Rachel Reeves's Pitiful Attack on Corbyn

Being the object of Rachel Reeves's criticism is like getting gummed by a toothless sheep. Nevertheless, her "scathing" broadside against Jeremy Corbyn interests because, in a few sentences, she encapsulates the outlook and politics of the Labour right.

Speaking at the Edinburgh Fringe and asked about her opinion on Corbyn's emerging new left party, the Chancellor said "Jeremy Corbyn has had two chances to be prime minister and I think the country gave their verdict, most recently in 2019 when Labour had its worst result since 1935 ... He tried to destroy my party and he can now go set up his own party ... The country has rejected him twice. The bloke’s got a big ego. He can have another go but I think the country will have the same verdict.”

It's always funny when the likes of Reeves bring up the "worst result" line. Because, as we know, this nadir in Labour's recent parliamentary fortunes still secured more public support than Keir's Starmer's super spectacular victory. It was only the collapse of the Tories and the Reform surge that gave the 2024 election the first-glance appearance of a Labour triumph. She knows this too, and so do all the journalists who've praised Starmer's pragmatism and genuflected to Morgan McSweeney's hyped up genius. It's almost as if there's a conspiracy of silence that refuses to ask questions or acknowledge the problems with the election result.

That Reeves should accuse Corbyn of nearly destroying the Labour Party sounds a bit like projection too. Always a politician who has to get other people to do the organising for her, Reeves kept her head down during the Corbyn years. But she was party to the destructive behaviour that ensured a left-led Labour never got a clear run at the Tories. And, in the summer of 2016, she was on the side of the isolated parliamentary party that not only tried to topple Corbyn, but threatened to split the party with its tacit endorsement of the court case seeking to bar Corbyn from running again. And that's just for starters.

Since assuming office, Reeves has showcased a singular lack of judgement. Coming for the winter fuel allowance, then attacking disabled people, and sapping small businesses through her increase of employer National Insurance contributions, she more than any other front bencher is arguably responsible for the collapse in Labour's polling. Yes, even more than the Prime Minister.

Lastly, Reeves alights upon Corbyn's ego. The Labour right have convinced themselves that he is a preening narcissist, probably because they can't imagine that someone might be motivated to do something about poverty because they're against poverty, as opposed to it looking good for the TV cameras. And this to come from a woman who has better things to do than write her own books, and is so conscious of her place in the history books as the first female chancellor that she can't stop boasting about it, seldom do we see a clearer example of an accusation being a confession.

As you may have noticed, what was absent from her remarks was politics. Reeves can't offer a political critique of a new left party because, for her, there are no politics outside of tailing the Bank of England, doffing her cap to the bosses that might give her a nice post-politics job, and having cosy chats with establishment stenographers. She typifies the Labour right entirely. In recent days, rather than stand up to Nigel Farage's division-stoking "Lawless Britain" tour and the efforts of sundry far right groups to stir up a repeat of last year's racist riots, we see Angela Eagle affirming that those protesting outside of refugee hostels have genuine concerns. And then we had Peter Kyle and Jess Phillips likening Reform's opposition to the Online Safety Act as "enabling modern day Jimmy Saviles". When you look at who was the chief crown prosecutor at the time, I'm guessing they haven't thought about the consequences of dwelling on this.

The Labour right do not have the ability or the nous to take on their opponents to their left and their right, because they got to the top by lying, chicanery, and bureaucratic manoeuvring. That was enough to win them the Labour Party and, from there, an election through fortuitous circumstances. But as Reeves's lobbing of duds at the left have shown, none of them have a clue about how to defend their position. And it's this that will do for them in the end.

