The General Election in the United Kingdom

[P.K.]

26 minutes ago, woolley said:

How can you say that? They made mincemeat of the Tory vote, letting in far more than 80 Labour MPs.

The logic of the situation clearly escapes you.

Allegedly "The Brexit Party" withdrew because Bozo promised them he would "Get Brexit Done!"

Well, he wouldn't "Get Brexit Done!" from the Opposition benches now would he...

No charge.

[woolley]

On 7/5/2024 at 10:42 AM, P.K. said:

Mandy taking a pop at Reform stalwart David Bull on the "quality" of some of their candidates. Bull(shit) responds that they (the Brexit Party) stood down and gave Bozo Johnson an 80-seat majority.

Well, not on yesterday's voting they wouldn't have...

 

12 hours ago, woolley said:

How can you say that? They made mincemeat of the Tory vote, letting in far more than 80 Labour MPs.

 

11 hours ago, P.K. said:

The logic of the situation clearly escapes you.

Allegedly "The Brexit Party" withdrew because Bozo promised them he would "Get Brexit Done!"

Well, he wouldn't "Get Brexit Done!" from the Opposition benches now would he...

No charge.

You're right for once. It escapes me absolutely, or at least your logic does, and the rest of your post sheds no light. Please explain how Thursday's vote suggests that Brexit standing down in Tory defended seats in 2019 did not assist the Tories to an 80 seat majority. Elections are barely comparable with each other in any case. So many variables.

[La Colombe]

On 7/5/2024 at 8:51 AM, Amadeus said:

 

Lol, seriously? Weapons grade hypocrisy posting that. 

[The Voice of Reason]

 

Interesting and largely complimentary article about Angela Rayner from of all sources The Telegraph.

 

Angela Rayner is now one of Britain’s most powerful women – underestimate her at your peril

The new Deputy Prime Minister and ‘rebel with a cause’ could be Keir Starmer’s greatest asset... or his biggest headache

Back in the 2000s, on the eve of a London National Executive Committee meeting of the public service union Unison, a senior member, Liz Snape, got a call: “There’s a young woman coming your way from Stockport. She’s called Angie, she’s a north west regional activist and has a very unique talent for somebody so young.

“She’s had a terrible start in life. Keep an eye out for her. She’s sharp and bright and to the point. I think she’s going to go far.”

Snape put down the phone. Intriguing. The woman was in her twenties, had grown up on one of the roughest Stockport housing estates, and was travelling to London as a union rep speaking for 250,000 members.

She already had a young child, born when she was 16, and a sick mother at home, and had got herself out of grinding poverty by becoming a carer to the elderly, with an NVQ Level 2 in social care.

It had been an obvious route given she’d been caring for her bi-polar mother since the age of 10, preventing her from suicide by sleeping at the end of her bed at night. It was a dire back story that was to become famous 10 years later, and never more so than this week given that that young woman, now by marriage called Angela Rayner, is now one of the most powerful women in Britain.

As a new political era begins for Britain, Rayner, along with Chancellor Rachel Reeves, is part of a trio led by Sir Keir Starmer that will oversee the change agendapromised by the new Prime Minister.

By appointing her Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, he has signalled his trust in her. It also shows how highly he rates a woman who he inherited in 2020 by virtue of her own mandate as newly elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, backed by the unions, when he himself was elected leader.

After a very tricky three-year getting-to-trust-you process which Starmer’s biographer, Tom Baldwin, likens to “an arranged marriage” because Starmer could not get rid of her, Rayner is now rumoured to be holding out for what would be a newly created Office for the Deputy Prime Minister.

Less than 10 years after being elected as a Labour MP for Ashton-under-Lyne in 2015, that woman who began her political career speaking up for downtrodden carers in Stockport is at the heart of the country’s new establishment. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into,” she has said since. 

Katy Balls, political editor of The Spectator, says: “She has a union background and has fought to get to where she is. She also knows she has a unique power base within the Labour Party and is the only member, other than Keir Starmer, to be elected by the party membership. That means she is un-sackable. She’s a fighter, and has the potential to be Starmer’s biggest asset or biggest headache.”

