the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Tag: labour-party

October 26, 2025

33:64 presents “Bob Dylan.”

The defeat suffered by Labour in the Caerphilly by-election would be incredibly ironic were it not for the fact of it being an ominous portent.  

To begin with, the irony is that the same electoral discontent that propelled Labour into government is exactly the same as that which caused them to be so  comprehensively rejected in Wales. Just as how their victory in the general election of 2024 wasn’t evidence of some long dormant upswell in Labour values amongst the voters, more than that it reflected their collective disenchantment after fourteen years of Tory Government, so to does its defeat last Thursday indicate less of a desire for Welsh independence than to send a message to Stymied.

No matter how much Plaid Cymru (PC) might claim otherwise, their basic shtick to the people of Caerphilly was ‘We’re not Reform’. Which was a shrewd piece of electoral maths. Anyone that might have otherwise have voted for Labour, the Conservative, Liberal Democrats or the Greens would have calculated that tactical voting was far more important than the result of one inconsequential by election.

Because no amount of testiculation can alter the fact that by-elections are the medieval equivalent of the government of the day being dragged to the stocks by voters and then pelted with rotten fruit, eggs and faeces. They prove only how unpopular a government is, which can be discerned from the both the voter turnout and who it was that the voters bothered to turnout for. 

Which in this case amounted to 50.43% of them, of whom only of those 47.4% voted for PC of which significant proportion of those were the aforementioned tactical voters. The change in vote share bears this out, the short version being that Labour and Conservative vote share collapsed from the general election and from which PC benefitted. 

My point is that this not only highlights voter disaffection generally – as evidenced by by the low turnout – but also a specific disaffection with the options open for them to choose from. If the main reason for your electoral success is from hoovering up ‘x’s from voters who detest another party more than they support your one, then that isn’t good.

It is also ominous because if we consider the success in 2024 of the six Independent Alliance MP’s and the barely over 30% of the vote they got on a roughly 40% turnout, and then factor that in with the collapse of traditional voting allegiances, then its clear that times are indeed a changing. Gone are the old class based loyalties. There was a certainty about them, rooted as they were in tangible differences which essentially boiled down to rich or poor. 

Yes they were simplistic but the Britain of  1970’s, 80’s or even the 90’s, were simpler times, there was no hint of just how complicated politics were to become. But whilst the Britain of 2025 is still one of simpler times, it is not the simple one of of recent history, but rather the simple dvision of identity politics. 

This is an inevitable consequence of a society that champions, rewards and celebrates an ever greater division based on identity.  One that is increasingly partisan, intolerant and self-righteous but also a society which rewards those politicians that seek to fashion that discontent into political opportunity. By perpetuating the very division proclaims it opposes and by fostering more grievances, more reasons for division, they are like political alchemists; they turn impotence, frustration and alienation into electoral opportunity.  

With little or no broad policy agenda – other than being opposed to things – and with scant regard for voter engagement beyond their core base and having no upside in remedying that, we are seeing a new kind of politics. Typified by Rasin, who hasn’t just divided along traditional political sectarian lines – left and right – but also among left and far left, and incredibly, those in the far left who don’t share her vision of what the far left is. 

But then again, is she all that different to Stymied or The Cunning Stunt? Only by degree’s, not by instinct or motivation. They have spent the last eight years vilifying people who believed in the wrong kind of democracy. Would ideally prefer that it had never happened, traduced and impugned the reasons of the people who caused it to happen and ignored their point of view. How different is her divisive politics to those politicians who can’t accept that Brexit happened?

How is her continual repetition of the lie of there having been a genocide in Gaze not too dissimilar Stymied and Co banging on about the racist, xenophobic or bigoted motivations of Brexit voters? Or her pandering to disaffected former Labour voters, those who imagine themselves progressives or else those who feel more than they think any more cynical than than those politicians who citing Russian interference, manipulation by the ‘far right’ or fundamental ignorance as comforting explanations for Brexit?  

It’s all on the same spectrum. I disagree with you and because you’re wrong, you’ve forfeited any right to be treated with the same respect I demand of others. That’s why the tactical voting in Caherphilly was so ominous, not because of what it was so much as to what it foretold. A growing willingness on the part of the electorate not to vote for who they want but to prevent the election of someone they want even less, And along with that, the idea that society should prioritise your grievances, needs and values above any other concern. 

Now there’s a cheery thought.

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May 23, 2025

34:63 presents “Mr. Kobayashi.”

