Hello I used to Tweet but now I only tweet Massive poofter, mostly gayposting in response to a society that has gotten high on its own supply of howfin queerphobia
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Even the least favourable chunk of the North East (really glad that I made this for fun PR model last year www.datawrapper.de/_/fjWX9/), Tees Valley, saw 7% swing behind those two parties, which is well over double the total 2024 vote which the BES are finding going from Lab to Reform (circa 2.8%)
Across England (for this analysis best to ignore the devolved nations), LD + Green got about 20% last year. In the North East, the Red Wall archetype, the total was nearly 11%. Is that a lot lower? Yes. Is it still a *substantial* voter base that shows existing willingness to ditch Labour? Also yes!
A "rebuttal" to this, that you can see at least once in the replies, is that it doesn't matter if Labour are losing votes to left because that's all in big cities, not the "Red Wall". Beyond the democratically disgraceful idea that city voters should be ignored, the "Red Wall" has Green/LD voters!
One of my petty authoritarianisms is I'd take the internet off people who post this way. The British Election Study is not a journalistic outlet so moaning at them to cover non-election and public opinion data topics is like demanding, I dunno, Kerrang! investigate Angela Rayner's stamp duty
Imagine simply having an upper house with a set size that was either directly elected or at least indirectly responsive to changes in views (e.g. the devolved parliaments plus regional colleges of English councillors appoint members every 5 years?), couldn't be us, have to do this stupidity instead
Some of the responses to this exemplify why the Lords is an ever-growing chamber: "well the government needs to pass legislation and the last one stuffed the benches, so we need to counter-stuff them!" It's great living in the Museum for Antiquated Governance, love it, so glad it works like this!
Yeah, and it's completely immaterial to next year's elextion as to whether it was 95, 951, or 9510 voters: those are the party leaders now regardless, for a party that may have a record result, spent 3 years as part of government, and may be instrumental to determining the next one.
I appreciate I am biased by virtue of being a chippy Scot but if you do make a small arse of it by missing an important Scottish moment and someone calls you out on it, take the L and commit to doing better, don't double down with stuff that reads as "oh well it wasn't really that important anyway"
They're going for Boluarte numbers, which is appropriate as someone also elected (as Vice President initially) for a left wing party who swung hard right and has allowed (much worse) police (and military) overreach and abuse of power against protesters
Great response: "I have not bothered to even be aware of events relating to one of the major parliamentary parties in Scotland but it's okay because turnout was low" is absolute Peak Englishness, isn't it? Our silly little Parliament and our silly little parties don't merit UK-level attention!
The thing about the Euro though is that the EU doesn't hand currency out like a sweetie to all applicants, you do have to meet criteria, and some countries simply choose... not to meet the criteria. Now Scotland outright saying that? Won't do any EU-entering favours! But it's not enforceable.
Maybe? We've seen some of that in the past - "why are GPEW doing 'better' than the Scottish Greens by some metrics", without the obvious analysis of "GPEW's position is as an alternative to existing parties for young lefties especially, a role also filled in Scotland by the SNP"
Potentially yes - voters don't necessarily grasp the separation in parties, even though it pre-dates devolution (!), so if "the Greens" are seen to be doing well that might have Scottish impacts too
Also I don't want to be too pointed to my UK-level counterparts who do good work generally, but I would note, I would gently note, I would kindly note, they did not report on who won the Scottish Greens contest on Friday...
I mean it could not be more obvious that "capitalise on dissatisfaction with Labour" was the way forward for GPEW yet half of their MP group just spent months arguing that shouldn't they really be trying to win Tory seats too. Thumping victory for "actually being aware of reality" if nothing else.
The reality for GPEW is wrong Co-Leader stepped down. Denyer was clearly and obviously much more in line with the bulk of the party and also represented the kind of areas where the party can realistically grow, Ramsay got too high on his own supply of having beaten a Tory and pitching accordingly.