At the age of 20, Angie Bowen, as she was then, had not been driven by a desire to be political, unlike so many of the young, well-educated prospective Labour MPs barely out of university who stood as candidates – some successfully – in this week’s general election. 

She knew the pain of poverty. She’d walked with two siblings to her grandmother’s every week so they could have a bath in hot water and wash their uniform. Their food was cooked in a fat fryer. She had been on the cusp of being taken into care.

Her mother couldn’t read or write. And then, with no parental guidance, as a sexually inexperienced teenager, she had become a mother herself, at 16. She took her GCSEs, none coming back grade C or above.

“I met Angela when she had been told she would amount to nothing, that she was just going to be sat there living on benefits for the whole of her life,” says Stephanie Thomas, who would go on to be assistant general secretary of Unison and who was Rayner’s first Unison mentor in Stockport.

“And you either believe or you fight against it and show people you are worth something. I could see immediately that she wanted to do something to give herself a better life, to give other women a better life. She had seen what it is like to be vulnerable and left behind.” 

Rayner was enjoying being a union rep: listening to the poorly paid carers; herding them into action; getting bolshy with Stockport Council, which employed them. “My union found me a rebel – and it made me a rebel with a cause,” she has said. 

The young Angela Rayner saw "what it is like to be vulnerable and left behind"

“She wanted to run before she could walk [in the union] and so she needed guidance,” explains Thomas. When she ran for the National Executive Council, I had said: “It’s way too soon. You need more experience. And she said “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m doing it.“ 

It was, as it turned out, to be the beginning of a pattern. “We got behind her, sent her on a public speaking course, gave her media training, presentation skills, report writing….We’d red-pen a lot of her reports saying, ‘Angela, you can’t say that!’.

“But she took it well. She never bore a grudge. She’d take the criticism if it was constructive. There was not an edge to her. She was a very kind person.” 

“Angela fills the gaps for Keir,” says Baldwin. “I wear my heart on my sleeve,” Rayner has said, which is in direct opposition to the new Prime Minister’s buttoned-up demeanour.

She stores his number in her phone as Mr Darcy, a reference to the emotionally reticent lawyer in Bridget Jones’ Diary.

Tom Baldwin says: “She has called him ‘the least political person I know in politics.’ There was a long period from 2021 through to last year when relations weren’t great [between them] and they spoke a different language.”

This reached a nadir following mixed local election results when Starmer stripped her of her role as party chair and election coordinator as part of a shadow cabinet reshuffle. She found out indirectly.

They had a meeting in which, at the very least, she let him have it with both barrels, and she emerged with more, not fewer, shadow cabinet titles. Boris Johnson in the Commons likened her to “a lioness on the prowl”.

“The more titles he feeds her, Mr Speaker, the hungrier I fear she is likely to become.”

“There was this sense of a damaged relationship,” says Baldwin. “But that has dissipated now. She can anchor him in the trade unions. She keeps the tent big for him. He needs different poles to keep the tent up.”

Angela Rayner, now 44, sleeps three to four hours a night. It’s always been this way. Politically, she is driven by the same beliefs as she was back in those union days: greater workers’ rights – “Angela would resist the watering down of that,” says Baldwin – with the abolishment of the zero-hour contract; better education for all; levelling up through housing and measures to reduce homelessness.

Angela Rayner, who cut her teeth as a union rep, is still driven to champion worker's rights and homelessnessCREDIT: Joe Giddens/PA Wire

She describes herself as “soft Left”, although she first served under – and campaigned for – Jeremy Corbyn, who was eventually expelled from the party in 2020 as Starmer sought to erase the party’s legacy of anti-Semitism. 

She voted Remain but has since admitted she was ambivalent on Brexit. She is “hardline” on law and order – a result of having seen violence on her council estate – and national security.

She has been supportive of trans rights, saying in The Guardian in March: “We have biological women and we have trans women. And they’re both women: one is a biological woman through sex, and one is a trans woman who has transitioned. Most of the public can get that.”

