Sunday 15 December 2019

The Far Left's 2019 General Election Results

The mainstream left got a pummelling on Thursday, and there a number of reasons for this. Some complex, some a bit more straightforward. But before continuing analysing the result and its implications, Sunday is the best day to tune in and see how our comrades on the far left did. Strap yourselves in.

Alliance for Green Socialism
Leeds North East - Celia Foote 176 (0.3%, +0.1)
Leeds Wast - Mike Davis 31 (0.1%)

Communist League
Tottenham - Jonathan Silberman 42 (0.1%)
Wythenshawe and Sale East - Caroline Bellamy 58 (0.1%)

People Before Profit Alliance
Belfast West - Gerry Carroll 6,194 (16%, +5.8)
Foyle - Shaun Harkin (1,332 (2.8%, -0.2)

Socialist Equality Party
Holborn and St Pancras - Thomas Scripps 37 (0.1%)
Manchester Central - Dennis Leech 107 (0.2%)
Sheffield Central - Chris Marsden 28 (0.1%)

Socialist Labour Party
Hartlepool - Kevin Cranney 494 (1.2%)

Socialist Party of Great Britain
Cardiff Central - Brian Johnson 88 (0.2%)
Folkestone and Hythe - Andy Thomas 69 (0.1%)

Workers Revolutionary Party
Camberwell and Peckham - Joshua Ogunleye 127 (0.2%, +0.0)
Ealing Southall - Hassan Zulkifal 170 (0.4%, -0.4)
Hackney South and Shoreditch - Jonty Leff 111 (0.2%)
Kensington - Scott Dore 28 (0.1%)
Tottenham - Frank Sweeney 88 (0.2%)

No doubt the WRP will come away from their battle royale in Tottenham gleeful that their 88 votes more than double of their Communist League rivals. But come on, just look at the state of this list. Apart from People Before Profit in Northern Ireland, who show what consistent work can achieve, this is by far the most miserable set of results the far left have posted in recent years. Not that it should come as any surprise. The WRP and SEP are bizarre cults descended from a tradition within Trotskyism of shopping dissidents to Middle Eastern dictatorships and being led by a serial sex abuser. The Alliance for Green Socialism stands because of some arcane personal animus between its members and Leeds Labour Party, the SLP and CL are little more than left hobbyist outfits, and the SPGB carry on doing their Waiting for Godot thing. Thankfully none of them mattered enough to deny Labour a seat.

Of one thing we can be certain. Regardless of what happens between now and the next general election, whatever the content and the range of debates about the election result inside the broader labour movement and how we can rise to meet the Tories, these comrades will be back again with the same organisations, the same propaganda, and the same embarrassing results.

4 comments:

singapore sling said...

What about the green party

Imposs1904 said...

"Waiting for Godot thing . . . "

I like that.

As long as s/he knows to muster under our banner, then we're more than happy to wait another 20 minutes for them.

Lost Tango said...

Not in any sense "far left".

Thalesofmiletus said...

While it makes no difference to the overall critique above, the SPGB is in no sense a party of the far left or hard left or perhaps of the left at all and has little in common with any of the other parties listed. Its object is the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community. Clearly a total of 157 votes from two constituencies is a pitiful tally by any standards but I suspect that it will continue to wait for Godot as it has been doing for the past 115 years. If nothing else (and critics may say it offers nothing else) its critique of the capitalist mode of production remains as logical, coherent and irrefutable as it has since its foundation in 1904.