Jeremy Corbyn’s wife is part of a group set up to unseat Sir Keir Starmer at the next general election that is also discussing standing independent candidates against Labour in coming by-elections.
Screenshots leaked to Sky News show an account belonging to Laura Alvarez is a member of the Organise Corbyn Inspired Socialist Alliance (OCISA) Facebook group.
Further images show Ms Alvarez’s account commenting in the group – including posting “disgusting creature” on a photo of Sir Keir.
EXTRA: This Site has been contacted by a person wishing to clarify OCISA’s side of the story.
They say: “Laura isn’t a figurehead for OCISA. She didn’t say Starmer is disgusting.
“OCISA will not be standing candidates around the country – only in Holborn and St Pancras, although members are being encouraged to support Socialist candidates in their areas.”
They added: “Membership has shot up, so Sky did us a favour!”
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Jacob Rees-Mogg: he’s probably cursing after seeing these poll results. But what kind of imprecation would this educated toff utter?
It’s turning into a bad week for Jacob Rees-Mogg (and a good week for the rest of us).
Not only has his Retained EU Law Bill been paused on its way through Parliament – possibly never to return (it is rubbish, after all), but…
Opinion polls are showing that he is likely to lose his North East Somerset Parliamentary seat in the next general election.
A swing of almost 30 points in the court of public opinion has been recorded in his constituency.
It’s understood that a Labour candidate would record more than 38% of the vote if the polls were open this weekend, whereas the senior Tory is only projected to fetch 34%.
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Suella Braverman: was her selection to stand for the Tories in the new Fareham and Waterlooville constituency a wise choice?
Was it always going to be a shoo-in?
With her current constituency due to be dissolved at the next general election, Suella Braverman has won the Conservative Party’s selection vote to be its candidate in the new constituency.
Some may argue that this is because, as Home Secretary, she is far more recognisable to the public than the other contender whose seat is also disappearing, Flick Drummond.
Braverman’s Fareham seat will go, as will Drummond’s for Meon Valley, to be replaced by one for Fareham and Waterlooville.
But here’s the big question: Braverman has blotted her copy book badly with behaviour that many would consider to be racist – towards asylum-seekers who have cross the English Channel in small boats seeking a better life in the UK, and towards people of foreign descent who she has accused of responsibility for child sex offences – so is she really a good choice?
Drummond may still seek selection in other constituencies, although she has said she won’t be going far from her Meon Valley home.
If she does win another chance to represent her party, it will be interesting to see whether either or both of them are returned to Westminster.
And if it’s one or the other… which one?
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The ballot box: a recent opinion poll suggests that Welsh people will abandon the Conservative Party en masse at the next general election.
Happy St David’s Day, Wales!
A YouGov poll for WalesOnline has stated that the Conservatives are likely to lose all but two Parliamentary seats in Wales at the next general election.
Tragically for This Writer, the MPs set to remain are both here in Powys – in Montgomeryshire, and in my own home constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire.
What’s wrong with people here? Good question!
My best guess is that the older generation are set in their ways, while the younger voters have lost all hope for the future if it’s a choice between Rishi Sunak’s economy wreckers and Keir Starmer’s pale blue Tories.
A YouGov poll for WalesOnline, released ahead of St David’s Day, shows the Conservatives’ share of the vote has slipped to just 19%, while Labour’s share has surged from 41% in 2019 to 53% now.
Among people aged 24-50, the Tory share of the vote is just 7%.
According to the Wales Governance Centre, the YouGov poll shows that based on uniform swing and current boundaries the Conservative party would keep just two Welsh seats, the lowest number since they got no seats in the 2001 election.
The only remaining Conservative seats based on this poll would be Brecon and Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire, with the Tories only managing to hold on to the former by a very narrow margin. It is technically too close to call, with the Lib Dems within a couple of percentage points but on strict number the Conservatives edge it. As this is based on uniform swing of votes and assumes no tactical voting, that scenario may well not play out in reality. The seat has changed hands recently in a by-election in August 2019 after Tory MP Chris Davies pleaded guilty to claiming false expenses. It was subsequently won by the Lib Dems but reclaimed by the Tories in the general election that December.