Obviously a big turnout difference but note the stark contrast with Scotland: parliamentarians up here went basically unchallenged as there was no real sense any were departing from values and two were elected, parliamentarians down south tried to go in a "be nice to Tories" route and got hammered
I just block quite quickly because actually arguing is a waste of time but *extremely* funny to get a guy replying to effect of "YOU NATIONALISTS ALWAYS HAVE TO BE VICTIMS" (not a nationalist xoxo) which, it must be said, was quite scornful so didn't really disprove the point, did it?
I'm not a nationalist but I am a snippy homosexual, find something better to do than being rude to strangers online sweetpea xoxo
Pretty clear to me that Villalba has been functionally deselected; she was a Dundee constituency candidate in 2021 but did not get either selection this time, widely reported the leadership were gunning for her, I reckon she saw writing on the wall and jumped rather than be pushed via low list place
No I'm simply pointing out meeting critiques of current political circumstances with "well what about PREVIOUS silliness from THE OTHER SIDE" might work better if you're actually aiming it at said other side
I'll always remember her trying to do Permanent Rent Controls through a one-paragraph amendment to a COVID Recovery bill and a surprising number of folk on the Scottish Left getting bigmad about the Greens not backing an obviously legally incompetent approach that'd be court cased dead immediately
Which was also stupid, wait until you discover there's a part of the UK called "Scotland" which has had a substantially different political arena to England in recent decades and there's a whole, enormous section of the left up here which was never part of the Corbyn project!
Who is convinced by this? Who is thinking "well I was going to vote Reform but now that Yvette Cooper told morning telly she has Union Flag bunting and tablecloths I'm all in on Labour"; an evil government, a stupid government, an embarrassing government! This is so absurd! I loathe these goons.
Once again watching England with an archly raised brow from Scotland; we've had 15 years of scorn heaped on Independence supporters up here for being narrow, flag-obsessed nationalists, and now the whole UK Cabinet is lying about having loads of flags they shag all the time, mortifying behaviour
See also Calton, if you think that might just have been post IndyRef growth: ~3% in 2012, ~3.5% in summer 2015 by-election when it wasn't a target, ~9% in 2017 when it was - sure, wasn't won (and hasn't been yet), but the doorknocking made a huge difference that stalls simply would not.
Glasgow branch has consistently demonstrated power of a canvassing-first approach. Dennistoun ward went from ~6% in 2012 to ~20% in 2017 off the back of an intense canvassing campaign that led to 40-50% shares in the area of the ward that canvassed and had strong GOTV efforts...
I have developed a problem, and that problem is called Raspberry Jaffa Cakes. Are they better than the original orange, or are they merely novel? I intend to continue taste testing until I have an answer. This make take some time. I am willing to make that sacrifice.
And now the same people are basically giving it "well Labour simply have to appeal to Reform voters or else they will lose the next election, this is just basic arithmetic" Oh right so NOW you admit they had a weak victory but only to justify capitulating to the worst bigotry of my lifetime? Great
Anyway just thinking about how this time last year, the Clever Centrist response to people pointing out Labour's win was extremely shallow was "you moron, you fool, you imbecile, it was actually MASTERFUL voter efficiency that gave them a huge majority, to suggest it's a weakness shows you up"
Real risk that by the end of this year the answer to this question is basically just "he's not particularly supportive of Ukraine" which to be clear is a real red flag, obviously, but Labour are rapidly headed towards a sort of Farageism with NATO Characteristics which is hardly compelling
(Emphasis btw on "*explicit* impact on British politics"; there are clearly ongoing societal impacts arising from vaccine hesitancy and there are, quite substantial, indirect impacts from the radicalised and conspiracist spheres people found themselves in, but major parties don't talk about COVID)
Whereas it's still seemingly a feature of partisan scream-fighting in the US about how much of an impact different aspects of lockdown had and whether or not (it's not, fyi, it's obviously not) COVID was a lab leak. And yet, a lot of Liberal Yanks think our politics is more broken than theirs!
