The Beeb’s man says that Bradford’s a bit of a weird constituency, constantly defying national trends (swung towards Tories while still Labour in early 2000s, and swung towards Labour in 2010), but everyone seemed to be expecting Labour to win this one, given how badly the government is doing.
I’m not a Galloway fan myself - he’s a windbag who doesn’t bother looking after his constituents, only exploiting their resentment to gain attention for himself.
I love how Galloway is shown standing next to the Monster Raving Loony candidate
But what does this mean for Labour, and for Ed Miliband in particular?
By more than 10,000 votes, more than 50% of the total vote, and the LibDems lost their deposit, which is always heartening. I suppose Labour ought to just be more like gorgeous George.
Good. I hope every damned ex-mining and cotton weaving town in the North kicks Labour out on their ear. They take the votes from their Northern heartlands for granted and do fuck all to improve conditions in the North, or to try to narrow the North-South divide, occasionally throwing some scrap Northwards whilst sucking the South East’s (rather, Greater London’s) cock. The Tories you can understand, being overtly the party of limpwristed public schoolboy inbreds and other guillotine fodder. But Labour? Fuck them.
George is an amoral self-aggrandizing bastard but he makes no pretense to be otherwise and is one of the shrewdest political players in today’s UK. Given the current public loathing for all three main parties and Galloway’s high-profile demagogery it does not surprise me that he won; in addition to those who like him - and there are many - he’s a perfect protest vote candidate and won his last seat for much the same reasons.
In the grand scheme of things it won’t change much. Do single-representative candidates and independents get to ask anything at PMQs?
What’s that, CRSP? Didn’t you see Milliband and Balls making a stand for the common man last week? They went into Gregg’s and bought some sausage rolls, for God’s sake. What more powerful commitment to the ordinary people of this country could you imagine?
What’s weird is, this is exactly what happened in Scotland. The SNP presented a populist, semi-credible alternative, and got a majority under a PR system. So you can take people for granted just until they’ve actually got someone to vote for.
Literally the most cringeworthy political stunt I’ve ever seen.
Yep. I used to be rabidly against Scottish Independence. I’m slowly finding myself agreeing more and more with the Nats and thinking Scotland really would be better off without being under Westminster’s heel. The City of London and the transfixion that politicians have with it will be the death of the union. Anything outside the M25 is seen as an afterthought in this country, and that applies to large swathes of the South (i.e. Devon and Cornwall) as well.
I tentatively agree with this. I’m not convinced that independence is the best thing for Scotland, but the SNP have proved to be a pretty competent government, and Alex Salmond is by miles the best political operator in Britain. But as you say, there are many parts of the UK being fucked over by the south-east fixation. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have some measure of control over their own destiny, but the English regions have not. This seems deeply unfair. I wonder if the regional cities will go for elected mayors?
It’s a media thing too, of course. Galloway’s “shock” win wouldn’t have been any such thing in, say, Tower Hamlets. Media would have been crawling over the constituency and tracking campaigns for weeks. But who’s going to go to Bradford for a by-election?
He tried to introduce a talking shop with absolutely zero power as a way to get the north to shut up whilst things carried on as usual. Is it any wonder it was rejected?
Devolution has always occurred in stages, with Scottish parliament having an administrative role at first (similar to Welsh at the moment?) then being granted fiscal powers once they’d demonstrated their competence. Rejecting even a little autonomy is far more dire for the region than not, just as a “no to AV” isn’t taken as an endorsement for the d’Hondt method.
What? The Scottish Parliament, as instituted by the Scotland Act 1998, was not just a body with an “administrative role” and had a pretty impressive array of legislating ability from the outset. If you’re talking about “administrative devolution” in Scotland, that is, the institution of the Scotland Office and the appointment of the Secretary of State for Scotland in the late 1800s onwards, then the English Regions, including the North East, already have a similar set up (or did, until the latest administration were voted in) in Government Offices for the English Regions.
In other words, Devolution in the North East was not at all anything like Devolution in Scotland. To compound the issue further, why the hell was the North to be split up into tiny regions, if not to dilute any power that these sub-administrations could gather permanently? The entirety of the North should be devolved, not any of this bullshit divide-and-rule from the South East regional crap.
Probably because they couldn’t come to a consensus on how to delineate the legislature?
Scottish parliament was a poor example, the Welsh parliament is a far better illustration. Welsh parliament had administrative powers from 1998 to 2006, at which point it was granted legislative powers, which were reinforced in 2011. Another telling point is that devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales have always received “Yes” responses, which isn’t the case even with the meagre provisions made in the North.