What a horrible choice – Conservatives or Liberal Democrats!
This Writer wonders whether this might be a moment for the Green Party to make inroads into Wales. It’s doing very well in the southwest of England!
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Apparently the latest polls are predicting a huge loss for the Conservatives at the next general election, that may make them only the third largest party – behind the SNP.
But are they really likely to lose 300 seats?
Well…
Here’s an interesting analysis by A Different Bias:
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Geoffrey Cox: he has a safe seat, so he felt perfectly comfortable taking a second job and treating his Parliamentary work as a hobby.
Suddenly proportional representation is looking like the wise choice after all – isn’t it, Britain?
Some might say the result of the 2011 referendum on whether to introduce proportional representation for Parliamentary elections in the UK was a dire warning of the corruption that we see in government today. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
The bid to introduce a fairer voting system was resoundingly defeated by a 68 per cent of votes against to only 32 per cent for, on a turnout of 42 per cent of the electorate.
I wonder if the survivors of the other 58 per cent of registered voters at the time regret not bothering to turn up now they know that the result meant a continuation of “safe seats”, allowing the MPs who occupy them to corrupt themselves with second jobs with impunity.
“FPTP has clearly given some MPs a brass neck. The leadership of opp parties must accept the only way they can give the public a realistic opportunity of unseating the worst offenders is by working together to secure a fairer voting system,” #PRhttps://t.co/FG6M7zrj2v
You see, the current First Past The Post system lends itself to tribal voting, meaning that areas that traditionally vote for a particular party are likely to see that party’s representative into Parliament at every election, because there only needs to be enough of them to see off all the other contenders individually.
It means a minority of voters can impose their will – or, more realistically, the real plans behind the lies that their favoured party told to get elected – on the majority.
Do you think most of the UK wants the NHS carved up by a cabal of private corporations? Of course not – around 70 per cent of voters want full re-nationalisation. But that won’t stop the Tories taking it another step towards full privatisation – the exact opposite of what we want – on Tuesday.
By the same token, the individuals occupying those safe seats know that they’re unlikely to be voted out, so they know they can take second jobs and rake in the cash.
As the Guardian article states, the facts “undermine Boris Johnson’s suggestion that voters who disapprove of their MP’s outside work can simply unseat them at an election”.
Either that damned fool spoke without thinking (yet again), or he simply lied. Neither alternative is acceptable in a prime minister but – oh! He’s in a safe Tory seat! So you can’t vote him out.
You see how it works?
Pretty much all of the problems we have with our democracy today stem from the fact that in 2011 the UK voted not to have one.
Clive Lewis’s words (above) are absolutely true – but there is a fatal flaw.
The 2011 referendum was a once-in-a-lifetime situation, forced by the fact that the Tories had failed to win a majority in Parliament and a referendum was a condition of their coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
Now we live in a dictatorship where Boris Johnson lied his way to an 80-seat Conservative majority. Neither he nor any Tory who replaces him will ever allow another referendum because they know it would end the dictatorship they have lied so hard to achieve.
And we’re unlikely to see another hung Parliament for the foreseeable future because the main opposition party – Labour – is currently run by a red Tory wetwipe who probably couldn’t win an election if he was the only candidate.
Public opinion might push Johnson towards a gesture of some sort, but it won’t be much. He has already watered down plans to restrict MPs from holding second jobs.
And this week he can distract us all with the votes on the NHS and on asylum seekers.
Bread and circuses. It’s a tactic that has worked since Roman times – because you’re always going to fall for it. Or will you..?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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Candidates in the general election will have 23 per cent more money to spend after the Tories slipped the increase through without debate. This only applies if any candidates other than Tories actually have that much money, of course.
The Observer has reported that, under the new limits, the total amount the candidates of each political party can spend has increased from £26.5m to £32.7m.
