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Total political bloodbath in the UK today, where the current governing Labour party led by Keir Starmer has been decimated in the local elections.
For those who do not know, the local elections are local council elections in England, while they are local parliament elections in Wales and Scotland.
Labour loses 1267 local council seats across England, which more than halves the party, it loses 35 seats in the Welsh parliament (Senedd Cymru) and 1 seat in the Scottish parliament.
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That's a stark reminder of how quickly public sentiment can shift when people feel disconnected from their government. Across the pond, Americans are grappling with similar frustrations about representation and accountability. Maybe the real lesson here is that democracy works best when citizens have meaningful ways to shape the system itself, not just choose between predetermined options within it.
@randahl importantly it means for the first time the biggest party in 3 out of the 4 countries in the UK are the local independence parties who want to ditch England and reverse Brexit.
@randahl not all council seats were contested this week, it's a rolling election where about 25% are contested each time.
In this case it's bad for Labour, but they've lost about a quarter, not a half, and Reform are growing but not as big as the headlines make out.
Definitely need to do more to get rid of mini-Trump, but there are signs that Reform is tainted because they've failed to deliver where they won last time. Their doge didn't find anything to cut.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_make-up_of_local_councils_in_the_United_Kingdom
@craignicol I can be wrong, but me writing about the halving of labour is based on the graphic shown at the top of the page here:
@randahl yeah, it's accurate in terms of council seats that were up for election - less than a third of all seats, but overall, Reform still only have about 10%-15% of seats, behind Labour and Tory, and they might still be in 4th when the count finishes
@craignicol is it rolling elections inside in each local council (some of their seats are up), or is it rolling in the sense that only some councils have elections?
Voters have to a wide extent moved on to the new right-wing populist party Reform UK, led by the British Donald Trump: Nigel Farage. He contributed to sending the UK economy off the cliff with Brexit, before his children got German passports so they can still benefit from the EU.
My heart bleeds for clever British voters who already know, that Farage will deliver nothing but division.
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@randahl The Labour govt can adopt PR which would scupper Reform's chances of getting into govt. It currently seems unlikely to do so, but this may change. Farage & co precipitating a break-up or federalisation the UK may not be a bad thing. Scotland and Wales would likely rejoin the EU. Reunified Ireland wouldn't need to.
@randahl I think the Scots may reform UK by saying bye bye and reunite with EU
@randahl The thing to keep in mind is that Reform received about 25% of the votes and we have multiple parties in the election. The perversity of first past the post can lead to weird non proportional outcomes.
@alex_p_roe agreed. And we will see the same hacking of democracy in the US midterms.
JFC not good
@randahl Wee typo - it’s Wales not Whales 🙂
@alex_p_roe thank you very much for catching that. I have updated the post.
@randahl No problem - will now delete my toot 🙂
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