All of the chatter last week about the assisted dying bill was concerned with MP’s voting for an amendment to give health workers an ‘opt out’, and a slew of measures that had been added ostensibly as ‘safeguarding’ vulnerable persons, to protect them from coercion. 

Because of this, one might be forgiven for thinking that this was a fine example of MP’s putting ‘country before party’ and voting on principle, that the grubby business of party politics had been temporarily suspended in pursuit of some notion of a  higher moral obligation. 

You’d be wrong though.  

To understand why, first of all you need to question who exactly it is those MP’s were so keen to safeguard and then to ask yourself who are the vulnerable people at risk from coercion? It is never fully explained what safeguarding is, or what a vulnerable person is, is it? Not really. ‘Safeguarding’ and ‘vulnerable people’ have, in regard to having any meaning within the whole assisted dying debate are as meaningful as calling a trans-woman a woman.

Where is any there notion of safeguarding the public purse in all this, of putting economic probity first, of safeguarding all the other public services that would face ever more drastic cuts to help pay for an increasingly ageing population? According to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), whereas today 18% of the population is over the age of 65, by 2065 they predict it will be 26%. It gets worse because whilst 26% of people will be over 65, an additional 15% of them will be under 16. Thats nearly half of all the UK’s population not paying tax, but still expecting the state to provide for them. Granted, eventually the young might become taxpayers, but by then quite a lot of them them will be working in the kind of low-wage job that requires government bailouts – working tax credits, housing benefit and the like – to avoid even more government help.

It’s all a vicious circle, and part of the blame lies with the NHS. Yes the NHS, so beloved by, well everyone, being as it is an institution that occupies such a unique place in our collective psyche that a segment extolling it was included in the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. Because all of its various health initiatives – to help people to stop smoking, improved detection leading to better survival rates for heart disease, cancers and other previously life ending conditions for example – have been too successful. 

So successful in fact, that of the 26% of the population that will be aged over 65 by 2065, the that the Office for National Statistics estimates that by 2045 there will be 3.1 million of them or 4.3% of the population will be older than 85. So to my way of thinking, anyone over the age of 85 who is claiming a state pension is guilty of benefit fraud. It may well be through no fault of their own, but they’re still claiming a benefit to which they’re not entitled.

To misquote Mr Kobayashi in ‘The Usual Suspects’, the fact that they were unaware that they were committing fraud is no excuse.  When the current crop of pensioners – those over 80 I’m talking about here – were adults of working age and paid tax, successive governments had a realistic expectation that their time as a pensioner might last for maybe 15 years or so. Wasn’t that the deal with state pensions, that when they were of working age, the they tax paid then paid for pensioners pensions then?

The pension bill is only going to increase, whilst at the same time the umber of people paying that bill is decreasing. It is a state of affairs that is as unaffordable as it is unconscionable. Adult social care alone cost £26.9 billion in 2021/22, up 3.8% from 2020/21 and according to the OBR, pensions will account for 42% of the welfare budget this year, that’s £124 billion, the largest single expenditure – more than we spend on defence, transport and education combined. And those numbers are only going to get bigger.

Thats why the Assisted Dying Bill is hopefully a much needed first step towards state sponsored euthanasia. And just because people find something distasteful to even to contemplate, doesn’t make any the less urgent. If anything, the fact that people do find the subject of euthanasia, or assisted dying a topic they’d much rather avoid altogether is precisely the reason why it has become so urgent.

The government could offer pensioners upon retirement a deal, a lump sum equal to the value of their pension for 15 years – that’s the state sponsored bit – in return for a guaranteed undertaking for voluntary euthanasia on their part. 15 years seems about enough time for people to pit all their affairs in order, take all the holidays they’d never had and generally depart with dignity. Of course, when the 15 years had elapsed they could renege on their part of the deal, of corse they could, but that would mean an immediate termination of any governmental – local or central – responsibility for them. 

And of course the financial benefits to society would be worth it. In addition to the savings garnered from a reduced welfare budget, the savings to the NHS, and local authorities, if people knew what the deal was, then the money invested in private pensions – estimated to be £112 billion in 2021 by the Institute for Fiscal Studies – quite a bit of that might be ploughed back into the economy. It would also help the NHS. There’d also be a societal benefit. In the housing sector, as more stock became available, house prices and rents would fall. Employment too. There’d be a huge swathe of jobs that were no longer needed, thereby creating new employment opportunities

We urgently need our politicians to do the leading part of leadership, as opposed to them being constantly fixated on what the media or the public think and constantly aware of their ow career. Of course MP’s have a idea of themselves as being all kinds of wonderful to everyone – after all being an MP means they have to take part in a popularity contest every five years – but unfortunately for them, economic reality makes their ideals unaffordable. Its those ideals that are actually coercing millions into hardship, creating the vulnerable they seem so concerned with protecting and plunging the country state ever closer to civil unrest. Generational inequality is not something that can be ignored for much longer.