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Local Council By-Elections July 2025

This month saw 67,757 votes cast in 38 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 17 council seats changed hands. For comparison with June's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Jun	+/- Jul 24	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	38	12,577	18.6%	+3.8	-0.9	331	-2
Labour	33	11,214	16.6%	-0.7	-24.2	340	-5
Lib Dem	31	12,259	18.1%	+0.9	+3.3	395	0
Reform*	36	18,900	27.9%	-3.3	+26.3	525	+8
Green	31	6,115	9.0%	-0.9	-4.6	197	-1
SNP**	0						0
PC***	5	1,204	1.8%	+1.8	+1.8	241	0
Ind****	15	5,283	7.8%	+0.5	-0.3	352	0
Other*****	6	205	0.3%	-0.4	-1.0	34	0

* Reform's comparison results are based on recomputing their tallies from last year's Others
** There were no by-elections in Scotland
*** There were five by-elections in Wales
**** There was one Independent clash
***** Others in June consisted of Communist Party of Britain (9), SDP (13, 11), TUSC (26), Vectis Party (46), Yorkshire Party (100)

Once again, a set of results that looks like a PeoplePolling survey. Reform are way out in the front with the other three parties scrapping for a distant second. What a pitiful spectacle. But the eagle-eyed might have spotted something interesting in the numbers. Yes, this was the first time Reform lost vote share since its post-election take off started. And it lost the three seats it was defending too. Straws in the wind for those hoping to see the momentum of their local efforts slow down, but it is worthwhile noting in case it becomes the start of a trend.

As for the other parties, the Liberal Democrats performed creditably but the same cannot be said for the Tories or Labour. Both are turning in tallies more suited to third parties than that befitting the traditional parties of government. And while they're knocking around historic lows, it's worth noting the dying Conservatives are at least putting up a fight. They're down overall on seats, yet they still took four from other parties this month - including two off Reform. Labour? When was the last time they won a seat from anyone? A glance at the last several months' worth of voting suggests all Nigel Farage's lot have to do is show up for Labour to hand the seat over to them. As the government party they could do something about this, such as introducing policies that might improve people's standard of livings, renovate public services, and undercut the purchase extreme right wing politics have. But there's absolutely no sign of that happening.

2 July
North Tyneside, Killingworth, Ref gain from Lab
North Tyneside, Longbenton & Benton, Lab hold

3 July
Bath & North East Somerset, Mendip, LDem hold
Durham, Benfieldside, LDem gain from Ref
Gedling, Calverton, Ind gain from Con
Hammersmith & Fulham, Fulham Town, Con hold
Nottinghamshire, Newark West, Con gain from Ref
Powys, Llanidloes, LDem hold
Suffolk, Tower, Ref gain from Con

10 July
Bassetlaw, Ranskill, Ref gain from Con
Hartlepool, Throston, Ref gain from Lab
Isle of Wight, Wroxall, Lowtherville & Bonchurch, Ind hold
Mole Valley, Bookham East & Eastwick Park, LDem hold
Rotherham, Keppel, Ref gain from Lab
Surrey, Woking South, LDem hold
Tewkesbury, Northway, Ref gain from Ind
Vale of White Horse, Botley & Sunningwell, LDem hold
Wealden, Horam & Punnetts Town, Grn hold
Woking, Hoe Valley, LDem hold

17 July
Basildon, St Martin's, Ref gain from Lab
Dartford, Maypole & Leyton Cross, Ref gain from Con
Dartford, Stone House, Ref gain from Con
Denbighshire, Prestatyn Central, Con hold
Harborough, Market Harborough Logan, Con gain from LDem
Liverpool, Sefton Park, Grn hold
Neath Port Talbot, Baglan, Lab hold
Rhondda Cynon Taf, Pontypridd Town, PC hold
Staffordshire, Eccleshall & Gnosall, Con gain from Ref

24 July
Bromley, Bromley Common & Holwood, Ref gain from Con
Cardiff, Llanrumney, Lab hold
Dacorum, Berkhamsted West, LDem hold
Dorset, Swanage, Con hold
Hertsmere, Borehamwood Brookmeadow, Con hold
Lichfield, Alrewas & Fradley, Con hold
Rutland, Barleythorpe, Con gain from Grn

31 July
Barking & Dagenham, Thames View, Lab hold
North Devon, Barnstaple with Westacott, LDem hold
Warrington, Bewsey & Whitecross, Ref gain from Lab

Five Most Popular Posts in July

It might be silly doing this as there were only, um, five posts last month. But your host is a stickler for tradition, especially those I've invented.

