer’s inner circle, who are now plotting Operation Save Our Starmer.

The polling numbers are so dire that members of his inner circle have privately admitted that it’s going to be a "bloodbath" and that Starmer is "the most unpopular Prime Minister ever".

They know it’s going to be catastrophic, so they’ve come up with a deeply cynical "three-pronged strategy" to try and keep him in power, even if Labour suffer their worst election results ever in Scotland, Wales, and the local elections.

Deny responsibility

According to the anonymous source who told The Guardian about their plans, the first prong of their strategy will to be to "minimise the salience of the results as a judgement on the government".

Apparently they’re going to try to argue that people are angry with politicians in general, and that poor old Starmer was just caught in the crossfire, despite having done so well so far!

It’s hard to imagine anyone buying this nonsense. Not the public; not the hundreds of Labour politicians set to lose their seats; and not the Labour MPs who will see how doomed they are at the next general election if nothing changes.

Rely on Trump

The second prong will be to take advantage of Donald Trump’s insane attacks on Iran, and claim that it’s the wrong time to hold a Labour leadership contest.

It’s deeply cynical to use Trump and Netanyahu’s insanity in the Middle East to try and save Starmer’s skin, and a risky strategy too, because it relies on Trump continuing the attacks for at least another month.

Labour’s strategy of claiming to want de-escalation is already brass-necked, given that they’re allowing the US to use British RAF bases to launch attacks on Iran, but claiming to want de-escalation is even more brazen if they’re privately hoping that the attacks continue, so that they can use the instability to insist that Starmer must stay.

Distract immediately

According to the source, the plan is to "distract immediately with a new king’s speech and a potential cabinet reshuffle".

Will the plebs be placated by the king’s scheduled appearance in parliament, and a few token ministerial movements?

It seems highly unlikely.

Additional strategies

Aside from the three main strategies of deny, rely, and distract, the anonymous sources also gave away several other components of Operation Save Our Starmer.

They’re hoping to rush out the next tranche of Mandelson-Epstein files before the elections, so that the scandal that should already have taken Starmer down isn’t reignited in the furious aftermath of Labour’s looming electoral hammering.

They’re hoping that Labour MPs’ fury at the electoral bloodbath will be dissipated by the fact that parliament will be prorogued for the elections, meaning that they’re less likely to get together and organise a leadership challenge.

They’re also hoping that Starmer’s potential successors like Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are too cowardly to pull the trigger, because the first one to stick the knife in rarely ends up wearing the crown.

The Labour right seem extremely confident that there will be no wave of co-ordinated resignations, like when the Labour right used the Brexit referendum result as an excuse to launch their spectacularly failed 2016 Anyone But Corbyn Coup.

It’s interesting to compare the Labour right’s plan to dress the Iran conflict up as a major international issue that would render a leadership contest "totally self-indulgent", with their decision to launch their utterly self-indulgent Corbyn coup in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum result, despite the need to highlight David Cameron’s recklessly negligent failure to develop a contingency plan, just in case he lost his gamble with the nations future.

It seems they think major political crises are only useful in stopping leadership challenges, when it’s one of their guys facing the potential challenge.

One "senior strategist" has claimed that Labour has basically done enough already, and that they just have to "remind people that much of what we have set in motion will start to bear fruit".

Even if it were true that Labour has done so much to improve living standards in the long-term, it’s not going to count for much if they’re privately praying for the global instability and economic shockwaves to continue, so they can use Trump and Netanyahu’s Iran chaos as an excuse to keep their lame duck Prime Minister in Downing Street.

Conclusion

It’s hard to say whether this nonsense will be enough to deter Labour MPs from seeking to replace the man who is so bad that he’s turned a massive landslide victory into a desperate fight for political survival, in under two years.

Labour MPs have done nothing so far to demonstrate that they’ve got the backbone to to make the necessary changes before it’s too late.

If they want the collapse in support to stop, the logical thing would be to get rid of the man who caused it by implementing a load of policies that traditional Labour voters would hate, then telling them to "leave if you don’t like it".

Time is running out for Labour to demonstrate that its first priority is improving the living standards of ordinary people, and it’s beyond obvious that they’ll fail to do this if Starmer and Reeves continue setting the agenda.

