Kmflett's Blog

The phrase was originally used by Gary Younge to describe George W Bush’s reaction to the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Nothing, fortunately, as dramatic happened in England and Wales on May 2nd.

In fact Labour did well and the Tories very badly. Not all the results are yet in but they are closing in a loss of 500 Council seats, a figure they floated on the assumption it would not be met and hence things could be spun as not that bad.

Blackpool South was the third largest By-Election swing ever and Councils were won which had previously been Tory strongholds.

Yet across England seats were also lost. They were lost to the Greens, Independents often focused on Gaza and in a much more limited way to the Workers Party. Much of this related to Gaza and Starmer’s refusal both to back an unconditional ceasefire and his statement that Israel did have the right to cut water and food supplies to Gaza. A considerable number of Muslim voters were alienated and little has been done to address it. It went further than that. Labour also lot in urban areas where there was a left-ish vote not happy about Starmer’s great moving right show and Gaza.

Rachel Reeves previously said as did Starmer that if people on the left didn’t like the New New Labour project then they were not wanted on board. Many got the message. What Reeves and Starmer clearly did not twig was that they still had a vote. This was the purpose of Labour’s Broad Church,junked by Starmer. To keep a broad range of left of centre opinion on board even if nothing much really happened

The Starmer project, on May 2nd quite a successful one, was to win back Tory voters who had in the past supported Labour. On some results I looked at the disaffected Tory vote split between Labour and Reform but there is a lot of local variance (also known as democracy). The narrow church strategy worked up to a point until the people Starmer didn’t know existed had their say.