1. The Case for Cautious Optimism
2. The Real Electoral Reform Threat to the Right
3. Circling the Drain
4. What I've Been Reading Recently
5. Five Most Popular Posts in June

Okay, that number five is the very definition of barrel scraping. But the rule that ruled last month was the more recent the post, the more reads it got. Which is a reversal of what normally happens. I wasn't surprised that a few thoughts on the new left party would come out top. All being well, an avalanche of words are wobbling on the precipice ready to thunder down onto the discourse between now and party founding day so it will be good blogging fodder. In at two was the threat none of the right appear to have noticed about Labour's electoral reform plans. While it's good that the Tories, Reform, and their supporters are alienating themselves from the next generation of voters, they're keeping mum on automatic registration - the measure that could make a difference between them getting the most seats in 2029. And not. At three is the return of Tory woe, need I say more? And then there are some musings about a book pile.

It's worth noting that, according to the stats, despite posting next to nothing this has by far been the second most successful month in this blog's history. Almost 400,000 page views! This followed June where, wait for it, there were almost 2.4 million. Nothing to do with burgeoning popularity, except apart from AIs crawling all over these pages and shamelessly ripping off my content. That means Google Stats, which monitor this blog, has become entirely worthless. What a joke.

Anyway, no telling what August might bring. My mojo may return, but if it doesn't the blog will tick over with a few postings here and there. How can I start the new month in the customary way of no posts appear?

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The Case for Cautious Optimism

Like 500,000 other people, I signed up for the Zarah Sultana/Jeremy Corbyn Your Party mailing list. Comparing free registration to the memberships of other political parties is hardly a like-for-like exercise, but it does demonstrate a real appetite for an alternative to Keir Starmer's authoritarian incompetence and Nigel Farage's right wing extremism. And it's very likely the donation facility has already raised tens if not hundreds of thousands in small donations. Already, the new party is orders of magnitudes more significant than any other left-of-Labour outfit in British political history, and it doesn't really exist yet.

Since the announcement, and setting aside dishonest rubbish about letting Reform in and right wing panic, the establishment have, by and large, greeted it with two responses. The first is with dismissive humour, that - ho, ho, - neither Corbyn nor Sultana could get their story straight about the new party's name. What a muddle! The other, articulated on Times Radio, has it that there are too many irreconcilables among the party's potential support. That on the one hand you have Muslim voters lost to Labour over Gaza but who are socially conservative, and social progressives motivated by, among other things, trans rights. This surely is a mountain the nascent party would find impassable.

A more thought-through variant of this position is offered by John Oxley. He makes a similar point about the incompatibility between the voting behaviour of the so-called Gaza Independents in the Commons, and where the party's progressive base would sit. But a further difficulty is that if this can be overcome, it would - at best - lead to a handful of seats because the party has "too narrow a niche". Building reach requires issues that have broad appeal and can be capitalised on, as Farage has done with Brexit and immigration. Reform also complicates things, as it pivots towards Labour seats with its mix of anti-immigration, English nationalist politics, and dalliances with left-populist economics. Another problem are the new party's supporters, among whom are likely to be unpopular views at odds with public opinion, it's not clear how these difficulties could be overcome. That is, in the absence of one thing: a Farage of the left. "Someone with a demagogue appeal, political nous to weave these tribes together, and organisational skills to pull together a party which pushes its advantage strategically." Without this, there are flashes of anger and fragments of grievance. And so the new party will be born, but with limited life chances.

These are serious issues, but they are issues limited to a party of a certain type. All parties are condensers and coalitions of interests, but where the government, the Tories, Reform, and the Liberal Democrats are concerned, there is one interest that predominates - capital's. What they offer then are variations on a theme. I.e. Who can manage its collective interests best, which in the case of the Tories and Labour, is about engineering the class relationships British capitalism depends on. To ensure they're on the right track, leading figures cosy on up to business interests as closely as possible. No need for members as mediators of interests when luncheons and private meetings do the job. In Labour's case, this closeness to capital has proceeded with the attacks on and removal of democracy, due process, and natural justice inside the party. This leads to a politics where agency and efficacy is invested in the leadership, and offers bourgeois politics a model of how it should be done.

