DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

i am having this weird difficulty understanding stats today, i keep seeing tables showing the Labour party (whatever that is) winning more local council seats than anybody else, but right next to these tables there's a load of headlines about how UKIP have destroyed all other political parties and are the runaway success story of yesterday's elections

that's before i ponder what any of this has to do with the business of running local government

It feels like the "UKIP fox is in the Westminster hen house", Nigel Farage has told reporters, after his party won large gains in England's local elections

i mean okay, i know, meaningless fucking farce to lull idiots into a sense of participation, but they're not even pretending any more, this was a vote about WHO PEOPLE WANT TO FIX THEIR FUCKING PAVEMENTS FFS

i am having this weird difficulty understanding stats today, i keep seeing tables showing the Labour party (whatever that is) winning more local council seats than anybody else, but right next to these tables there's a load of headlines about how UKIP have destroyed all other political parties and are the runaway success story of yesterday's elections

glad i'm not the only one perplexed by this.

in the absence of anyone in media caring about the European and local arenas as anything other than midterm reports on real politics this is what you get imo

well yeah precisely, the gamification(?), showbizification(?) of the serious business of making real serious decisions about how the country is governed isn't even pretending to be anything other than sports entertainment for misanthrope spods now

Labour and UKIP have added roughly the same number of seats so far. The idea is that at this stage, with an unpopular government, Labour should be doing much better than they are but their gains are being limited by councils moving from Tory to No Overall Control, partly thanks to UKIP, rather than from Tory to Labour.

But obviously they wouldn't have been able to do this well had the press not dedicated as much time to Farage as every other leader put together.

the stats on the ground are out of all proportion to the tone of some of the headlines, including the BBC's earlier today

a quick Google now looks like a degree of reining back is happening

the local government system is beyond fucked imo

After all that hype, the Lib Dems have ended up with more council seats than Uk*p. All that Farrago hype and hogwash has not worked. So why are the media pretending that it has? Didn’t they learn anything from what happened with Mitt Romney in 2012?

It really does make me feel as if there should be a ten-year moratorium on newspapers and “news” in all forms of media because they are distorting the society in which we are expected to live. I am seriously contemplating whether I should continue living in a country which supposedly doesn’t want me in it. That’s all I hear from the radio, the TV; “foreigners coming in.” And yet this doesn’t remotely relate to what is actually happening. But it distorts the way people are regarded and treated.

Is this always going to be the way with the media – the squeakiest wheel gets the oil, a Good Fucking Story until humanity is wiped out, all that’s worthy of being said is fucking clickbait? Because it’s wearying and stressful, and I need neither of these things in my life. Unless the media really is only run by rich ultra-right wing fuckwits who just want everywhere to be North Korea forever.

xpost yeah, even the guardian's reporting a big backlash against miliband, but the stats say otherwise. Ukip aren't even doing that well. And Greens are gaining a little bit of ground it's nice to see.

I had the same reaction this morning - obviously depressing UKIP have gained so many seats, but it's not that many compared to the hype. My borough's results aren't in yet but neighbouring boroughs all have swings to Labour, Haringey gave the Lib Dems a massive kicking.

OK, Uk*p might do a little better in the Euro elections but tbh I can’t see them getting a landslide of votes, certainly nowhere near as many as they were expecting.

Is this always going to be the way with the media – the squeakiest wheel gets the oil, a Good Fucking Story until humanity is wiped out, all that’s worthy of being said is fucking clickbait? Because it’s wearying and stressful, and I need neither of these things in my life. Unless the media really is only run by rich ultra-right wing fuckwits who just want everywhere to be North Korea forever.

yes.

even the guardian's reporting a big backlash against miliband

'even' the guardian seems wrong there- guardian is usually the first to try and undermine Miliband- all the main politics journos there are hardcore Blairite ultras. Also partly why they run with the opinion polling firm that consistently produces labour poll ratings lower than elsewhere.

They're also responding to the Times story (gee, why would a NewsInt paper want to do down Miliband?!?) so it's meta bullshit.

There is a larger group of people dissatisfied with the two main parties who want things to head a little bit left of Labour '97-'10, not just Political Twitter, and this is not reflected in the coverage. Why, when there is rightward pressure/demagoguery, do we get this wall to wall coverage, but if the same thing is happening on the left eg Labour's fall in majority as the party headed to the right, it's NEVER explored?

I was expecting the Greens to do a little better this time, with a boost from disaffected LD and Labour voters, but there's no sign of that yet.

How much coverage do the Greens get? I mean, I voted for the one available Green councillor in Greenwich, but I'm special. Marcello OTM up there. Fuck the media

I also voted for the independent candidate without knowing anything about him, though, so maybe I shd be disregarded as lunatic

We only had 1 green as well. I voted for them, the Labour councillor who turned up to our street party last year and some random TUSC candidate cos sure why not.

i went green all the way this time. most of my friends who cared to tell me did so too. but yeah, the greens get seriously fuck all coverage, especially compared to Ukip and that seems massively unfair.

There is a story about how UKIP have gone from complete irrelevance in local politics - in 2011 they won 7 seats - but they did pretty well in last year's elections too (without a Euro vote to help their brand) so none of today's results should be that much of a surprise unless they win control of a council somewhere.

xxp I think we're both in Waltham Forest CP? I too voted for the single Green candidate plus a couple of the Labour guys. Labour have actually been fairly assiduous at canvassing etc. round my way.

