As expected Labour held the seat in Birmingham that was once held by the late Jack Dromey the husband of Harriet Harman. It held the seat despite having a candidate who had once discussed, without immediately dismissing, the merits of violent uprising. If what is being said about this new MP is correct then Labour have put up a candidate who is it could be said a worse than Corbyn offering.
But it’s not all good news for Labour. Their candidate, Paulette Hamilton, didn’t exactly inspire electors to get out and vote for her. She won on a mere 27% turn out and although she increased the majority that Dromey had in this seat by 5.2%, the low turnout made this a less than impressive performance. Basically she won because of apathy and because those who did bother to vote were those who would vote for a dog turd provided that it was emblazoned with a Labour red rosette.
Tory voters appeared to stay at home with a reported 3.8% drop in Tory voters. I don’t blame them as there is little to be enthused about regarding the Tories these days except for them being ‘not the Labour Party’ although that distinction is getting all too blurred these days.
I suppose that the results for the Tories could be worse what with the utter mess they’ve made of pretty basic governmental stuff such as energy security and economic management. However the worst affects of the various government failures regarding energy and the economy has not truly hit yet and I expect that the local elections on the 5th of May of this year could well show the Tories taking an even bigger hit than in this byelection.
A Labour win was expected in this seat as they are not the governing party and therefore they were not affected by any mid term punishment by voters. Couple that with the low turnout and this is not an earth shattering result. All it means is that the House of Commons now has another alleged far left identitarian extremist sitting in it under the Labour banner. It certainly does nothing to make me believe that a vote for Labour is a vote for myself my family or my class. Quite the contrary, it makes me see that Labour have not changed under Starmer, not one little bit.
