Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 4,078
Wonderful news..
thank you mr frump for making green issues fashionable
Labour’s prospects for May’s elections plunged even lower last night. A Green party that once seemed flaky will now often look like the safer anti-Reform vote if it can field more pitch-perfect candidates like Hannah Spencer: plumber, councillor, all-round good sort. Her honeyed victory words will soften many a Labour voter’s heart. She is a leftist without the bilious fist-shaking of the old sectarian socialists: “Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry … I think that absolutely everybody should get a nice life.” Nice. Byelections are often no guide to a general election three years away, but the trouncing of Farage may make this one historic.
Since Zack Polanski was elected Green leader last summer, the party’s membership has soared from about 60,000 to nearly 200,000. It has risen rapidly in the polls. But until last night, Polanski hadn’t faced a serious electoral test. Some old hands worried that while YouGov surveys come and go, actual wins are harder. Those cynics have now been silenced. The party has shown its surge isn’t just a bubble of online vibes. It can turn out support at the polling booth.
Of course much of the credit for this stunning victory – the Greens’ first ever win in a parliamentary byelection – goes to Polanski, who understood that the party needed to be more willing to embrace controversy, and stepped firmly into the large space Starmer left to Labour’s left. Much of it goes to the candidate – now MP – Hannah Spencer, almost universally known as “Hannah the plumber”, whose sense of humour, down-to-earth charisma and knack for explaining radical ideas like they’re common sense won her thousands of fans within hours of being selected.
More than either of them, though, this campaign was won by thousands of activists – Green members from across Greater Manchester and right across the UK (I know of activists who went there from Shetland and Northern Ireland) who travelled to the constituency because they saw this byelection as a battle for the country’s soul – and they wanted to play their part. The Greens said they had 2,000 people out campaigning yesterday, while Reform and Labour claimed 1,000 each. Those are extraordinary numbers and the fact that the party had the logistical capacity to effectively target that energy shows that it’s managed to turn its membership surge into an effective machine.
Most of all, though, this Green victory should be credited to the voters of Gorton and Denton. They rejected the toxic rhetoric of Matt Goodwin and Reform, and Labour’s outright lies. They stood firm through a week of smears, which included claims that Polanski plans to turn our playgrounds into crack dens and daughters into sex workers. And they didn’t wince. They understood what was going on – that the smear machine was just getting going. And that, as voters, the best thing to do is ignore it.
www.theguardian.com
comrade stalin
moscow
thank you mr frump for making green issues fashionable
Labour’s prospects for May’s elections plunged even lower last night. A Green party that once seemed flaky will now often look like the safer anti-Reform vote if it can field more pitch-perfect candidates like Hannah Spencer: plumber, councillor, all-round good sort. Her honeyed victory words will soften many a Labour voter’s heart. She is a leftist without the bilious fist-shaking of the old sectarian socialists: “Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry … I think that absolutely everybody should get a nice life.” Nice. Byelections are often no guide to a general election three years away, but the trouncing of Farage may make this one historic.
Since Zack Polanski was elected Green leader last summer, the party’s membership has soared from about 60,000 to nearly 200,000. It has risen rapidly in the polls. But until last night, Polanski hadn’t faced a serious electoral test. Some old hands worried that while YouGov surveys come and go, actual wins are harder. Those cynics have now been silenced. The party has shown its surge isn’t just a bubble of online vibes. It can turn out support at the polling booth.
Of course much of the credit for this stunning victory – the Greens’ first ever win in a parliamentary byelection – goes to Polanski, who understood that the party needed to be more willing to embrace controversy, and stepped firmly into the large space Starmer left to Labour’s left. Much of it goes to the candidate – now MP – Hannah Spencer, almost universally known as “Hannah the plumber”, whose sense of humour, down-to-earth charisma and knack for explaining radical ideas like they’re common sense won her thousands of fans within hours of being selected.
More than either of them, though, this campaign was won by thousands of activists – Green members from across Greater Manchester and right across the UK (I know of activists who went there from Shetland and Northern Ireland) who travelled to the constituency because they saw this byelection as a battle for the country’s soul – and they wanted to play their part. The Greens said they had 2,000 people out campaigning yesterday, while Reform and Labour claimed 1,000 each. Those are extraordinary numbers and the fact that the party had the logistical capacity to effectively target that energy shows that it’s managed to turn its membership surge into an effective machine.
Most of all, though, this Green victory should be credited to the voters of Gorton and Denton. They rejected the toxic rhetoric of Matt Goodwin and Reform, and Labour’s outright lies. They stood firm through a week of smears, which included claims that Polanski plans to turn our playgrounds into crack dens and daughters into sex workers. And they didn’t wince. They understood what was going on – that the smear machine was just getting going. And that, as voters, the best thing to do is ignore it.
What does the Greens’ victory in Gorton and Denton mean for the future of British politics? Our panel responds
Greens first, Reform second, Labour trailing – and the Tories losing their deposit. This felt like a rejection of the status quo
comrade stalin
moscow