If Labour MPs are gullible enough to fall for these ludicrous efforts to save Starmer’s skin, they’ll only have themselves to blame when they lose their own seats at the next election.

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When the journalist Andy Twelves took a look at MattGPT Goodwin’s new book "Suicide of a Nation" he found misused statistics; made up quotes; deceptively framed quotations; and several tell tale signs that portions of the book have been generated by ChatGPT.

Aside from the made-up quotes attributed to writers like Cicero, Friedrich Hayek, and Roger Scruton, one of the most obvious signs that Goodwin relied on ChatGPT to compose his book was that three of the book’s twelve citations still included the query string ?utm_source=chatgpt.com in the url!

Goodwin isn’t just any old right-wing agitator either, he’s a top GB News presenter, and the figure that Reform chose to try to parachute into the Gorton and Denton constituency, which they thankfully lost to the Green Party.

It’s obviously a lot easier for lazy opportunists to create loads of content if they use genAI to write their stuff for them, and easier still if they don’t even bother fact checking the results to ensure they’re not full of fabricated quotes; hallucinated sources; and misrepresented statistics, before publishing it as if it’s their own work.

There’s no way I’m going to use genAI to create content for AAV, and it goes further than simply not trusting the technology to avoid stuff like all the fake quotes, misleading statistics. and hallucinated sources.

If I was intellectually lazy, I could prompt genAI into creating my articles for me, then go through the outputs to check that all of the quotes, statistics, and sources are actually real. However that appears to be a lot of boring work just to evade composing articles myself, right?

From a personal point of view, it just seems much less tedious to just write what I actually want to say, and then find the necessary quotes, statistics, and sources for myself where required.

Presumably the people who follow and support AAV continue to do so because they feel I’m adding something beyond what they could easily generate for themselves by typing a few prompts into the genAI model of their choice.

If I were to go down the lazy route of getting ChatGPT to write my articles for me, I can’t see how it would be possible to maintain a distinctive writing style, or avoid trivial and derivative analyses.

I guess there’s a big difference between my intended audience, and the target audience of a far-right rabble rouser like MattGPT Goodwin.

Some people want real analyses, written by real people, containing real information, and some people are apparently content to waste their time reading lazy and misleading AI-generated slop, as long as it confirms their pre-existing biases.

Who cares if it’s contributing to the destruction of our shared objective reality, if it tells them what they want to hear, right?

I’m not trying to claim that all uses of genAI are inherently bad. I know people who work with AI, and I’m not a luddite. What I’m saying is that I’ll never simply generate AI content and present it as my own work. Corrected, or uncorrected, it’d be a fraud against my readers and supporters.

GenAI can be useful in certain circumstances, however it represents a threat to writers in a lot of ways, not least the AI industry’s absolutely brazen copyright theft in feeding vast amounts of people’s work into their language models without compensation, and the fact real writers (many of whom had their work stolen to create this tech) are all having to compete in online spaces that are increasingly filled with so much lazily-generated AI slop.

However I’m hopeful that there are enough people out there who still want to read real analyses, written by real people, and containing real information, that they’ll continue to visit and support independent media sources like AAV, which don’t lazily publish misleading AI-generated slop as if it’s their own work.

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"I wonder if Keir Starmer is actually one of our most popular PMs ever" muses the pro-Starmer account on BlueSky.

I needed to stop and check through the account’s posting history to ensure it wasn’t some kind of parody account "doing a bit", but it actually seems sincere.

So let’s take this statement in good faith, and see if it’s possible that Starmer is actually one of the most popular Prime Ministers ever, and that "it’s only the media, the pollsters and the [right-wing] numpties that speak badly about him".

Could it actually be true that ordinary people "are very happy with the improvements he is delivering on a daily basis"?

Media

There is a case to be made that the UK media is extremely biased towards the political right, and that there’s an ongoing effort to boost the extreme-right into power, especially from the billionaire-bankrolled, impartiality-smashing GB News propaganda channel (AKA Reform TV).