As a mainstream politics writer, this is the prism through which Oxley perceives politics. However, this is not the approach informing the new party. In the aftermath of his victory last year, Corbyn argued that he owed his return to the Commons to community embeddedness and power. And perhaps mindful of other left wing splits from Labour and the sundry efforts at building an alternative, he has been reluctant to commit to a new party in the absence of a strong base and an orientation that would sink deep roots into our class. Like many others, I've found this reticence frustrating. Starting a new organisation requires that someone who has social weight, which Corbyn does, makes the move and be the catalyst for what could come next. He might have been pushed into it before he was ready, but the die is cast and the numbers are coming up.

When he was Labour leader, Corbyn and Corbynism pushed it to the limits of Labourism and threatened to go beyond it. Corbyn tried to ground the party in community organising, to turn what was the traditional party of the working class in name into its party in substance. And it's encouraging that this model of collective power is the approach Corbyn wants to found the party on, and not the electoralism of a Labour mk II. This is where things can get weird where the mainstream model of politics is concerned. If this quickly puts on a few hundred thousand members at launch, as noted a while back the organisation in and of itself can become a political factor. Not because it can turn out armies of canvassers - though helpful. It comes from its social weight. Putting its energies and grounding its organisation in workplaces and communities makes it familiar, creating living relationships between members, activists, and our class at large. It becomes a party that lives the everyday lives of everyday people, because the party is them. The party doesn't need a strong leader, because its job is to generate hundreds of thousands of them. These aren't people who stand above and separately from them, like Labour politicians do, but are indistinguishable. Their leadership comes from organising and building institutions that bring our people together. This is not only the best way to break from Labourism and transform society for the better, it is the only practical way of doing so.

The party as a substantive collective, as a part of and vehicle for our class, this is its potential as things stand. There will be arguments and problems, but its declaration comes at the right time. Labour have performed dismally in office and have attacked its own base, like all Labour governments do. The country is pervaded by a miasma of dissatisfaction that the current crop of parties cannot intersect with. And, germane to the new party, the experience of the last decade in Labour Party politics, the explosion of street movements, and the proliferation of industrial disputes has swelled the legions of politically switched on and experienced activists looking for something to cohere their efforts around. The Labour leadership contest of 2015 and all that followed was a moment upon which the direction of this country's politics turned. This new party could be another one.

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The Real Electoral Reform Threat to the Right

Shock horror, Labour have announced something that meets with the approval of this corner of the internet. As parliament was shutting up shop for the summer, the government announced its elections strategy paper. This aims to undo some of the damage the Tories have done to voting by expanding voter ID to virtually any and all forms of identification, and clamping down on overseas donations. But it aims for some modest improvements. Sadly, no form of proportional representation, but they are extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds, finally bringing Westminster and local government elections into line with devolved contests in Wales and Scotland.

Predictably, the right are very upset. The Tory communities brief, Paul Holmes, called it a "brazen attempt" at constitutional jiggery-pokery, clearly believing this will deliver extra votes to Labour as the Conservatives have given up influencing anyone outside a small segment of the voting public. The Mail have piled in with "proof" that young people are clueless. The Telegraph denounces it as an effort to "rig the system", and a declaration of war on baby boomers, while the equalities shadow Claire Coutinho feebly protested that it would "disrupt exam season".

And then we have the view that is, frankly, delusional. Nigel Farage is opposed to the change, but believes the young are beating a path to Reform's door. Other self-interested idiots think likewise, simply because Farage has wide name recognition and is the butt of many a teenage joke on TikTok. The numbers aren't there in the polling, preferring to rattle around the the imaginations of sundry right wingers.

All this misses the mark, however. 16 and 17 year olds will have marginal effects on the next election and, as plenty have noted, their turnout is likely to be in line with other young people's. I.e. Low. While the right are crying about this, it appears they haven't noticed the real threat to their position: Labour's plan to automatically register voters.