Tough choices should mean exactly that, because otherwise they’ll only get tougher.

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May 3, 2025

34:63 presents “Asterix”

I must confess to feeling slightly disappointed upon waking this morning to discover that the sky hadn’t fallen in. Because yesterday, the media were full of either grim pronouncements or jubilant celebrations about exactly what Reforms UK’s performance in Thursdays elections meant for the future of British politics.

Brexit, as it is for most things nowadays, was involved, being the catalyst that lay behind this wholly predictable, and indeed, widely predicted drubbing. Indeed, in all the coverage I’ve read, what is striking is just how much opinions are shaped by Brexit. In a tangential yet unremarked way, Brexit was but a symptom of a greater, more fundamental problem confronting democracy, not just in the UK, but elsewhere. One that moreover, has the capacity to fatally undermine it by using its own inherent flaws to achieve this, voter turnout, or more accurately, voter absence.

In all of the mayoral elections contested on Thursday, not one of them had a voter turnout of more than 34% and neither of the ones that elected Reform UK mayors managed even 30%. Why no media attention is being given to this problem is beyond me, especially as a little over a year ago the dangers were revealed to exist. 

Remember George Galloway’s campaign in the Rochdale by-election last year? Where he made it clear from the outset that he was targeting the Muslim community in Rochdale – 30% of its population – and instead of focusing on local or even national issues, but rather on Israel/Gaza? It was an act of effectively strategic masterstroke, resulting him getting 40% of all the votes cast, which sounds impressive, until you realise only 39.7% of voters actually bothered to. And then suddenly that 40% seems even less impressive, especially when you realise that that once impressive 40% translates into 12,335 actual votes.

This trick – targeting a specific community and focusing on an issue not directly related to their daily lives – was repeated a few months later at the 2024 general election. Whilst George Galloway wasn’t re-elected, five candidates were, all pandering to concerns of a minority but crucially, a minority who turned out to vote. Together with Jeremy Corblimey, they formed the Independent  Alliance and their ranks could easily have been increased to nine, because three candidates,  standing on a similar platform were narrowly defeated.

It isn’t that surprising that Labour is so quiet on this issue – low voter turnout – because it suited them very well at the 2024 general election. Despite the fact there was a load of guff in some of the media about how constituency boundary changes and the need for voter I.D would work against Labour, like so much political speculation, that didn’t happen. Voter turnout  was about 60%, and despite Labour getting a lower share of that, 34%, somehow they got 412 seats or 63% of them. 

Some awfully clever people have worked out that the you take into account the number that did vote for them, the number that didn’t and the number of people who could have voted but chose not to, combine all of that and only 20% of the UK electorate did so. Of course the media are predicting all manner of things, because that’s what the media do. Political forecasting is as good at predicting the future as reading tea-leaves, checking ones horoscope or listening to a clairvoyant.

Its much easier than them questioning why this keeps happening, why political parties have consistently failed to engage with voters the way seem all to happy to do with lobbyists. And by not doing this, they’re not only perpetuating the problem, they’re failing to do their job. Nearly as much as the politicians.

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May 2, 2025

34:63 presents “Mari Wilson.”

As with all things, the devil is in the detail, and there is a lot of detail for Farrago to dwell on, following the overnight constituency, local council and mayoral elections. It is now Friday afternoon and more grim tidings are expected to be heading Plonkers way. But the results are just as troubling for Farrago, albeit in a different way, one replete with potentially longer term damage. 

First of all, a quick shufti at the actual results. The Reform UK candidate, Sarah Poitin, won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes, overturning a majority that rights, shouldn’t have been vulnerable. However, as stunning – and widely predicted –  as her victory undoubtedly was, she only got 38.7% of the votes cast and only 42.6% of the voters actually bothered to vote. And even that was lower than the turnout less than a year ago. at the general election.It’s not like there hadn’t been any publicity, media interest and speculation about it or anything.

