The Irresistible Resurgence of Hope, After the Green Party Beat Labour and Reform in Manchester
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Although much of the world is now engulfed in chaos after the US and Israel launched an illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran on Saturday morning, I want to turn back the clock to the day before the “war” began, and the resounding victory, in a crucial by-election in Gorton and Denton, in Manchester, of Hannah Spencer, a local working class plumber standing for the Green Party, who secured 14,980 votes (42% of the total votes cast) over Reform’s 10,578 votes, and Labour’s 9,364 votes (halving their vote from when they held the seat at the General Election in 2024), dealing a seismic blow to the domination of British politics by an entire political class — from Labour to the Tories and Reform — that functions solely through negativity, corruption, oppression and division.
At her victory speech, echoing what she stated throughout her campaign, she said:
I am no different to every single person here in this constituency. I work hard. That is what we do. Except things have changed a lot over the last few decades. Because working hard used to get you something. It got you a house, a nice life, holidays. It got you somewhere. But now? Working hard? What does that get you?
Because talk to anyone here and they will tell you, the people who work hard but can’t put food on the table, can’t get their kids school uniforms, can’t put their heating on, can’t live off the pension they worked hard to save for, can’t even begin to dream about ever having a holiday, ever. Because life has changed. Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry.
Despite the Landslide, Labour Have No Vision and Only Won the UK General Election Because the Tories Lost So Spectacularly
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So the good news is easy. After 14 years of cruelty, incompetence and corruption, the Tories were wiped out in yesterday’s General Election in the UK, suffering their worst ever result, and ending up with less MPs than at any other point in their 190-year existence.
Of the 650 seats contested, the 365 seats that the Tories had when Rishi Sunak unexpectedly called a General Election on May 22 were slashed to just 121 (a loss of over two-thirds), with their vote almost halved, from 13,966,454 in 2019 to just 6,814,469 yesterday.
High-profile Tory losses included Liz Truss, the disastrous 43-day Prime Minister, whose vote plunged from 35,507 in 2019 to 11,217 in South West Norfolk, the absurd and offensive pro-Brexit toff Jacob Rees-Mogg, and a number of ministers until six weeks ago including the vacuous Tory pin-up Penny Mordaunt, the empty Grant Shapps and Mark Harper, the far-right ideologues Liam Fox and Johnny Mercer, and the offensive Thérèse Coffey and Gillian Keegan.
General Election 2024: The Labour MPs Who Oppose Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, and Those Who Support It
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Ever since Rishi Sunak announced that a General Election would take place on July 4, some commentators have been suggesting that those of us who are implacably opposed to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza — as all decent people should be — should boycott the Labour Party entirely, because of the unconditional support for Israel demonstrated by Keir Starmer and key members of his shadow cabinet.
Starmer, shamefully, told LBC on October 11 that Israel had “the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza, while claiming that, “Obviously, everything should be done within international law”, even though, as a former human rights lawyer, he must have known that international law prohibits withholding power and water from a civilian population, because it is collective punishment, and a war crime under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which entered into force in October 1950.
Emily Thornberry and David Lammy were also criticised for statements they made in the first week of Israel’s ultra-violent response to the deadly attacks by Hamas and other militants on October 7, and were all included in “a notice of intention to prosecute UK politicians for their role in aiding and abetting Israel’s perpetration of war crimes”, issued on October 16 by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), “an independent organisation of lawyers, politicians and academics who support the rights of Palestinians and aim to protect their rights through the law.”
Who's still at Guantánamo?