As anyone with the barest acquaintance with election studies know, turnout is lower in urban areas and because voter registration is voluntary, electoral rolls fail to accurately reflect the adult population. Automatic enrolment would see significant rises in electorate size in these places, immediately presenting the need for boundary reviews as many would be larger than the 73k "average" used to determine the present shape of constituencies. Why does this matter? This would entail a redistricting that favours urban areas, while the present over-representation of rural areas and small towns in the Commons would be pared back with a few dozen of them merging and/or disappearing. The constituency map of Britain would actually look more like the demographic map of Britain, making it harder for Reform and/or the Tories to win a Commons majority. Labour might lose out too, as these seats are where a lot of their disaffected base live who might be attracted to the Greens or a new left party. But fundamentally, because of the character of British politics and the long-term trend away from the right, the parties of outright reaction face a difficult uphill struggle.

The question for Labour is how quickly can they get this through? Or more to the point, how quickly do they want to see these changes? And when the right wing press wake up to the threat this poses their parliamentary arms, will Labour go scurrying for cover or stick by its plans? Just this once, here's to hoping the government doesn't perform a u-turn.

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Circling the Drain

It's difficult to appreciate how, just three years ago, the Conservative Party was the pivot around which British politics turned. These days, it's an uninteresting side show followed by a diminishing band of aficionados and weird people. Kemi Badenoch has proved herself incapable of kicking the football, let alone powering one into the back of Labour's open goals, and everywhere the party is floundering, completely disoriented by getting dumped out of office and watching Reform become the primary opposition to Keir Starmer's government.

As we head into the summer recess, a couple of things remind us of their decrepitude. The Graun's man in Wales, Will Hayward writes about the party's looming extinction. 10% of their vote passed away between 2019 and 2024 with a further 40% due to grow angel wings before 2029, as per everywhere else in Britain young people are not replacing the base like-for-like. Going in for the Nigel Farage cosplay is not helping them, nor are efforts at trying to create new points of resentment over Welsh Labour's basic income pilots. No one is interested, and that means next year they could be wiped completely from the Senedd.

But all is not lost. There was a spasm of excitement on Thursday about a speech Danny Kruger delivered to a deserted House of Commons. He argued for a restoration of Christianity in politics. In an intervention the polyester populist Robert Jenrick described as "magnificent", Kruger expressed concern that Christianity had been ejected from our shared cultural space by two other religions. One was Islam, and the other ... was "woke". He said,

It is a combination of ancient paganism, Christian heresies, and the cult of modernism, all mashed up into a deeply mistaken and deeply dangerous ideology of power that is hostile to the essential objects of our affections and our loyalties: families, communities, and nations ... [it] must simply be destroyed, at least as a public doctrine ... It must be banished from public life — from schools and universities, and from businesses and public services."

Yes, Kruger wants to mobilise Christian values against a sensibility that finds exploitation, prejudice, and poverty abhorrent, and in its weakest version asks that we treat each other with respect. A Tory effort in this direction is likely to have as much effect turning around their party's fortunes as Badenoch's performances at Prime Minister's Questions.

What it does underline is the predicament the Tories are in. Everyone knows about their crisis of political reproduction and how their ageing voter base condemns them to dwindling relevance. This point is no longer a fringe belief confined to this corner of the internet, but is the political common sense in Westminster and mainstream political comment. Except, evidence suggests, the Tories and their press. Without any understanding of their predicament, and hemmed in by a strategy that cannot concede anything that could raise political expectations, their reflex is to double down on their core premises to try and consolidate themselves following a shattering defeat. It's what they did between 1997 and 2005, which gave them a foundation for the faux liberal Toryism that came next. And arguably, Boris Johnson followed a similar strategy when he became leader. Hard on Brexit, tough on immigration, showed his opponents the door and the British public lapped it up.

Except this time, it is not working. Doing Farage impersonations is pointless while the real deal is cruising the country, gliding from one soft ball interview to another. It's also a waste of time when the things the Tories are concentrating on, immigration, war on woke, are issues that, from the standpoint of the people they're addressing, they've demonstrably failed on. As Starmer nver misses a chance to remind the hapless Badenoch, the Tories put rocket boosters under net immigration. They're just not credible, which is something neither she nor the heir presumptive can do a thing about. Except publicly, desperately endorsing more and more extreme politics, which Farage is savvy enough to keep his distance from. And without the levers of power, the Tories cannot demonstrate how much they mean it this time.

