As every political commentator knows, there are limitations to what by-elections tell us about national politics. Turn-out is always smaller than in a general election and local or transient issues assume greater importance. Nevertheless, even within limitations, there are lessons we can drawn from the Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections held on Thursday.
The most obvious one is that the Tories were given a drubbing. Even allowing for turnouts under 40%, the collapse in the Tory vote is significant. Compared to the general election in 2019, more than three quarters of Conservative voters in Wellingborough, 77%, stayed home, or went elsewhere. In Kingswood, it was 68%. The total number of Tory votes – and this in only two constituencies – fell by 43,000, a huge number, even for by-elections.
In percentage terms, Wellingborough saw the second biggest swing away from the Tories since the Second World War. They have now lost ten by-elections in this parliament and it is no wonder that Tory MPs have more or less given up on the next election.
But it is also clear that while there is a huge swing against this government, there is not much enthusiasm for Labour. In Wellingborough, the percentage swing to Labour was almost entirely due to Tory abstentions and votes for the Reform Party. Labour’s actual vote rose by only a hundred, whereas in Kingswood it fell by 5,300.
Labour has very few members working on the ground
There is little motivation on the ground for Labour members to work for right wing candidates manoeuvred into place by factional regional officers at the behest of the right wing. Reports from the North East show that the Labour campaign for the regional mayor’s position is being almost entirely carried by full-time officials and a handful of councillors. Handfuls go out canvassing, whereas Jamie Driscoll’s Indpendent campaign has dozens of willing volunteers, many of them Labour members angry that a trivial pretext was used by Labour North to take him off the short-list. But this is probably typical of the national picture.
So much for Thursday’s by-elections. However, what will emerge from the Rochdale by election, later this month, may tell a completely different story. Rochdale has the potential to create a major upset, after Starmer suspended the Labour candidate, Azhar Ali. In this seat, now, Labour is not backing any candidate, in a field that includes three former Labour MPs.
Starmer claimed that he acted “decisively” in disowning Ali, for remarks he made about the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. This was in a meeting weeks before his selection as candidate. Yet all the indications were that Ali, coming from the right wing of the party, was going to get a free pass, despite his faux-pas.
Louise Ellman, former chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, and one of those who fought tooth and nail to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, tweeted that she “always found him [Ali] to be an ally”. Other right-wingers also lined up to support him, and It was only the intervention of the Daily Mail that made Starmer dump him.
Different rules apply to the left and to the right
The day after Ali’s suspension, it was revealed that the Labour candidate for Hyndburn, another right-wing loyalist, had referred in the same meeting, to “fucking Israel”. He, too, was therefore suspened.
What these incidents show, is something all Party members have known for a long time: that there is one set of rules applied to the right wing and a different set to the left. When a right-winger displeases the leadership, there is some scope for getting away with it. But any lefts are suspended immediately.
Andy McDonald, for example, was suspended at once, simply for using the phrase ‘from the River to the Sea’, even though it was in the context of a hope for peace. Kate Osamor was also suspended for raising the very reasonable issue of the slaughter in Gaza as an issue to remember on International Holocaust memorial day.
The Starmer and Evans regime, attempting to ban all criticism of the state of Israel, even in the midst of its savage and genocidal attack on Gaza, is turning into a car-crash. They may now find that they have handed the Rochdale seat to George Galloway, founder and leader of the George Galloway Party, currently mis-describing itself as the ‘Workers’ Party’.
Israel using snipers to kill children in Gaza
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the murderous campaign of the Israeli government continues. A few newspapers reported last week that a six-year old girl, Hind Rajab, had been “found dead”, along with her family and at least two people who had attempted to rescue her. Even that headline, “found dead” glosses over the crime, when it ought to say, “found murdered”.
Then last week, on social media, we saw the awful spectacle of a two-year toddler, wounded but still alive, lying next to the body of his mother. Rescuers, fearing being shot themselves, were attempting to throw a line to the boy to drag him to safety.
It beggars belief that a state that claims to be ‘civilised’ should use snipers against non-combatant women and little children. The truth is that if either of these children had been Israeli, their pictures and their fate would be splashed across all the Western media, and Keir Starmer would no doubt be weaving the incidents into his speeches, instead of doing what he is doing: sitting on his hands.
The Israeli government does not want their crimes in Gaza to be seen by the world, and that is why they are targetting journalists and those from Al Jazeera in particular. But even when the news does get out, the horrors faced by the population of Gaza go ignored by Western politicians.
For Starmer, criticism of Israel = antisemitism
It is disgraceful that in this atmosphere, the leader of the Labour Party reserves his indignation only for those who dare to criticise the state of Israel. Like the nineteenth century British politician who used the expression, “my country, right or wrong”, Starmer seems to defend Israel, whatever its crimes. The leader of the Labour Party, applies a simple equation: criticism of Israel = antisemitism.
As a result of Starmer’s abandonment of all of his previous commitments, most recently his ‘green’ agenda, but especially by turning a blind eye to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, Labour is in danger of losing the support of hundreds of thousands of young voters and Muslim voters.
Riding a wave of anti-Tory hatred, which has buoyed Labour up in the polls, Starmer and his entourage of advisers may have thought that all they need to do is nurse along the massive opinion poll lead, right up to the general election. But, as Harold Wilson once remarked, “a week is a long time in politics”. If Labour abstains (yet again) in a possible new Commons vote for a Gaza cease-fire, and then loses in Rochdale, it may introduce a different trajectory to national politics.
Over Gaza, Starmer is completely out of touch with the majority of his party membership, and increasingly alienated from leading Labour figures, like the London mayor, the Scottish leader, some metro mayors, and many MPs. The disquiet over his rigidly pro-Israeli stance is reaching even to some on the right wing of the party. Long before he ever becomes Prime Minister, even assuming he doesn’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Starmer is a lame duck leader, without principles and, in relation to Gaza, without humanity.