This week, Keir Starmer said, amid confusion over the party’s trans policy, that transgender women who have legally transitioned do not have the right to access female-only spaces, insisting those spaces “need to be protected.”

Two other members of the then shadow cabinet refused to be drawn.

Rayner married the union official Mark Rayner in 2010, from whom she separated in 2020. They are close friends. She is a devoted mother of three boys, two of them now teenagers from her marriage to Rayner: Charlie, 16, and Jimmy, 14.

She delivered Charlie at 23 weeks and almost lost him. He is registered blind and has epilepsy but goes to a mainstream school. At the age of 37, she became a grandmother to a little girl from the son she had at 16, Ryan, now 27. She calls herself “grangela”.

Since becoming an MP, Rayner has been a loud presence in the Labour Party. One of her first rookie errors was to complain to a shop owner on HoC headed paper when a pair of shoes with Star Wars heels were not delivered to her.

Until recently, she has gone raving on holiday, to nightclubs in Manchester with friends, and is famous for mixing up her Venom cocktail at barbecues (one bottle of vodka, one bottle of Southern Comfort, 10 bottles of alcopop and a litre of orange juice), a potion so potent that a local councillor ended up comatose in the dog basket.

“You can see from the fact that the Tories often use Angela Rayner in their attack ads that they believe she has the potential to be a vulnerability to Labour,” says Balls. “Definitely a few years ago they found in focus groups that she did not poll well with many Tory/Labour swing voters, which is one reason for the attacks.

“While voters found her back story admirable, it didn’t translate to wanting her to be in charge of the country. The Tories also see her as obviously to the Left of Starmer, so attacking her is an effective way of suggesting Starmer’s Labour will be less centrist than he suggests in interviews.”

Dame Margaret Beckett, the longest ever serving female MP, a minister under four Labour prime ministers and, like Rayner, a former deputy leader of the Labour Party (1992 to 1994) agrees: “There will be an attempt to use her against Keir Starmer and she needs to make sure they can’t, in what she says and what she does. My impression is that Keir has become increasingly at ease with Angela and her role.”

Rayner has been on a sharp learning curve. Her appearance in the election debates revealed a new sartorial restraint, a move away from a wardrobe of leopard print and glitter which, for a while, was said to have irritated Starmer.

She has been cited in what has been called “the sleekification of Labour’s women”. Rayner’s punchy colours are still there, but now in solid blocks, with clean lines best suited to flattering silhouettes in photographs.

In a Vogue shoot at the end of last year – revealing in of itself - she looked polished, her flame red hair silky, in Emilia Wickstead (a designer loved by the Princess of Wales). In fact, she looked so good she must have bought the chartreuse Wickstead coat worn in the main image because she has since been seen out and about wearing it. 

Up until recently, Rayner has smoked cigarettes and then vapes in public, unable to quit (her kids call her “the Vape Dragon”). She has danced to Stormzy, and DJed at a Labour Party conference.

She plays Amy Winehouse on her car stereo and Eighties pop. She talks about her mortgage (£320,000), her period poverty as a teenager, when she resorted to rolled up balls of loo paper, and the cosmetic breast surgery she paid for with a loan on her thirtieth birthday, post the birth of her second and third sons, after losing six stone.

She told The FT, over lunch, conjuring a startling image: “My boobs just looked like two boiled eggs in socks…like basset hound ears. You can’t be 30 and have a chest like an 84-year-old.”

Sir Keir would have to drink a lot of her venom to get anywhere near to her openness. Such a big personality, however, has often inspired bad headlines – Tory gold dust – some of her own making, some not.

One newspaper story, in 2022, which alleged she crossed and uncrossed her legs à la Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct to put Boris Johnson off his game in the chamber, provoked outrage.

There were thousands of complaints of misogyny, including a condemnatory response from Johnson himself. “It was steeped in classism... about where I came from, how I grew up and really I must be thick and I must be stupid…” she told the ITV programme Lorraine. “I’ve worked really hard to get where I am.”