Which means a few things, none of them good for her glittering parliamentary career, which may or may not happen or for Reform UK’s positioning of itself as a viable electoral proposition. Firstly, with a majority that is the very definition of ‘by the skin of their teeth’, and with such a low turnout to boot,  a better result for her would’ve been to have lost by six instead. Because you can bet that the local Labour Party will scrutinise her parliamentary attendance record, forensically examine her expenses claims, flood her constituency surgery with labyrinthine constituent problems, all designed to portray her as bad MP at the next election. They’ll also be all over her social media content – especially in her youthful postings – for any damaging content, and trying to unearth anything in her past that might be used against her. So basically what every political party handed such opportunity would do.

The situation in Greater Lincolnshire, where Dame Angela Jenkins became Reform UK’s first mayor, is if anything, potentially even worse. Yes, she’s a former Conservative MP so she knows how the game is played and yes, as mayor of newly formed super council, essentially overseeing three smaller councils each represented two senior councillors each, – given as how all of whom are Conservative,- this in theory doesn’t pose as much of a problem as if they were Labour.  I didn’t know this, but prior to last night, over 65% of Reform UK’s local councillors were defectors from the Conservatives. But be that as it may, Ange got her gold chain with a vote share of 42.2% – good -, a majority of nearly 40,000 – double good -, on a voter turnout of, er, 29.9%.  

So her election has succeeded in highlighting the flaws in our voting system and nothing else. As the mayor of a new super council, she needs the support of six others to ratify any policies she wants to introduce. They in turn are at the mercy of local officials, in town halls and council departments to make those policies real. And successful implementation of her policies will, even if they succeed in permeating down through the layers in bureaucracy, rely on council staff and contractors, who might be instinctively opposed to Reform UK. They won’t want her mayoralty to become a shining example of good governance should Farrago enter No.10.

And this is why the greater the electoral success that Reform UK has, the greater the threat to Reform UK has of suffering irreperable reputational damage. It can only present themselves as the change Britain needs for so long. At some point, they’ll have to deliver that change, and whilst bemoaning the structural unfairness of the first-past-the-post voting system chimes with people who care about such things, if potholes are left unrepaired, schools face staff shortages, or social care is pared back even further,  nobody will much care.

They won’t care that central government has cut the councils budget, but they will care the their council tax bill goes up or that they have to buy a residents parking permit. They won’t care that the council is barely meeting its statutory obligations but they will care when those statuary obligations are perceived to be applied discriminatorily. They won’t care when council run things that they never use are closed, but they will care when things that they do use close. Then they’ll care, then they’ll care a lot. 

And it won’t just be Farrago regretting getting the thing he always wanted.

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April 30, 2025

34:63 presents “The Corporal Jones guide to politics.”

In recent days there has been a lot of speculation in the press concerning what exactly Plonker will do in order to nullify the threat of a Reform UK rout of Labour at the upcoming local elections tomorrow.  They have pretty much conceded the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, which voting also place tomorrow, which on paper they should win, given as how the former MP Mike Amesbury won it with a majority of nearly 15,000 at the General Election barely a year ago. 

But then having a by-election forced upon you because the sitting MP had to resign after recieving a 10-week suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to punching a constituent last year, is not a good look. But neither is it a good look for a politician to carefully finesse his public image so that him saying little about actual policy in the general election campaign – so that everyone can fill in their own hopes onto him – works only so far. Which in his case, turned out – to no-ones surprise – to be until he was elected and soon thereafter revealed himself to be as slippery as most other politicians.  

Anything less than a resounding victory for Labour- an increased majority, an increased voter turnout from the general election and the other parties being thoroughly rejected by the electorate – will be a defeat. It remains to be see if its a crushing one or not. The local elections pose more of a threat, because most people will vote based on how competent or not they judge central government to be. Sad but true. Its politics. Just like when in February Local Government Secretary Angela Ratner announced that local elections in East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey would be delayed for one year to allow major reorganisations to take place. It may well be true, maybe there’s a compelling rationale behind her decision. But in order to prevent the taint of political chicanery being levelled and gaining traction, making the announcement less than three months before they’re happening, again, isn’t a good look.

But this government seems to be constantly bedevilled by events, responding to them, and being in constant firefighting mode, rather than shaping them and exuding calm. The postponement of the aforementioned is but one example of this. Another is sudden flurry of headlines this week suggesting that Plonker will take a stronger line on immigration in order to try and mitigate the threat from Reform UK.  Its not because of something as old fashioned as its the right thing to do and that doing such – reducing the numbers of people being granted asylum – might have a beneficial effect on already overstretched public services. That Plonker seems unwilling to grasp this obvious political calculation is one reason why Reform UK is polling so well and why all Plonker has are desperate last minute throws of the dice. His default position on immigration is to label anyone who thinks that immigration needs tougher action as racist or bigoted or far right extremists, effectively attempting to shut down any sensible discussion on this topic.

