In 1997 we were living through the ‘Cool Britannia’ era. Oasis topped the charts, Britishness wasn’t quite as embarrassing, and I vaguely remember it being a damn sight warmer than what it is tonight.
Skip forward to 2024, and Labour’s thumping election victory promises no more than a continuation of the cruel Britannia policies of the past fourteen years of Conservative social murder.
Heidi Alexander: from Swindon, to London, and back again
The first big scalp of the night happened about eight streets away from me, just over the constituency border in Swindon South, with Tory Robert Buckland losing the seat he has held since 2010 to Labour’s Heidi Alexander with a swing of 16.5%
The fact the ‘moderate’ Tory Buckland sits just slightly to the left of the Blairite devotee Alexander isn’t lost on me, even at 1am, and in dire need of someone getting up and making me a coffee to avoid the possibility of me waking up with the impression of a Jeremy Corbyn coaster on my forehead.
“Swindon girl” Alexander — who was in the same school year as me — was first elected MP for Lewisham East in 2010 and was appointed shadow secretary of state for health by Jeremy Corbyn in an attempt to bring together all wings of the Labour Party when he became leader on that glorious day in September 2015.
Worryingly, Alexander is far from the worst of the Blairites that the Labour Party has to offer.
As the likely results and the confirmed results are coming in we can see a clear pattern forming. This wasn’t really a stunning Labour win but a catastrophic, potentially terminal defeat for the Tories.
Slippery Starmer shrinks the vote share
There really doesn’t seem to be any rousing endorsement of Starmer’s Labour, which is hardly surprising considering Keir Starmer has the affability of a chicken carcass.
Labour HQ has sent out the normal suspects — Mandelson, Lammy, Khan and the like — on a victory lap of the media studios, each parroting the same lines about how “Keir” had to change the Labour Party of Corbyn to “earn the trust” of voters.
And by god, they’re right. Slippery Starmer has changed it so much from the Corbyn-led Labour Party of 2017 he’s seemingly managed to shrink the overall vote share!
Nice work that, Keith.
Any other Labour leader than Starmer would finish at least 20 points clear of the Tories tonight, right?
It’s still pretty early on the grand scheme of things. Labour could well beat the Tories by 20 points, 30 points, or even 40. But the fact remains: this new, New Labour government “on steroids” will still be a corrupt poor-hating entity no matter how much the Starmer sheeple tell us, “but at least they’re not the Tories”.
Starmer succeeded in bringing the billionaire media on side some time before the election campaign got underway, which is a far-cry from just over four years ago when the lying fraud was refusing to talk with Murdoch’s S*n.
Managing the media’s demands and expectations is something only a right-wing establishment lickspittle can ever achieve. History is the judge of this, not me.
All eyes on Islington North
They’ll now expect Starmer to behave like a Tory prime minister because their continued support carries a fucking hefty price tag. This isn’t an issue for the Labour leader because he doesn’t have a genuine left-wing bone in his body.
Those ten false pledges that hoisted Starmer to the top of the Labour Party were designed to capture the votes of an overwhelmingly left-wing membership.
Starmer’s sudden shift from supporting Labour’s 2017 Brexit position to being a key proponent of the People’s Vote campaign was designed to capture the support of an overwhelmingly remain-voting membership.
The chameleon Starmer has spent an entire political career saying one thing and doing another, and this is bound to appeal to Tory voters who seem to have a fetish for swallowing undiluted bullshit from anyone with a slightly posh accent.
Featured image via Rachael Swindon
This post was originally published on Canary.