General British politics discussion thread

I'd love to see Mandelson put away (though it's probably very unlikely) I hated him before the cool kids did but Hoyle really is a terrible, self serving, self promoting speaker. Just dreadful and more concerned about himself above all else.

Gorton and Denton by-election today. Genuine 3 way battle.

Urban Manchester constituency so very much solid Labour territory - whilst it wasn't a seat in 2019 (The Johnson v Corbyn massacre) it's estimated they would have won with close on 70% of the vote.
Greens are 4/6 favourite which would be a bad but not terrible result for Labour.
Reform UK 5/2 - a win here would put them on target to be the biggest party in the next parliament.
Labour 4/1 - some polling indicates they could retain it, failing that I guess it's important to avoid a voting meltdown.

There is an Advance UK candidate (Ben Habib's 'Reform UK is too woke for us' Party) but they will probably max out at a few hundred votes. And the Conservative candidate could affect Reform as well. But agree a vote split scenario is more likely between Green/Labour.

I've seen polling which suggests that the Greens have a decent-ish lead. Polanski seems to be making an impact as leader (despite being hated by the right wing press for opposing all their talking points) - they surely wouldn't be favourites to win without him there.

Losing to the Greens would likely cause a quicker exit than losing to Reform. Can [try] blame the Greens for a Reform win, can't do so for a Green win!

One thing working in Polanski's favour is that he sounds genuinely left wing. Could virtually anything Starmer says sound like a comment from a left wing politician? It would seem Reform, the Tories and Labour (the Labour leadership anyway) are three different shades of right wing party, just at different points on the spectrum.

Labour sources saying too close to call in the Gorton byelection. Predictit.org thinks its the Greens. Green leader Zach Polanski was ask could Reform have won it, and he said yes. Too close to call. Labour sources saying Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has played a big role in the campaign.

Controversially, the Greens were producing leaflets showing Starmer with Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu in this 30% Muslim constituency. Reform UK accusing them of "sectarianism". The leader of the UK Greens is Jewish but fiercely critical of Israel and Zionism.

The photos are real except where they superimposed an image of Steve Bannon making a fascist salute. In ads they show photos and then juxtapose them with images of destruction in Gaza.

Reform are also criticising them for ads using Urdu.

Mobile messaging did not take off in the US until a good bit later than here - they have always been a decade behind in mobile tech - and then when it did, it was iMessage and iMessage only. So europeans that don't use iPhones as much versus Epstein - who's latter email address told us he did - would result in them sticking with email.

That has to be part of it.