One naturally conservative man told me recently, “When I analyse my instinctive reaction to Angela Rayner I feel bad about myself because I realise I’m a bigot. I don’t like it.” Rayner loathes this kind of Tory response to her, a distaste for her accent, her class and a (pre-Vogue) blousiness.

But sometimes, she is her worst enemy. In 2021, she was recorded at the Labour Party Conference talking about Conservatives, as “a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute pile of [inaudible] banana republic, vile, nasty Etonian [inaudible] piece of scum.” The comment, unedifying and unprofessional, went viral.

A year earlier she had also been caught muttering “scum” under her breath in the Commons which had led to a rebuke. 

This was an example of how Rayner’s “cut through” – her ability to get noticed – can work against her. She blamed the “street language” of her youth. Starmer was unimpressed. 

Fellow Labour MP Emily Thornberry said “there may have been drink partaken” at the party conference in 2021. 

Rayner later apologised, saying: “I will continue to speak my mind. But in future I will be more careful about how I do that and the language that I choose.” 

“I know some Tories don’t like her style or her politics,” says Michael Gove – “old Govey” as Rayner calls him – who is handing over to her his Levelling Up portfolio. He has shared with her “a couple of cups of tea”, but not yet the clubbing night she has said she’d like.

Michael Gove: 'Some Tories don't like her style or her politics'

“I don’t think by nature Angela is a hater. She is just passionate about what she believes in. If you get her at conference, having a drink with a cigarette, her guard is down,” says the Liberal Democrat peer David Goddard, Baron Goddard of Stockport who has known her since she was a pushy union rep and he was running Stockport Council. “[But] she has learned [over the years] that it has to be more about minding yourself. She doesn’t kick off like she used to.”

Her background, dissenters say, has too often been used as a political tool by her, although these days she seems to be moving away from the “Poor Ange” narrative: “Obviously her personal story is touching and moving and her resilience and forthrightness is winning,” says Gove, “and I think people are naturally drawn to her because of her warmth and authenticity.”

An example of her humour on this matter was on show back in 2017, when she was named The Spectator Rising Star of the Year. In accepting the award in such a fine-dining London hotel setting, she quipped she hadn’t seen so many knives on a table since a Stockport police amnesty. 

Angela Rayner’s early ability to distance herself from the hard Left politics of Jeremy Corbyn is revealing. “I am not a Corbynista” she has said. Lord Goddard remembers advising her during this time, following her election: “She got herself out of that [damaging legacy] all on her own.

“I would tell her ‘Angela, keep a bit of distance from him. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You need a Plan B.’ I think that helped her see the bigger picture. 

 

“It’s a credit to her that she managed to stay on the right side of events. I have really seen her grow as a person. She has become far more measured.

“I have told her, ‘Try to make that transition into becoming a more rounded politician.’” She still rings him, when they are both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords respectively, saying “Dave, have you got 15 minutes?”

“I do sometimes think [of her], ‘Is there nobody [else] to give you advice?’ But she is a loner. Back [when she was very young] we ran our relationship on a ‘no surprises’ basis. If she heard things that were brewing with care workers or refuse workers, she’d tell me and I would tip her off too.

“It was a radical approach and it worked. I trusted her and she trusted me. At least 50 per cent of the time, we stopped things escalating.”

Those who have gone the distance with Rayner say trust and support is everything. It sits at the heart of her repaired relationship with Starmer – cemented last year when he made her shadow deputy prime minister, and then this year backed her with 100 per cent conviction over a Greater Manchester Police investigation into whether or not she’d committed a tax dodge when selling a council house, bought in 2007.

It was a question first raised in a 2024 unauthorised biography of her by Lord Michael Ashcroft. She was cleared of any wrongdoing in May. This continuing trust between Rayner and Starmer will determine the future health of a British government with her in it

Rayner has, in the past, said of herself, “I’m John Prescott in a skirt, me”, a reference to Prescott’s working-class background, his lack of Oxbridge education, his northern accent and his tendency to go off message, most memorably when he lost his temper and punched a protestor. “I do consider myself to be like him. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I think that is a very northern thing,” Rayner told The Daily Record back in December 2021.

