It's all falling apart alarmingly fast for Boris Johnson across the water. How long you reckon he has left as British Prime Minister? Hours surely?
How many parties are they talking about now? I've lost count.
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Southwark still solid red in my personal history map. I assume Lambeth and Lewisham will be the same.
Delighted for my friends in Wandsworth though.
And there lies the mystery of the Basildon Borough. There are 3 distinct area/towns, Billericay, Wickford and Basildon itself. I can see Billericay and a good chunk of Wickford conforming to your description above but Basildon is downright deprived, a seriously high amount of council homes. Why they're voting Con is beyond me. In saying that I did see turn-outs of ~20% so it doesn't take a lot of votes to swing it.
Just out of interest how much is your council tax? And would it go up under a Labour council or is that just a Tory trope Ive been hearing a lot the last few days?
Tory councils do usually have lower council tax....
...and NO services worth mentioning as a result. Education, libraries, parks, cleaning/waste removal, housing etc all thrown away to give the Tory voters a hundred quid a year more.
Below is the 2020 bill when the local council was Labour/Indy. They got voted out in 2021 for the Cons (mainly due to the Marmite leader - good policies imo but terrible terrible social media presence). It's gone up each year since, we're at £1998 now but as you can see, the bulk of that goes to the County Council which is notoriously Con and I've no idea how/when they get voted for.
Those numbers make no sense. How can all the increases be under 3% yet the overall increase is 3.2%? Or do they hide more of the increase with that asterisk?
It would probably be explained through the demographics of those who actually vote. Poor, working people are less likely to vote and old, retired people are more likely to vote.
If poor, working people voted, things would change. But old people are getting older and lihibgnlonger and voting more times as old people. Tragic, really.
Question still remains; can this sink Boris, or more to the point will the Tories use this as a handy excuse to jettison him? If they let this linger too long they'll yet again lose their chance, and he'll stick around. Which likely will wreck their image more between now and a General Election.
It absolutely can. This is the best proxy we've got for a general election. The question is whether or not the party can summon the courage to get rid of him.
If I was one of the Scottish Tory MPs I would be screaming loudly for Johnson to go. Scottish Tories already today are trying to deflect blame on to him and I can see them trying to play up on being a group apart for the next while.
I dunno, the grassroots councilor levels are already pointing the finger squarely at Johnson and are absoilutely correct to do so, but his grip on the parliamentary wing of the party seems to never weaken and until he loses that he is going nowhere.
wow almost £2k a year is some wedge, didnt think it would be that high outside London
I think it still can sink him but what could save him is the lack of a viable alternative. Two months ago it was Sunak but now he is under more questioning about his wife and Infosys still operating in Russia. It hasnt been a good couple of months for him.
Well their former leader did exactly that a while back.
His grip on the parliamentary party is based solely on his ability to guarantee their seats. If that appears fallible then expect them to feel more inclined to act independently. You are correct though in that he has thus far managed to keep them in line.
Band B council tax (second cheapest) in Gateshead is over £1700 this year.
Band D is over £2200.
His grip on the parliamentary wing of the party has very much been weaken. He wasn't able to whip them into voting to stop the Evgeny Lebedev dossier being released and more significantly he couldn't get enough of them to block the vote on the Commons privileges committee investigation. In many respects he is a lame duck. Tories have a majority on the privileges committee but they are very much aware that everybody knows he lied to the Commons. It would be very damaging for the party and those Tory MP's on the committee if they try to let him off. I'm still fairly confident that he won't survive the further fines coming his way, the Sue Gray report being released and this investigation.
Can't remember what mine was in Southwark but i'de say it was around the 2k mark.
Council tax is a great system if you are in a council that spends it on amenities but the disparity between councils in that regard is so unfair.
Yeahnits a bit wild. Wealthy councils get more and poorer councils get less. The bulk of local spending goes on old people's care.
My FIL grew up in a deprived area and he always said thst the poorer areas got the best stuff. And he's right thst used to be the case, but it's really not true now. "Deprivation" used to be a big factor in the equation to work out council funding. But it keeps being reduced in importance innthe equation to the point that wealthier areas now get more per person than poor areas. Plus old people's spending comes off the top the rest have to make do with whatever is left. This isn't all the Tories doing as it started under Blair, but a decade of Tory rule and austerity has really accelerated it.
This is probably a rant for another thread though.
The poorer areas "get the best stuff" comes from them having more libraries and community centres and things like that because council funding has to go to those areas because they are needed and also leads to higher council tax in poorer areas. Many don't need those in rich areas cause they can afford loads of books and a yacht club membership.
The real big losers are poor people in a rich area who need those facilities but are stuck with tight Tory councils.
Most notably was the Grenfell fire where the council had refunded only the high band tax payers because they had money left over. They had money left over at the same time they were knowingly buying cheap inferior cladding.
Police are going to Investigate Starmer for having a beer. What spectacularly convenient timing that this should happen now and then be forgotten about once the damage is done. The police need to be gutted over there as it's obvious they are as crooked as their masters.
Too late now all the votes are in.
Yeah I suppose it is.
I suspect the news about the economy being about to shrink which was published yesterday evening was not published earlier because it didn't suit the government. If it were great news, I suspect it would have been pushed out earlier, by hook or by crook.
It seems remarkable to me that people are paying £2k a year but then when the council elections come around the turnout isnt that high. You'd think people would be more engaged when they are paying sizeable taxes to their local council.
Ya but so many councils are sure bets. All mine were Labour by 30+ majorities and higher turn out would probably not change that. I always votes but never had a council vote that really mattered.
ah yeah its first past the post, Id forgotten about that. Its always going to depress turnout when people feel their vote doesnt matter
One of my old constituencies Lewisham just came back 54 seats 54 Labour.
Yeah my area is solidly Labour and one Lib Dem in the broader area. The Labour candidate in my local had his margin cut to 200, winning about 1000 votes to about 800 votes for the Lib Dem. So not totally out of touch, but safe enough at the same time.
First past the post is absolute amateur hour. Democracy for Dummies.
Someone just got elected because 2 candidates were level so they drew straws.
Democracy for dummies indeed.
Jesus i knew fptp was terrible but this is honestly how they tie break? Is it the same for MPs?
Check some of the worst examples of how undemocratic it is
https://twitter.com/electoralreform/status/1522531687778955264
Tories have lost nearly 500 seats across GB. About 340 in England, about 60 in Wales and about 85 in Scotland.
If I were them I'd focus on the England number and saynit wasn't as bad as the left wing media had forecast and labour failed to convince the pu lic to vote for them and so on. Its a bad result though.
Interesting to see what happens next.
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