In March, the Electoral Commission recommended there should be no such increase in spending limits for candidates over the so-called “long campaign” period between December 19 and general election day on May 7.
The change to the law on candidates’ election spending, passed without parliamentary debate, was made despite a direct warning by the commission against “excessive spending” in order to “prevent the perception of undue influence over the outcome of the election”.
Ministers changed the law through a statutory instrument, the terms of which were not debated in the Commons, which is used more properly for consensual changes in the law. A Labour source said the move had not been spotted by them at the time, so they missed the chance to force a vote in the Commons.
It’s too late for that now.
We know the Conservatives have much more moolah than any of the other parties – let’s face it, they have spent all of their period in office changing the law to make it possible for the extremely rich and big businesses to donate increasingly ludicrous amounts to Tory Party funds, and this is the reason.
For example: In the past four years, 27 per cent of the £78,010,807 the Tories have raised – £21,072,508 – has come from hedge fund donors. George Osborne’s 2013 budget abolished stamp duty reserve tax on funds, a £145m giveaway to those very same hedge funds. That’s just one example.
The Observer states: “With the Tories having amassed a £78m war chest over the past four years, they can now funnel huge amounts of cash into key seats.”
We know that the Tories won more seats than anyone else at the 2010 election by throwing ridiculous amounts of Lord Ashcroft’s money at marginal seats and by lying about their policy intentions. This undemocratic move – there was no Parliamentary debate and one can hardly say it has been announced loudly; did you even know this decision was made in the summer? – clearly states their intention to repeat the same grubby, underhanded manoeuvre next year.
And we know that David Cameron has made this decision against the advice of the Electoral Commission – meaning that it should be plain for all to see that this is yet another corrupt decision by the most corrupt government of the last century.
What else are we to think of this? Lucy Powell MP, Ed Miliband’s election strategist, had a few well-chosen ideas on that subject. Writing in The Guardian, she stated:
“With only a record of failure to run on, David Cameron’s campaign is reliant on smear, fear and fat cats’ chequebooks. This is a party flush with big money backers but without the empathy or ideas the country needs, so they are rigging the rules of our democracy in their favour.
“When he was first leader of the opposition, David Cameron said he wanted to take the big money out of politics. He promised to address the ‘big donor culture’, arguing that we should ‘cut what is spent on a general election’. Yet he has now cynically changed his tune. Desperate to hang on to power, the Tories have quietly changed the rules to allow them to spend big in the runup to the election. The changes would allow them to spend millions more than they’re presently allowed, paving the way for Tory propaganda to flood constituencies.”
Opponents of Tory tyranny cannot match the Nasty Party’s spending power. All we have are our own voices and the facts.
That’s why next year – more than ever before – we have to put the message out to protect the public against the next wave of lies and ‘spin’.
The Tory Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act means we can’t spend any appreciable amount of money doing this, but they can’t stop us talking and they can’t stop us publicising the facts.
It’s up to us – all of us – to show the Tories that money isn’t everything.
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They Work For Themselves Not You.com: Michael Gove may well have told IPSA to “stick” its pay rise but you can be sure that this is a publicity stunt. And how long will this principled stand last when his colleagues all take the money?
There’s a strong smell of arrogance coming from Westminster at the moment – an attitude of “What are you going to do about it?” to everything. Am I wrong?
On one side we see Labour, trying to divest itself of union influence – and therefore its last link to its working-class background. Ed Miliband thinks the middle class is where the votes are, and he’s absolutely determined to ruin his entire organisation in a vain attempt to prove it. He’ll turn Labour into a plastic copy of the Conservative Party (in the course of which, of course, he’ll also have to change its name. You can’t be the Labour Party if you don’t represent people who work. I understand the word ‘Tory’ is going spare). Trouble is, there is already a Conservative Party. If your politics leans to the right anyway, why support the copy when you can have the original?
The Tories know this. They reckon Labour will self-destruct in fairly short order, leaving the way open for them to continue doing exactly anything they like – as they have been for the past three years and more, despite never having been voted into power by the British people, because they have support from the Liberal Democrats – who are enjoying their very last taste of any national political power.