Here we are then. The activities of the Tories are no longer the doings of an organisation in charge of its destiny. They are reflexes, a scramble of unthought reactions as this once mighty party circles the drain.

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What I've Been Reading Recently

Still can't write about politics for the time being, so here are the books I read during June. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of science fiction.

Bloody Panico! by Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Shelter by Dave Hutchinson
Nova by Samuel R Delany
Run, Come See Jerusalem! by Richard C Meredith
The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley
White August by John Boland
Stars and Bones by Gareth L Powell
The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown
The Aesthetic Dimension by Herbert Marcuse
Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

What stands out the most? Why, it's our old friend Marcuse! Still a bit of a dead dog where social theory is concerned (despite the valiant efforts of friend-of-the-blog Paul Ewert and his case for Marcuse's continued relevance), nevertheless his book on aesthetics has been on the to-read list for a very long time. And, though it's been even longer since I last read any of Herbs's screeds, this came across as accessible and super interesting. A far cry from the footnote it usually receives in Marcuse primers. As it's "safe", I might write something on it should the mood take.

Starting with novels that didn't quite make the mark for me, Dave Hutchinson's Shelter is a great post-apocalyptic number ... until it isn't. Skipping along at a decent pace with great characterisation and vivid world building, in the middle of the book there are a series of indiscriminate and cruel murders which, when all is revealed, does not fit the character responsible. I won't say more than that, except I found it jarring and not believable. Delany's Nova didn't do it for me either. Perhaps because of illness I couldn't focus on it, but for such a comparatively short and well-regarded book I found it something of a chore. Whiteley's The Loosening Skin had an intriguing alt-history premise. People shed their skins reptile-like about every 8-12 years, leading to different psychologies - shedding skin often occasions the break up of relationships and individual reinvention. This is also a world where the discarded skins of celebrities and prominent people are sought after. Loosening starts well with the disappearance of a film star-turned-director's skins from his vault but after the half-way point it peters out and gets lost in its own meander. You might say the book sheds its own plot and decides to do something different. Our last deflation comes from Gwyneth Jones. Probably a comment on how Tony Blair fancied himself a rock star PM, in her near future Jones imagines a Britain where rock stars take over and have to deal with Islamist uprisings, celebrity sex crimes, and bringing together a shattered England. It's well written but, for me, doesn't go anywhere or say anything particularly pertinent.

On the better pile, Herbert's third Dune book was alright, but hardly a masterpiece. It certainly hasn't dissuaded me that if you show me someone who says Dune is their favourite sf novel, you're actually showing me someone who hasn't read much sf. I enjoyed Run, Come See Jerusalem! - a time travel story that's short but as interesting as it is entertaining. The wild card here was Boland's White August, a 1950s proto techno thriller that involves evildoers plunging Blighty into a permanent snow storm in the middle of August. It's a race against time to find the culprit before everyone dies. Because the snow is (inexplicably) radioactive. Silly fun told from the standpoint of scientists and prime ministers, but nowhere near the heights of a Wyndham or John Christopher. Gareth L Powell's Stars and Bones was a well put together modern (2022) space opera. If you like the doings of Peter F Hamilton, you'll get on well with this further episode in the left's take over of sf's dominant sub-genre. But my book of the month is Eric Brown's The Kings of Eternity. Like his Kethani, there's a lot of food, drink, and immortality. There's also a laid back, life-is-good quality to Kings as well, even as the stakes build and there's a growing realisation that not all is well with the world. Brown here is gentle, but not cosy, and so manages an ambience that is uniquely his among contemporary sf writers. A real shame he's no longer with us.

What have you been reading recently?

Five Most Popular Posts in June

It was a touch quieter this month on the blog. More anon. But tradition is tradition and as a stickler for stability of expectations, here are the five posts that did the best in June.