I follow very, very few US accounts but what few I do it's fascinating to see the parallels and differences between the UK and the US; for example, I would say COVID has functionally zero ongoing *explicit* impact on British politics, like the political mainstream isn't really looking back at it
Presidential Status Scale: Hot to Trot In Great Shape for His Age Nae Bad Engagements Cancelled for the Weekend as a Precaution Spot of Bother <--- You Are Here Rudy Giuliani Special That Prince Philip Photo, You Know the One Death of Stalin
Again, there was absolutely no need to take an evil decision, and yet this UK Government took an evil decision. It's just an evil government, I'm sorry, it's an evil government that has declared war on the LGBT community - my community - and I've never despised a government more than I do this one.
Obviously a party isn't going to say "we're only doing this thing because another party came up with the idea and then made us do it", but that doesn't change that fact that is often exactly what has happened, please try and fire up just a few more connections between parts of your brain and think
People say Bluesky is dying, but the Scottish part of it is absolutely flawlessly recreating the Twitter experience of seething cybernats incapable of understanding concepts like "when a party doesn't have a majority it has to implement other parties' policies but it'll still claim credit for them"
You don't get Mexican food as the near-nationwide secondary cuisine (in the same way Indian is in the UK) without undertaking the brutal imperialist wars that didn't just expand your borders to touch Mexico but annexed Mexican lands! (YOU LITERALLY HAVE A STATE CALLED NEW MEXICO I MEAN COME ON!)
Fundamentally the default Yank position is that the British Empire was the most evil thing in human history, whilst the process of expanding from 13 colonies on the Atlantic seaboard to 50 states stretching to and in the Pacific(without which the US would not be a melting pot) was at most a whoopsie
Chicken tikka masala pizza
Two Republican horror show death conspiracy theories in one weekend? Now you're just getting greedy
It's just bitterly ironic that a framework put in place after the dehumanising horrors of the Nazis is considered suitable for unpicking as a concession to today's far right. There is nothing redeeming about this government now. Just sickens me to my core.
Given Article 8 was, and as a result of the imbecilic Supreme Court ruling once again is, what the UK was in breach of in Goodwin v United Kingdom, no surprise that the member of the cabinet most responsible for ramping up hatred against trans people would be keen to see it changed. Just awful.
We have, after literally YEARS of saying we'll go to Ratho to climb, gone to Ratho to climb. "The Tower" is 30 metres tall, I have a mild fear of heights, I have never gone that high (my usual place is nowhere near) but I DID IT, I lived. Also did less terrifying stuff.
Yes I am aye banging this drum as well, it's outrageous - it wasn't about being nice and civil to fascists it was an explicit rejection of all they stood for!
Jo Cox was murdered by a man with a house full of neo-Nazi agitprop and this was then retconned into a vague narrative about social media abuse
SP26: A Tale of Two Civil Wars A summer of strife concludes with the Greens in a happier position than they might have expected, whilst the Conservatives plumb new depths of misery.
Conservatives having selected just enough candidates to make it a recurring bother for me to have to go into the BBS regional preview pieces and delete the ones that have defected
Results now out but anyway, a re-plug for the mini-series of my thoughts on some of what the Greens need to do to get serious. Honestly, this scratched the surface at some points; I've only just remembered I didn't even get to the lack of clear vision in a way I intended to!
You're all just setting yourselves up for heartbreak
I have finished the piece! 50/50 whether I wake up in the morning and read it again like "fuck yes I was on fire" or "sir, you may not drink alcohol but that doesn't make your post-midnight patter any better"
Me: I am very tired and I have made sure to get the last train home so I can go to bed Also me: I have been adding bits to this piece for BBS all day including on said train and I want to finish it (because I'm actually quite proud of it) before bed Allan it is 1.30am, come on
The thing is right I'm not even saying "none of these people should be in parliament", I am saying "maybe being Independent is right for them and trying to build a party around them is a terrible, terrible idea and you're going to fuck it with many young left wingers at the outset if you do"
Again, if the key touchstone for this new party is going to be Gaza, I ask "what niche is it filling that isn't already filled by the Greens", and if the answer is "well the Greens aren't transphobic enough" then I ask why you think bigotry is a selling point for the Left in the era of New Fascism
("Vision" is not necessarily on policy to be clear but more what policies will be taken forward and how will they be achieved; the party is getting better at getting councillors elected but the narrative of what Green groups are doing and achieving does not seem to be there imo)
(Jumping off point for that would be how I recall being told before standing in 2017 that the Glasgow Councillors were less a Green Group and more a handful of Independents who had happened to be elected under a party banner, and tbh, not convinced that's really changed: where's the direction!)