It’s true that Britain’s right-wing dominated media defied public opinion to clamour for the UK to join in with the global economy trashing Israeli and US attacks on Iran, portraying Starmer as a coward for his decision to limit the UK’s involvement to just allowing the US to use UK bases to launch attacks on Iran.

It’s actually one of the few occasions that Starmer’s stance has more-or-less aligned with the views of the British public, and right-wing media outlets absolutely slammed him for it.

The problem is that it’s not just the right-wing media outlets that are disillusioned with Starmer’s performance as PM. Much of the fiercest criticism has actually come from the minority of liberal and left-wing outlets.

Starmer’s economic assaults on pensioners and disabled people were criticised by left-wing media; his diabolical "Island of Strangers" speech was criticised by left-wing and liberal journalists; the Mandelson-Epstein scandal was largely pursued by left-wing independent media until it got so big the mainstream media couldn’t ignore it any longer; his wilful complicity in Israel’s live-streamed Gaza genocide has been vehemently criticised by left-wing and liberal media sources; his refusal to move away from Tory austerity penny-pinching towards strategic investment has been heavily criticised from the left; and his efforts to politicise English and Welsh courts by scrapping the ancient British right to a jury trial has been condemned by liberal and left-wing outlets too.

Yes, the dominant right-wing media outlets will always be biased against a Labour government, no matter how much Starmer and his ilk attempt to maintain the regressive economic status quo, or imitate far-right anti-immigrant xenophobia. However it would be beyond absurd to pretend that media criticism is only coming from the right.

Polls

Keir Starmer’s polling numbers are absolutely diabolical. He’s even more unpopular than Boris Johnson during the partygate scandal, or Liz Truss when she was setting fire to the national economy!

A recent YouGov poll indicated that an extraordinary 67% of 2024 Labour voters are not planning to vote Labour at the next general election.

It’s quite something to pretend that polling companies like YouGov, Ipsos, Survation, BMG and Opinium are somehow guilty of "speaking badly" about Keir Starmer, for reporting their findings that Starmer is deeply unpopular, and dragging the Labour Party down with him.

Labour’s astonishing loss in the safe Gorton and Denton by-election to the Greens suggests that there must be some truth to the polls; that there’s widespread disillusionment with Starmer’s leadership amongst left-wing traditional Labour voters; and that his naked attempts to woo the extreme-right with austerity economics, welfare vandalism, and anti-immigrant xenophobia simply aren’t working.

It’s actually cult-like behaviour to dismiss facts and evidence (Starmer’s unpopularity; Labour’s catastrophic polling numbers; the humbling Gorton and Denton by-election defeat …) as if the people and organisations highlighting these issues are guilty of "speaking badly" about the dear leader.

Right-wing numpties

Much like the media situation, it’s true that "right-wing numpties" tend to speak badly of Keir Starmer.

Starmer remains deeply unpopular on the right, despite his electorally catastrophic strategy of chasing away scores of traditional Labour voters for every "right-wing numpty" voter he wins over with xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric; continued austerity ruination; and his steadfast refusal to bring vital national infrastructure like water and energy back under public control.

The problem for Labour is that Starmer has chased away millions of traditional Labour voters with his insistence that people should "leave if you don’t like it".

Are all of the people shifting their allegiances to the Greens, Corbyn’s Your Party, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru all "right-wing numpties" too?

Because if the claim is that it’s "only the media, the pollsters, and right-wing numpties" who are critical of Keir Starmer, that’s the absurd implication that’s being made.

Are people "very happy"?

How do we even attempt to answer this question without referring to stuff like polling numbers and electoral results, because they’re apparently part of some orchestrated conspiracy against Starmer’s excellent leadership?

If polling figures and electoral results are part of the anti-Starmer conspiracy, perhaps we could turn to anecdotal experience?

Are you happy with Keir Starmer’s leadership?

Do you feel like Starmer has been delivering sufficient "improvements"?

Do you even know anyone who is happy with Starmer’s leadership, and confident about Labour’s prospects in the upcoming May 7th elections?

I’m not, I don’t, and I don’t.

Furthermore Starmtroopers seem to be extremely thin on the ground on social media too these days, for a man of such claimed popularity.