1. Taken for a Mug
2. Geoffrey Wheatcroft at the End of the Tories
3. From U-Turn to U-Bend
4. What I've Been Reading Recently
5. Local Council By-Elections May 2025

With thin pickings to choose from, the great internet travelling public gravitated toward the substantive pieces. As they always do! In at one, ee have a meditation on Zia Yusuf's resignation from Reform chair, something he rescinded in short order. Demonstrating that the man is still a mug. Number two was my look at another entry in the death-of-the-Tories literature, this time being from someone who partly influenced my book (plug, plug). This was followed by Rachel Reeves's partial retreat on winter fuel allowance. A concession much overshadowed in recent days re: the government's disorderly retreat on cutting disability support. And then we have two of the regular fillers. A look at recent books read, and a round up of May's council by-elections.

What's going on? Normally happy to mouth off on anything and everything political, this month I've missed a short war, two instances of the government's authoritarian overreach, the latest round of Trumpist degeneracy, and the greatest threat to Keir Starmer's authority he's yet faced. Usual grist to the blogging mill you wmight think, but unfortunately I've had to take a rest. It started with the worst cold I've ever had, and immediately dumped upon it was something that has required nearly all of my energy. And because of this, I've given over evenings to winding down and low effort posting. I cannot say when normalcy will resume.

July could bring an upturn in posting, and it might not. Whatever, I'll keep this place ticking over for the forseeable.

Quarter Two Council By-Election Results 2025

This quarter 297,521 votes were cast in 149 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. 82 council seats changed hands. For comparison you can view Quarter One's results here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Q1	+/- Q2 2024	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	147	53,525	18.0%	-4.1	-9.2	364	-6
Labour	145	50,735	17.1%	-4.8	-16.4	350	-46
Lib Dem	123	62,894	21.1%	+3.3	+2.7	511	+6
Reform*	130	74,022	24.9%	+8.2	+24.3	569	+49
Green	120	31,785	10.7%	+3.1	+0.5	265	+6
SNP**	5	3,578	1.2%	-5.4	-0.7	716	0
PC***	4	890	0.3%	-0.1	+0.2	223	0
Ind****	70	14,951	5.0%	-0.6	-0.9	214	-6
Other*****	43	5,143	1.7%	+0.5	-1.8	120	-3

* Reform's comparison results for 2024 are based on recomputing their tallies in Others over the respective quarter
** There were five by-elections in Scotland
*** There were four by-elections in Wales
**** There were nine Independent clashes
***** Others this quarter consisted of Alba (91, 47), Blue (11), Britain First (22), Christian People's Alliance (24, 23), Communist League (8), Gwlad (9), Heritage (44, 16), Homeland (26), Jago (7), Liberal (16), Oxted Residents (890), Patria (7, 7), Rejoin EU (65), Scottish Family Party (34, 25), Scottish Libertarian Party (25), Social Justice Party (118), Tattenham's Residents (2,084), Tunbrudge Wells Alliance (416, 62), TUSC (91, 91, 62, 47, 43, 39, 35, 34, 30, 25, 23, 17, 10), UKIP (21, 15, 14, 10, 5), Workers Party (398), Yorkshire Party (58)

Well done the Labour Party. Under Keir Starmer's leadership, never - not even the Tories at their very worst, and certainly not Labour under Jeremy Corbyn - has one of the main parties of government performed as abysmally in the quarter's round up as this. The vote has sunk well below the Liberal Democrats, and the seat loss, which is supposed to matter the most, is laughably bad. Labour chose to hollow out its vote prior to last year's general election, and in office they've carried on in this vein. The base is corroding, and it's because the party has showered its support in an acid rain of policy. Local council by-elections don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but they are weather vanes and they are showing the crisis in Labour's support is real.

Not that the Tories can feel smug. Their pitched decline isn't as dramatic as Labour's because they were already at rock bottom. But as they're finding out, it can get worse. They can be completely buried, As noted yesterday, Labour can - in theory - turn their ship around. But no such luxury is available for the Conservative Party. The doom is upon them and this time it's hard to see how they might throw it off, unless they merge with Reform and let Nigel Farage take over.

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