Both the main parties are sneering at you. They think they know that you will stick to your traditional choices when election time rolls around again: Labour or Conservative. And they know that this means they will be allowed to continue doing whatever they want, against the wishes of the nation in most cases.
That’s how our version of democracy works. You get one chance to vote for the organisation that will rule over you for the next five years. Your decision is nominally based on the promises they make in their various manifestos (many of which will be broken. These documents are rarely worth the paper on which they’re printed), but most likely to be based on habit and an impression of what each party stands for – one that is no longer likely to bear any relationship to reality. Your influence is diminished by the fact that most Parliamentary seats are ‘safe’. The voting population is locked into a particular pattern and each political party can ‘parachute’ its own favoured candidates – people who will support the leaders’ policies, no matter what the wishes of their constituents – into those seats and be assured of support from these drones over the next five years. This is why Labour and the union Unite have been at loggerheads recently – Unite wants candidates who genuinely represent the people of their constituencies; Blairite Labour wants neoliberal, party-propping drones. It looks like Blairite Labour has won the battle, meaning the Labour Party will lose the war; how are they doing in the polls?
So elections are determined on the basis of a tiny number of marginal or ‘swing’ seats. Do you live in a marginal constituency? No? Then your vote probably doesn’t count.
It seems to me that, if we ever want to see democracy in the UK, we need to make it possible for EVERY seat to become a ‘swing’ seat – make it a much harder job for the large parties to ‘parachute’ in their party faithfuls and open up the field to candidates from smaller parties (not just UKIP). But how?
The answer’s obvious, isn’t it? You make sure everyone in your constituency knows exactly what their MP has been doing in their name. Only an informed electorate can make useful decisions, after all – and government of the uninformed is not legitimate government at all.
For example: My MP is a Liberal Democrat backbench drone called Roger Williams. I’ve known him for years and thought he was a nice enough fellow. In fact I voted for him at the last election. It was a tactical vote to keep the Tories out (foolish, in hindsight) – but he has let me down on many major votes, and I’m about to give you two examples.
My constituency is Brecon and Radnorshire – the most rural in England and Wales. It relies on agriculture for much of its income. Therefore it was a shock to our economy when the Westminster government voted to dissolve the Agricultural Wages Board. I cannot currently find any information about how Mr Williams voted on this issue of major importance to his constituency.
I can, however, report his fellow Liberal Democrats’ response to the Welsh Government’s plan for a replacement body covering Wales – they oppose it.
The AWB ensured consistent wages among agricultural workers, and prevented disputes over pay and conditions. Abolishing the board removes recognition of workers’ unique skills, bringing with it a significant pay cut. It is also a mark of disrespect.
In Brecon and Radnorshire, cuts to state benefits will take an average of £433 from working-age people’s incomes – more than a week’s take-home pay where wages are only around 76 per cent of the national average. The loss of the AWB means a significant extra cut to the local economy.
According to Lib Dem AM Bill Powell, his party doesn’t want the Welsh Government to “ram through” this emergency legislation “without allowing Assembly members and committees to scrutinise their proposals fully”.
Perhaps he is forgetting that Mr Williams voted in March to help the Conservative Party “ram through” emergency legislation on the Work Programme in a much quicker and undignified way, in order to prevent jobseekers from claiming back the £130 million that had been stolen from them in illegal sanctions by the Department for Work and Pensions?
So we see that my MP’s party supports the abolition of the AWB, and my MP supported the retroactive law. Both were acts of repression; both were pieces of legislation I oppose. Did he act according to my wishes? Most assuredly not. But he acts in my name.
Oh yes… He also voted against a cumulative impact assessment on the effects of benefit cuts on people with disabilities.
Should he – or any Liberal Democrat – represent Brecon and Radnorshire after 2015? Absolutely not – it would not be in the best interests of the constituency.
But we shouldn’t tolerate anyone from the other parties who preaches freedom for us but practises similar policies of repression.
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