“But Angela is much more tuned into the people who she is with,” says Dame Margaret Hodge, who stood down this election after a long career and who, as a Corbyn-hater, admits she was initially suspicious of the young, red-headed woman who served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. “Prescott was always slightly cross he wasn’t one of [Blair’s lot]. He would hate me for saying that.”

“I’m not suspicious of Angela anymore. She is kind and committed to the cause. And she is a loner in an odd way, as well as being friendly and warm and tough. It’s a lovely combination.”

“If feels like there has been a softening over the past year,” agrees Balls, “and some senior Tories will now admit that Angela has something about her. Her admirers within the Tory party think she has charm and can land a blow.

“They take the view that she is quite popular with the voters. That could change [now] she is actually the one making the decisions.’

Gove says: “I wish her really well. She will be expected to lead on the housing and the planning reforms which Labour has put as central to the drive for growth. There will be goodwill from the department and an element of affection from Labour grassroots. And they will forgive any early errors which might be impetuosity.”

Angela Rayner is a deft politician, MPs on both sides seem to agree on that at least.

As she has said of herself: “Underestimate me at your peril.”

 

Edited July 6 by The Voice of Reason

[HeliX]

16 hours ago, woolley said:

He's worked hard to shape his party the way it is now.

Yes, that's my major objection to the Tory twat.

[The Voice of Reason]

On 7/5/2024 at 12:07 PM, HeliX said:

Starmer is a massive bag of nothing. His own vote dropped from 36k in 2019 to 18k in 2024. Nobody wants him.

18k want him. Not quite nobody 

[HeliX]

1 hour ago, The Voice of Reason said:

18k want him. Not quite nobody 

He's lost half his support in his own constituency. He got a lower vote than Corbyn in this election. His party got fewer votes than Corbyn, who was allegedly unelectable and a disaster for Labour. If Reform didn't exist the Tories would've likely gottne back in.

[The Voice of Reason]

2 hours ago, HeliX said:

He's lost half his support in his own constituency. He got a lower vote than Corbyn in this election. His party got fewer votes than Corbyn, who was allegedly unelectable and a disaster for Labour. If Reform didn't exist the Tories would've likely gottne back in.

Poem

 If wishes were horses

Beggars would ride:

If turnips were watches

I would wear one by my side.

And if if’s and and’s were pots and pans,

The tinker would never work!
 

If Jordan Pickford didn’t exist, Switzerland may now be through to the Euro 2024 semi finals. Who knows?
 

But the Reform party does exist, whether you like it or not. You can’t base an argument on saying that X would have happened if that which you dislike doesn’t exist. The football team I support might have won the Premier League if Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea  et al  didnt exist.

It doesn’t work like that

[HeliX]

40 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

 

Poem

 If wishes were horses

Beggars would ride:

If turnips were watches

I would wear one by my side.

And if if’s and and’s were pots and pans,

The tinker would never work!
 

If Jordan Pickford didn’t exist, Switzerland may now be through to the Euro 2024 semi finals. Who knows?
 

But the Reform party does exist, whether you like it or not. You can’t base an argument on saying that X would have happened if that which you dislike doesn’t exist. The football team I support might have won the Premier League if Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea  et al  didnt exist.

It doesn’t work like that

I think you're struggling with the difference between wishes and understanding statistics. I'm clearly not wishing that the Tories won.

[P.K.]

On 7/5/2024 at 11:28 PM, woolley said:

How can you say that? They made mincemeat of the Tory vote, letting in far more than 80 Labour MPs.

I like to put numbers around things to help quantify them. I noticed that nice economic justice campaigner Richard Murphy declared "Labour has not won hearts and minds. Not in the slightest." I just figured the Smurf had simply forgotten that in the UK we never vote a government in we just vote them out! However digging to find out what motivated the Reform UK voters, I mean, they can't all be racists surely, I came to realise that has changed and in 2019 the UK did, in fact, vote a government in. Unfortunately...