But as Reforms growing threat, and Labours craven reaction to it amply demonstrate, while such a strategy might work in posh metropolitan circles, out in the wild, out where most of the electorate live, out where the very real consequences of immigration are being felt, that strategy isn’t working. 

Don’t be thinking I’m in any way a fan of Farrago. I think he’s nothing more than a snake oil salesman, all smarm and the kind of bluster that most people mistake as plain speaking. Like a lot of people flirting with Reform UK, its only because of the lack of any other viable political alternative And like a lot of people who are considering voting Reform UK, my values and principles, my fundamental conception of what the state should do – and what it shouldn’t – and what obligations the state owed to the citizen – and vice-versa – haven’t really changed. Its the political parties who have changed out of all recognition. 

Despite the many horrors that the Grocers Daughter visited on the UK, she at least had ideological underpinnings to them. There was a logic, twisted and serving the interests of a minority, yes, but a logic.  The most socialist thing about Plonker is his first name, and the only thing he stands for is a piss.

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March 22, 2024

Schrodinger’s cat meets democracy

The result of the recent Irish referendum was many things and I’ll leave it to those more knowledgeable in Irish politics to expound upon the issues it raises. Much has been made of the decision to even hold a referendum regarding changes to the constitution in the first place. There are many problems facing Ireland right now and holding a referendum on something that wasn’t one of them seemed as if it was an exercise in political virtue signalling. One which indicated how in touch with the values and language of now the political class were, by indicating how out of touch they were with the concerns of ordinary Irish citizens.

An example being that changes to the the wording of the constitution are not exactly on a par with proposed cull of 200,000 dairy cows – 10% of the total – in order to better meet the Irish governments goal of reducing agricultural emissions by 25% by 2030. And whilst tinkering with some of wording of the constitution looked good to people who are inordinately pre-occupied with looking good, it also had the added benefit of seemingly coming with no cost, whereas the cull is estimated to cost £600Million.

But come at a cost it did and whilst much was made of the seemingly low turnout – 44% as compared with 2018’s repeal of the abortion law which had 66.5% – even the most cursory of looks at voter turnout reveals just how low it actually was. In parts of the capital Dublin and at least four counties, turnout was estimated to be no higher than 12 per cent and although turnout was high in some places – 46% in other parts of Dublin – there was an overwhelmingly sense of voter apathy. This the nightmare scenario that awaits both main parties in the forthcoming UK election if they fail to engender anything even approaching a sense of it being anything other than the outcome being a foregone conclusion. The victory of George Galloway in Rochdale underlies the reality of this prediction.

As noted in a previous blog post, there were many things I found highly disagreeable about George Galloway’s campaign, but no matter how calculated one considers his campaign to have been, it was undeniably effective. Making it clear that he was targeting the Muslim community in Rochdale that made up 30% of its population and shifting the focus away from local or even national issues, but instead onto Israel/Gaza was an act of effective strategic masterstroke. It paid off, resulting him getting 40% of all the votes cast, which sounds impressive, until you realise only 39.7% of voters actually bothered to. And then suddenly that 40% seems even less impressive, especially when you realise that that once impressive 40% translates into 12,335 actual votes.

A pathetic inditement of our political apathy, made all the more pathetic when one realises there are 26 constituencies with a majority of less than 1000, each notionally at risk from a well co-ordinated and highly motivated grassroots campaign. Which is both a good and a bad thing for democracy. Good, because it allows people to become properly invested in participatory democracy in a meaningful, not theoretical way, and to decide for themselves what issues are important to them, not have them dictated by a party machine. That is also the bad thing, because as Galloway’s victory in Rochdale shows, the numbers needed to win were not big and therefore permits to a certain kind of activism, as factional as it is unrepresentative. Certainly nowhere near cohesive enough to engender solidity with other similar victors on a regional, never mind national stage.

That’s why to me, the results of the Irish referendum and Rochdale are one and the same, bringing in their wake the warning of voter disengagement with the entire political process. Of how that sense of disengagement, that apathy, could be turned on itself, be weaponised and ruthlessly exploited in the pursuit of a rigidly exclusionary agenda.

Think of those 12,335 votes and tell me I’m dreaming.