Results now out but anyway, a re-plug for the mini-series of my thoughts on some of what the Greens need to do to get serious. Honestly, this scratched the surface at some points; I've only just remembered I didn't even get to the lack of clear vision in a way I intended to!
I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)
MSP candidate ballots have previously taken place about 18 months pre-election but were later this time - I'm no longer involved so can't say for sure, but I would assume because we didn't actually know what the new Holyrood regional boundaries were going to be until around May
Separate ballots! What happened at the same time was the vote for all of the party's internal roles, e.g. committee conveners and members etc, because the Greens do their Co-Leaders every two years as part of that normal set of internal elections.
Elected Co-Leader of the Greens on Friday and on Monday peak fares on Scotrail are abolished, complete Greerism victory this weekend
Oh absolutely, it *should* have been but it needs effort to shift a culture of not really bothering and that effort didn't really happen
Many thoughts on this but part of it is, effectively, that since co-leader elections are theoretically held every two years regardless and are part of normal internal elections, they don't have the BIG MOMENT factor of other parties where they are not on a regular schedule and standalone affairs
Not to plug my own stuff right now but to do exactly that, I did note that Greens don't really DO exciting leadership elections; they need to get better at that. Low turnout is norm. medium.com/@allanfaulds...
To make sure he got 6.9% (ni.ce)
Current status: having a small cry watching @ross-greer.bsky.social and @gillianmacmsp.bsky.social take up leadership of the Scottish Greens. Who'd have thunk these three sleepy idiots at conference in 2016 would be party leaders and *checks notes* an annoyingly thorough elections expert?
Not my good charger dying, this feels especially spiteful given it's only a bit over a year old and I had to pay through the nose for it in Birmingham, after I'd gotten on the train at Glasgow and went to plug my phone in and realised I had left without, nothing lasts anymore does it
The allyship that Quakers have shown to queer people in the UK for, at least, my lifetime is genuinely powerful and moving. It was when they insisted that religious freedom meant the freedom to allow them to conduct same-sex marriages, and it remains so standing against transphobia. Top people.
When you're the only homosexual under 50 in Scotland not to have gone to Chappell Roan
Not even kidding, gone from the 3rd easiest majority to flip to the 4th, and the difference between them is only 0.3%; it'll be an objectively good thing for Holyrood if this is what helps keep Lennon there.
Monica Lennon: I will be the candidate for one of the most winnable constituencies in the country Labour winning the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse By-Election: No you won't Monica Lennon: Okay I'll take the next most winnable, thanks 😊
Me: I am going to have a lighter lunch even though Wednesday is treat lunch day, because I will be indulging so much this week A very lovely colleague who was apologetic after I came in for an in-person with them that ended up online last week: What if I gave you a delicious little cake
Screaming at the big 8000 on Russia, whatever else you can say (and you certainly rightly do) about Russia being an expansionist imperial power, having thousands of mosques does rather track with having annexed and incorporated dozens of autocthonous Muslim ethnic groups!
The Greens leadership contest ended up boring AF! The nasty was avoided and then as a result nobody cared anymore. Funny!
Once again the likelihood of the Conservatives ending up Holyrood's smallest party increases...