Reality check

According to the polls Keir Starmer is the most unpopular Prime Minister ever, who is widely despised by the left and right alike. It’s arguable that even most centrists would agree with the contention that Labour hasn’t done anything like enough to make material improvements to ordinary people’s lives, and that this failure to deliver is multiplying the risk of an extreme-right takeover of Westminster.

Labour just lost one of the most humbling by-elections in the party’s history, and they’re staring down the barrel of a historic wipe outs in Scotland, Wales, London, and in Labour-controlled councils across the country in May.

It seems obvious to outside observers that Starmer is only still in position now because Labour needs him to take the fall for the looming electoral bloodbath, so that his successor can start with a clean slate, rather than a historic electoral mauling.

Maybe I’m wrong though, and the Starmer true believers are right?

Maybe the diabolical poll numbers the result of an all-encompassing anti-Starmer conspiracy amongst the polling companies?

Maybe media criticism of Starmer is a smokescreen hiding the fact that he’s widely liked and admired by the British public?

Maybe the soaring popularity of the Green Party is a mirage, and the only people who are actually dissatisfied with Starmer’s leadership are "right-wing numpties"?

Maybe the public are so "very happy" with Starmer’s performance that they’re going to flock to the polls in May to send him a ringing endorsement?

It all seems very unlikely to me, and if I was a gambling man, I’d put money on Labour losing loads of seats in the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, and taking an almighty hammering in local council elections, with Starmer either resigning immediately, or facing a leadership challenge in the aftermath.

Perhaps this looming electoral Armageddon is the only way that the tiny remaining rump of Starmer true believers will finally wake up to reality?

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The Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections are coming up on May 7th, and the far-right Reform fanatics are looking to make unprecedented gains in both national assemblies.

The polls in Scotland are predicting that Reform will benefit from a huge collapse in the Tory vote to vie with Labour to become the official opposition to the SNP. The far right finishing above the Tories in second or third place would be a remarkable radicalisation of the Scottish parliament.

In the Senedd election polls, Reform are vying with Plaid Cymru to win the most votes of all. There’s little chance of them actually playing a part in the Welsh government though, because the majority of their gains would come at the expense of the Tories, who are the only party that would consider going into coalition with the extreme-right.

It’s hard to understand where this popularity is coming from, especially given Reform’s policies, and statements by Nigel Farage.

In Scotland, Reform have set out a policy agenda of shrinking the Scottish parliament, and tearing up the Scotland Act to hand a load of Scottish Parliament powers over to Westminster.

What this would mean in effect is stripping away many of the powers the Scottish Parliament has used to make life better for Scottish people, like not burdening Scottish students with vast unpayable debts; free prescriptions; free adult social care; better childcare provision; etc.

All of that would be at risk if Reform were to allowed to take a blowtorch to the Scotland Act, especially given Farage’s open admiration of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s ruinous DOGE cuts.

Farage wants to erode Scotland’s autonomy, and give Westminster politicians in London more powers to make life worse for ordinary people in Scotland, yet somehow a significant minority of Scottish people seem intent on supporting the rise of the extreme-right in Scotland.

Farage’s contempt for Wales is even more apparent, having recorded a Cameo video saying that he wouldn’t attend a wedding in Wales because he "heard that half the guests were Welsh" then calling them "foreign speakers".

Farage’s anti-Welsh comments were made as part of his Cameo grift, where he’s made around £180,000 acting as a paid rent-a-gob for anyone with the cash to pay him to say whatever they want. The Reform party works on a similar principle, being heavily bankrolled by the Thailand-based billionaire Christopher Harborne.

When people in Scotland and Wales vote for Reform, they’re essentially voting to hand political power to the shady overseas billionaire who bankrolls the Reform operation.

Then there’s the fact the Reform were the only party in the Senedd to vote against new legislation to make it a criminal offence for politicians to lie to get themselves elected.

Positioning themselves as the sole political voice in Wales standing up for a politician’s right to lie to the public really gives their game away.

It’s astonishing that so many people in Scotland and Wales seem to want to vote for Farage and his extreme-right rabble, especially given their openly stated desire to erode Scotland’s autonomy and their determination to lie to the Welsh public with impunity.