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March 5, 2024

Forest Gump’s mum meets Winston Churchill

The most depressing thing about the way in which the entire political class and their fawning sycophants in the media reacted to George Galloways’ electoral victory in Rochdale the other night was that it reminded me of how they’d all reacted after the Brexit vote. With an almost tedious inevitability, there was the same anguished newspaper headlines, the same acres of newsprint opining at length about what it said about Britain, about how it was a sad day for democracy, even down to the PM giving a speech outside No.10.

The statesman like thing to have done would’ve been for Loafer to be gracious in defeat and to admit that whilst he had lost, democracy had won. To position himself was a staunch defender of the democratic ideal, that how he felt about the result was ultimately of no consequence. But no. He somehow managed to conflate Galloways victory and the beliefs of some of the people who supported him as evidence of “our democracy itself being a target”

The thing is, it’s a teensy-teensy bit cheeky for Loafer to even mention democracy being a target, given the obscenely undemocratic way he became PM in the first place, in an act of political chicanery that would’ve made even Kim Jong-un blush. He is to democracy what Prince Harry is to reticence. At least his predecessor, Letttuce, was elected, even if it was only by 80,000 Conservative Party members. The last PM to be elected because of an actual general election was Boris’s Johnson, back in 2019.

Secondly did any Cabinet Ministers travel up to Rochdale to support the Conservative candidate Paul Ellison, especially after the Labour candidate was withdrawn? The media were all too aware of the potential for a Galloway win, most obviously because it allowed them to pontificate upon how disastrous an outcome this would be, so it follows that Loafer and Co were aware too. So where was the one time only coalition of all three main parties suspending business as usual and uniting behind a common cause to defeat Galloway? And instead of sounding all high and mighty about putting country before party like all politicians are always testiculating about, maybe actually doing it?

Galloway won Rochdale thanks in part to a low voter turnout – 39.7% as compared to the 60.1% in 2019 – and of that he only managed to 40%. Basically, 12,335 votes. Essentially if the main political parties couldn’t be even bothered to show up, then why should the voters? Worryingly, a couple of candidates whose names appeared on the ballot paper but were withdrawn before the election itself nevertheless managed somehow get a combined total of nearly 3,000 votes. And that leads neatly onto another threat to democracy.

Politicians themselves.

They are increasingly out of touch with the everyday concerns of the people they claim to serve, hardly a surprise when one realises the huge disparity between them and rest of the population. In 2019, research revealed the sheer scale of this grotesque reality. 44% of Tory MPs, 38% of Lib-Dem ones and 19% of Labour ones went to to fee paying – private – schools, as compared to 6% for the rest of us. It gets worse, as most of the Tory ones – 61% of that 44% – are in Loafer’s Cabinet, and 45% lot of that went to Oxbridge.

Less than 1% of the rest of us do. Unsurprisingly, this disparity stretches into the upper echelons of the civil service, the media and business.

No wonder then that a kind of group-think takes place, one that allows an echo chamber of ideological conformity to flourish and for dissenting opinions to be seldom heard. And that danger to democracy extends to the judiciary; senior judges being the most unrepresentative group of them all, with 67% attending private schools and 71% graduating from Oxbridge, with 11 of the judges on the Supreme Court thusly educated. Puts the legal challenges to Brexit into a harsher light, to say nothing of the Supreme Court unanimously ruling that Boris’s Johnson had “unlawfully” prorogued – suspended – parliament for five weeks. Effectively thwarting, albeit temporally, his ability to carry out the wishes of the majority of the UK population

Much like the Brexit vote, there was a lot of scare-mongering by the commentariat and grim predictions of doom that were better suited to Macbeth, but that didn’t prevent the shocked disbelief and abject bewilderment of the entire political class when the lower orders actually used democracy to be actively involved in their own lives. Possibly not enough of them made full advantage of that possibility in Rochdale, but whose fault is that? That’s one of the great strengths of democracy, which is why the right to vote was very begrudgingly and even more incrementally broadened to eventually encompass all citizens. Just as people are sometimes contrary, often unpredictable and frequently unfathomable, so too can be election results.

And as I pointed out in a previous blog, Galloways self-professed and ruthlessly focused targeting of Rochdale’s Muslim population may well have been distasteful, but from another point of view, a brilliant piece of strategic thinking, one which all of the other parties have always used. Indeed election night analysis almost fetishises the possibility of marginal seats being lost to a rival party, often cutting away so we can see the winner bask in their fleeting moment in the spotlight. And with an emboldened Galloway eyeing up marginal seats – 25 of which have majority of less than 1,000 – the results may not be to everyone’s liking, but isn’t that the point of democracy, losers consent?

To quote Forest Gumps’ mum ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get.’

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