Independent Hamsa Yusuf is an accountant and football coach. He says he can use his business knowledge to benefit of area #WRhustings
Independent Hamsa Yusuf says "no to council tax rises" and would invite experts to scrutinise council finances #WRhustings
Independent Hamsa Yusuf wants "pro-business environment" by easing parking rules and providing training #WRhustings
Independent Hamsa Yusuf wants more affordable housing and a "a new free bridge in our borough against time-wasting traffic" #WRhustings

lol ok I voted for this guy a priori because he was an independent candidate

could have been worse, I suppose. but voting for him AND the Greens is kinda oxymoronic :D

eh well. I voted Europeans Party in the Europe elections, so not like I'm taking any of it very seriously #allez

I liked the English Democrats strapline that said 'I am English, not British, not EUropean', which looked very much like a typo.

i couldn't vote for them, their policy on the deposition of Richard II was a joke

Yep Neil. High St ward. There's been a lot of allegations of corruption and exploitation (he is apparently a slumlord) around one of the Labour councillors in my ward but I haven't heard anything bad about the one I voted for, apart from the fact she's done nothing about the corrupt one I guess.

John Harris is enjoying himself:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/23/ukip-success-local-elections-two-party-system-crisis

xp I'm in Markhouse ward. Annoyingly only 1 of the 3 Labour councillors appeared to live locally, of the other two one of them lives in Chingford, the other in E10. Was glad to be able to vote Green though.

What a ghastly fucking doughnut Harris is.

"the fact that that leftie hooray-word "community" can actually have chewy connotations" - WTF does that even mean? "Community" is nothing but a "leftie hooray-word" now, is it? I say! Crikey!

And, of course, his coup de theatre:
I am writing this piece in Great Yarmouth, where the borough council count has yet to start
I am writing this piece in Great Yarmouth, where the borough council count has yet to start
I am writing this piece in Great Yarmouth, where the borough council count has yet to start
I am writing this piece in Great Yarmouth, where the borough council count has yet to start
I am writing this piece in Great Yarmouth, where the borough council count has yet to start
I am writing this piece in Great Yarmouth, where the borough council count has yet to start
I am writing this piece in Great Yarmouth, where the borough council count has yet to start

Maybe hold off saying anything until the borough council count has been DONE, you useless cockpunnet?

on my side of politics, the most difficult stuff to process is about things from which the left tends to avert its eyes: notions of identity and belonging, anxiety about accelerated change and the fact that that leftie hooray-word "community" can actually have chewy connotations. Crudely put, when you meet a Labour-Ukip switcher who expresses worries about immigration, you can't simply reduce what they say to falling wages and the lack of social housing.

lol like Harris has a problem with white bread traditionalism

Oh, the Guardian, day by day you make it that much more difficult for me to want to spend money on you. I think you'll have to treat this as a final warning.

Labour hold Waltham Forest, but "UKIP make inroads in Chingford", which is of course shocks nobody.

Tebbit country up there innit

the Chingford Skinhead

Yeah, IDS is their MP.

My green candidate came in 6th. The Lib Dems have lost all their seats across the borough.

that John Harris article... OMFG what's going on there?

He's essentially set himself up as the chronicler of the disaffected white working class over the last few years and takes great pleasure in wringing article after article out of trudging around small towns tacitly agreeing with embittered racists.

Which is not to say that embittered racists in small towns don't have a range of legitimate issues to gripe about, but he takes very little interest in getting beyond the surface.

There’s no point even arguing with him in the comments section because he’ll just say “ho hum go somewhere else if you want leftie propaganda” which is basically code for Guardian readers to take their custom elsewhere and I expect quite a few will do so. I hope that the loss of the paper’s heartland readership will be compensated for by the increase in number of 20-35-yr-old White Meat cast member lookalikes they obviously want to read the paper instead.

all the main politics journos there are hardcore Blairite ultras. Also partly why they run with the opinion polling firm that consistently produces labour poll ratings lower than elsewhere.

??? It's daft to say the Guardian thinks x or y because most of its columnists disagree with each other. What does Polly Toynbee have in common with Seumas Milne? Or Michael White with Owen Jones?

Commentators like Milne, Jones and Toynbee don't have the same level of overall influence on news reporting as White or Wintour, though, do they?

well, only Michael White is relevant there. Talking about the main Westminster beat correspondents, him, Martin Kettle, Patrick Wintour. Yeah, they give those others space on the comments, but the slant of the paper's political news reporting is plainly anti-Miliband.

Apart from the fact that their writing uniformly bores the shit out of me, I really don't give a stuff. To me they all look like members of the same back-slapping club. It doesn't matter if they're not. That's the impression readers get. They speak to and for each other and maybe to affluent 61-year-old flower shop owners in Keswick. Not to "us."

http://i1.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article7166596.ece/alternates/s2197/JS37474332.jpg

just leaving this here

Not been a good week for the Greens in Bristol as they are exposed to be as greedy and corrupt as every other party:

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Twitter-fury-pound-32k-year-Bristol-Assistant/story-21117356-detail/story.html

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Hoyt-centre-storm-buying-Bristol-council-house/story-21115005-detail/story.html

Is homeopathy and other alternative therapies making up a sizeable chunk of the NHS still Green policy on Health, or did they quietly drop it after the last election after seeing Jeremy Hunt accused of the same?

i regret nothing

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/75072000/jpg/_75072719_express24.jpg

Good to see The Times dedicating their front page to the big story of the day - that supermarket bosses sometimes ignore best before days on the food they eat. The local elections get a mention on page 4.

oh hey the guy funnelling all the council money into obscure somali organisations and making it a place thats always on panarama and how to get a council house tv shows got voted back in here in tower hamlets. woo.

not surprising considering at the primary school i went to vote at had like 40 (no joke) of his supporters outside and seemingly no-one from any other party.

Is homeopathy and other alternative therapies making up a sizeable chunk of the NHS still Green policy on Health, or did they quietly drop it after the last election after seeing Jeremy Hunt accused of the same?

But, I haven't been able to find much on it since with some very cursory searching and I don't think it was mentioned in the bumf I got through the letterbox.