It’s difficult to understand the mindset of people who hate their own nations so much that they’d wilfully back a nasty rent-a-gob ideologue who holds them and their countries in such contempt.

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The people spewing the most outrage about Winston Churchill being replaced by wildlife on the £5 note are the very same people who are determined to destroy Churchill’s finest legacy.

Last week’s performative outrage furore over the Bank of England’s decision to feature iconic British animals on the next series of banknotes was really something to behold.

Reform and Tory politicians; right-wing media hacks; and deluded propaganda-addled fools spewed torrents of outrage that their beloved Winston Churchill was being replaced on the £5 note, falsely attributing the decision to Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves; the Green Party; and the nebulous "woke left".

In reality the decision was made by the Bank of England after a period of public consultation, in which 44,000 people voted to honour British wildlife (60%), which came in above British landmarks (56%); historical figures (38%); arts, culture and sport (30%); innovations (23%); and noteworthy milestones (19%).

The right-wing outrage-peddlers didn’t just lie about how the decision was made and by whom, they also plucked random animals out of the air to scream about how Churchill was being replaced by "a picture of a beaver" (Nigel Farage); "a hedgehog" (Sharron Davies); "an owl" (Alex Armstrong); and "a squirrel" (Robert Jenrick).

On planet reality, the specific animals to appear on the £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes have not actually been decided yet. Phase two of the Bank of England’s consultation will let the public choose which are their favourite iconic British animals.

It actually seems like a fun and interesting exercise for the nation to choose which are the most quintessentially British of our native animals, but to the right-wing outrage-mongers, it’s horrifying proof of Britain’s national decline because squirrels are woke! Beavers are woke! Owls are woke! Hedgehogs are woke! Aaaargh!

Then there’s the fact that Churchill has only been featured on the £5 note for ten years, since 2016 when he replaced the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry; who replaced the Quaker railway pioneer George Stephenson in 2002; who replaced the Duke of Wellington in 1991.

Replacing Churchill on a banknote isn’t like deleting the man’s legacy, it’s entirely normal. Nobody stays on British banknotes forever, not even the Queen.

Talking of Churchill’s legacy, it’s worth pointing out that most of the right-wingers who spewed such outrage and outright lies about the banknote redesign are extremely keen on deleting Churchill’s finest legacy, the European Convention on Human Rights.

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In the aftermath of the Second World War, European nations came together to draw up a charter of fundamental human rights in an effort to ensure nothing like the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust could ever happen in Europe again.

Winston Churchill and his wartime cabinet ally, turned Labour rival, Clement Attlee were two of the strongest proponents of these new European human rights.

Winston Churchill was a leading figure at the founding congress at The Hague in 1948; Clement Attlee signed the UK up in 1950; and then Churchill’s government ratified it in 1953.

It was a great example of the British left and right putting their differences aside for the greater good, and it’s widely regarded as one of the best things Churchill ever did.

Removing the UK from the ECHR and deleting our human rights (to join Russia and Belarus as the only European countries outside the ECHR) is a constant theme for Reform and Tory politicians; GB News talking heads; and right-wing propaganda hacks.

They’re absolutely desperate to tear down Churchill’s legacy, and erase the fundamental human rights he wanted to leave us.

It’s quite something for these right-wing politicians and propaganda-peddlers to kick up an enormous furore over Churchill being rotated off the £5 note, whilst simultaneously agitating for Churchill’s greatest legacy to be thrown in a skip and burned.

It’s pure symbolism above substance.

They want Churchill to be seen as an empty emblem of Britishness, but they openly despise the substance of what the man wanted to leave as a safeguard for future generations.

They want cult-like adoration of the figure and his status as a wartime leader, but complete ignorance of his post-war efforts to ensure that European people would never suffer such horrors again.

It’s such a sad spectacle to see people being so ignorant and easily-led that they actually fall for this absurdly hypocritical right-wing culture war grift.

They’ll mindlessly agree with the likes of Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick when they spew faux-outrage and outright lies about Churchill being rotated off the £5 note, but then wilfully vote for parties like Reform and the Tories, even though they’re absolutely desperate to erase Churchill’s greatest political legacy.

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