It used to gall me that Americans could cope with a four word soundbite like "Make America Great Again" yet in the UK it was clearly thought they could only cope with three words like "Get Brexit Done". However it's become obvious that even thicko Americans can cope with four word soundbites if they make a snappy acronym. There's a lesson there somewhere. However I digress.

The 2019 election was all about "Get Brexit Done". The proof is in the figures when presented with EU Referendum voting by Party constituencies thus:

From the HoC Library:

"In the 2019 General Election, 294 (72%) of Leave seats were won by the Conservatives and 106 (26%) by Labour. All the seats won by the SNP and all but one of the seats won by the Liberal Democrats had voted Remain.

"The Conservatives held all their Leave-voting seats and gained 55 more. The 10 seats they lost had all voted Remain. Most of the 60 seats lost by Labour (52) were constituencies that had voted to Leave. The one seat gained by Labour had voted to Remain."

So it's clear that disaffected brexiteers flocked to serve under the Blue Colours to "Get Brexit Done" because, let's face it, there wasn't any other reason!

Now bitterly disappointed in how brexit has turned out and with none of the benefits they were promised actually materialising the lure of Reform UK was irresistible. As they claim they can deliver on everything Bozo failed to. So in the same way they turned to the tories in 2019 they turned to Reform in 2024 with exactly the same motives in mind. No doubt "immigration" being top of their agenda.

A good example is Lee 30p Anderson's constituency of Ashfield. I chose Ashfield simply because it's the same bigoted, racist, not very bright candidate standing for election both times:

2019 percentage of votes won

    Con  39%

Ash Ind 28%

       Lab 24%

     Brexit 5%

2024 percentage of votes won

          Ref 43%

          Lab 29%

    Ash Ind 16%

           Con 8%

So comparatively the Labour vote went up and the tories crashed and burned. It was noted by the BBC that in tory constituencies where 60%+ had voted for Leave the tory vote dropped by 27% thanks to a disappointing Brexit and in Labour constituencies with large Muslim communities their share of the vote dropped by 23% thanks to the truly poisonous George Galloway as Jess Phillips found to her cost.

According to Reform stalwart David Bull people voted for Reform because "people want low tax, low regulation and high growth and that's what we offer" - in other words all the usual populist BS.

So I am forced to conclude that had Reform UK with a decent platform stood in 2019 then the tories could have been in deep trouble. But back then they didn't have a decent platform nor a smarmy, lying, untrustworthy, racist leader so David Bull's assertion that by not standing in 2019 they gifted Bozo an eighty seat majority looks doubtful.

But there's no denying that brexit cast a deep shadow over this election and there's a lot of folks about who simply don't understand that they've been taken for mugs (again!) and you just can't polish a turd...

Edited July 7 by P.K.

[HeliX]

3 hours ago, P.K. said:

and in Labour constituencies with large Muslim communities their share of the vote dropped by 23% thanks to the truly poisonous George Galloway as Jess Phillips found to her cost.

Oh, did George Galloway force Keir to support collective punishment?

[wrighty]

18 hours ago, HeliX said:

He's lost half his support in his own constituency. He got a lower vote than Corbyn in this election. His party got fewer votes than Corbyn, who was allegedly unelectable and a disaster for Labour. If Reform didn't exist the Tories would've likely gottne back in.

The reason Corbyn did so well this time, apparently, is most of the people voting for him thought they were voting labour, because they're too stupid to know that he was standing as an independent having been kicked out by the party. So said Peter Mandelson, I think.

[P.K.]

39 minutes ago, HeliX said:

Oh, did George Galloway force Keir to support collective punishment?

I give up...

Did he?

[HeliX]

2 minutes ago, wrighty said:

The reason Corbyn did so well this time, apparently, is most of the people voting for him thought they were voting labour, because they're too stupid to know that he was standing as an independent having been kicked out by the party. So said Peter Mandelson, I think.

That seems like a reach.

[HeliX]

2 minutes ago, P.K. said:

I give up...

Did he?

No. So it's not really George Galloway's fault that Labour lost a huge proportion of their Muslim voters.