22%! A Bigger Swing against Labour than Hartlepool
On Thursday 6th May, Newham, and much of the country went to the polls. The results are in and now the arguments begin about what the results mean.
No-one has gone so far as to suggest that Hartlepool was a blessing in disguise for Labour, but neither have they explained why Labour has lost out repeatedly to a Conservative Party, led by a buffoon and mired in sleaze. That’s not quite right, we have seen the cut-and-paste auto-response from Labour’s left; the party clearly isn’t sufficiently Corbynite.
For the rest of us it is clear, Labour renews itself or it fails.
Against the national backdrop, the results for Labour in Newham seemed to go quite well.
Cllr “Pop-Up” took the by-election in East Ham Central with only a 22% swing to the Tories on a fairly high turnout, and high turnouts have traditionally favoured Labour. Even so, the actual Labour vote dropped by 600 votes and The Tories more than doubled their votes.
The Referendum
Mayor Fiaz must be pleased. Having decided that she wasn’t against the mayoral model after all it seems that the voters have agreed.
With 85,000 votes cast and a 56%-44% majority in the referendum Mayor Fiaz can feel secure, at least for the next 12 months. Regardless of any of the sophistry about whether people knew what they voted for, this is a clear endorsement of the mayoral model.
Whether it is a clear endorsement of the incumbent is a different matter.
A swing against Labour of 22% in the by-election could well be regarded as criticism of Labour’s i.e. her, performance on the council.
With the addition of Cllr “Pop-Up” Fiaz has strengthened her base of loyalists on the council. She must now be desperate to ensure that the suspension of the two CLPs continues for at least a further nine months. Suspension of the parties makes it much more likely that the Labour Party will impose candidates for mayor and council. Increasingly unpopular amongst the grassroots either because of betrayal or incompetence, Fiaz’s hold on the nomination looks increasingly insecure in the event that the matter is put to the membership of the Labour Party in East Ham and West Ham.
The referendum did manage to raise some passion it seems. This Tweet shows an interaction at a Canning Town South polling station. It seems wrongly described.
However, a closer look at who is holding what, suggests otherwise. The ‘voter’ is the man in white. He is holding the yellow leaflet of the Restore Democracy Campaign. He wants to go and cast his vote.
Close inspection of the material in the hands of the man in dark clothes shows him to be holding the Right to Vote leaflets. So it seems that the man “aggressively thrusting flyers”, was not supporting the Restore Democracy Campaign, but instead was supporting the campaign to keep the mayor. (Keep Your Right to Vote) Just which campaign do we think Ms Booker was supporting?
We shouldn’t be too hard on her, we understand that she studies at Goldsmiths so making facts fit the arguments rather than the other way round shouldn’t be too unusual.
Her family’s experience was not isolated however,
There may be readers who remember reports of a similar pattern outside various branch selection meetings when Labour went through its trigger ballot turmoil. It seemed to be the pro-Fiaz faction responsible back then also.