Once again tapping, following seeing Some Posts, the "I get why Yanks think King = Limitless Power, but actually it does not and in fact the most common current title for an unaccountable despot is simply President please stop shrieking about Trump acting like a King" sign
To paraphrase @dov.bsky.social, it's all very "a handful of Scots wanting to cosplay at English politics", just not convinced English folk being (justifiably) bigmad at Starmer (plus one disgruntled Green with a score to settle maybe?) is worth ratfucking the Actually Existing Scottish Left for
On new boundaries Greens are in fact notionally defending a seat in every region. The offer from another Left party then risks being "do a joint list with us and give up seats you could win, or we'll stand against you and neither of us get them"; that's hardly either appealing or politically wise.
This is the other aspect of why trying to launch a new Left party at Holyrood less than a year out is pretty doomed IMO: unlike pure FPTP where you can imagine mutually beneficial non-aggression pacts between the Greens and Corbyn/Sultana Party, that's just not a goer under AMS!
That doesn't work at Holyrood. It's not like Westminster where they can say "okay the Greens get a clear run at Huddersfield and Your at Ilford", the Greens can win (and in 2021 were only 115 votes away from) a seat in all 8 PR regions; only viable "pact" would be not standing & letting Greens solo!
This and social security are the two major areas where the SNP are unarguably to the left of Labour as well, which also makes the Tartan Tories patter pretty silly as well; it's not the Nats doing xenophobia and swingeing social security cuts that will impoverish people!
Love to be in the first few weeks after getting new glasses, where every little smudge must be wiped away immediately to preserve their beauty, compared to six months down the line when it's "oh when did that get there, oh, it's been there all day, oh well"
The third part is about culture, organisation and strategy. Professionalising is fine, actually; maybe conference should be less policy more campaigning; maybe campaigning should be effective; maybe for Holyrood it should follow agreed strategy and not branch freelancing? medium.com/@allanfaulds...
Genuinely if you are a Labour member and you're knocking doors for this, you should be ashamed of yourself. If you aren't screaming bloody murder about it to your local elected representatives, you should be ashamed of yourself. Did you really, really campaign to just capitulate to fascism?
Imagine having campaigned to put this spineless, queerphobic fascism enabler into Downing Street. Gods you'd be mortified wouldn't you
even register at all, but again, comes back to what I've said before: the only thing that such an outfit has to offer in a Scottish context that the Greens don't is being smug about not having been in government which, sure, fine, but that neither butters parsnips nor freezes rents
It would, purely on a political banter level, be extremely funny if the only real Scottish impact of the "we have to be more left wing and more pro-Gaza!" reaction against Labour was to shaft the most left wing and pro-Gaza party in the Scottish Parliament. I'm still not convinced that they will...
With all due respect to the good Professor, though this may be Daily Record editorialising, there's a nuanced between "take seats off" and "prevent from winning seats"; say "Your" takes 3% of the vote in a region, and a large part of that is from the Greens. That's not a Your Seat winning share.
I'll grant you that local identities shift over time but it's interesting as to what goes into that: when my first flatmate was studying art at Anniesland College's Balshagray Campus, that was "Partick" to us; VP isn't much further on, but it *IS* now across a massive, pain in the arse A road.
It will not surprise you that it is me replying to this, but Victoria Park was indeed in the pre-1912 Annexation Partick Burgh so could not unreasonably be said to be in the wider Partick area
Bonnie Cod Liver Bob
I'm sorry but it is simply very funny to still be going 'I'm a Labour activist, I know how Normal People think better than anyone else' in the era of Keir Starmer polling 20%. You are as much of a weird hobbyist minority as anyone else now!
Regional Man of Mystery, Perthshire Magnets
Adjacent vibe: was at a work pal's birthday last night, and a different ex-colleague was like "oh you should go talk to @moh-kohn.bsky.social" who I have never actually met before, who was also there, who then asked "oh you know Mags in person right?" Scottish politics man
Also I am posting from a tram at 11pm on Sunday and as much as it PAINS me to say, the Glasgow Subway could never
First time on the Leith tram: can confirm the tram now goes through Leith
I mean we're potentially doomed to a fash PM but that's from the same voting system you use for Congress and at least our shit version is like "City West", "County North", and not "District 12: one 37th of Austin and a snake out to the fuckin state border through the reddest counties possible"
