Labour are congratulating themselves on winning an “historic victory” in the Selby by-election but look at the results they’ve no reason to be smug, especially when taken in conjunction with their failure in the other two by elections. It’s true that they had a massive 20,000 vote majority to overturn and “threw the kitchen sink at it” but they committed the same resources to winning Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where they had a much smaller majority of 7,210 to beat, and fell short by just over 500 votes. I looked at the Selby results in some detail. Conservatives had 21,700 fewer votes than in 2019, Labour only gained 2,598. Where did the other 19,202 go?

They didn’t go to Lib Dem’s, who also had fewer votes. Gains by Greens and the Yorkshire Party more probably came from former Labour voters (at least one Green vote did). There were 13 candidates to choose from 6 in 2019 but, with the exception of the Greens, all of the others lost their deposit.

The answer is in the turnout – 44.7%, down from 71.67% in 2019. Many Tory voters, possibly some former Labour voters too, evidently stayed home! One person on Twitter argued that turnout is generally lower for a by-election, then made the totally unwarranted assumption that they would vote Labour in a General Election 🙄 I don’t see why they would once they see what a monster Labour has created in our midst 😠

In terms of policy I doubt if having Red Tory replace a Blue Tory as our MP will make any difference. Starmer can say “Selby voted for change” as much as he likes, but he won’t deliver the change that’s needed. Louise Hague spent a day traveling the constituency by bus to illustrate how dire our public transport is, something I wrote about from personal experience in a previous blog. I don’t expect it to change with Keir Junior as our MP. I described Nigel Adams as a nodding dog, I don’t expect Keir Mather to be any better. He might even be worse, he’s supporting Sir Kid Starver’s retention of the 2-child benefit cap!

I don’t hold with Tory Johny Mercer’s ridiculing of Mather because of his youth, there are much better reasons to detest him! He wrote a vile attack on Ken Livingstone which was shared by Chris Williamson, I only needed to glance at it to see just how abominable it was 😠 But I’m rather disappointed in Ken who, despite being expelled, seems to be supporting Starmer. I don’t hold with the notion held by some., including a few socialists, that we should vote Labour to “get the Tories out”. It’s just replacing one lot of Tories for another, as most of you reading this will agree. We’re accustomed to being “Tory enablers” for refusing to vote Labour but, by the same logic, not voting Conservative must make us “Labour enablers”.

I’m also disappointed in Mick Lynch and Sharon Graham who are also taking this view. In fact I’m reconsidering my membership of Unite Community, some members have already resigned over the ban on screening “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie”. But that’s a subject for my next blog, which is already started”.