Labour’s by-election ‘victories’: when is Starmer going to admit the country doesn’t actually like him?

The Labour Party won both by-elections on Thursday 15 February, overturning Tory majorities in Wellingborough and Kingswood. Leader Keir Starmer has been celebrating, hailing the results as a sign the UK is “crying out for change”. Of course, Labour’s by-election results were a millions miles away from that. In fact, they show the public has all but given up on politics. Not that Starmer seemed to have noticed – as Labour slipped further down the rabbit hole of delusion and preposterous PR.

By-elections show UK ‘crying out for change’ – according to Starmer

First, to Wellingborough. As BBC News reported:

Labour’s Gen Kitchen, a former London councillor who works in the charity sector and grew up in Northamptonshire, secured a comfortable majority of 6,436.

Meanwhile, the Tories suffered their biggest drop in vote share in any by-election since at least the Second World War.

Ms Kitchen said: “The people of Wellingborough have spoken for Britain. This is a stunning victory for the Labour Party.”

Next, to Kingswood. As BBC News also reported:

Labour secured a majority of 2,501 over Tory candidate Sam Bromiley in the South Gloucestershire seat of Kingswood, near Bristol.

In his victory speech Damien Egan, who resigned as mayor of Lewisham in London to fight the seat where he grew up, said 14 years of a Conservative government had “sucked the hope out of our country”

The constituency had been held by former Tory MP Mr Skidmore since 2010, until he quit over the government’s climate policies.

Reacting to the results, BBC News reported Starmer said:

Labour leader Sir Keir said the country was “crying out for change”, telling BBC Breakfast his party was “a different party” to what it had been in 2019. He said voters “can see that we’ve got the answers to their problems.”

But he added: “There is always more work to do.” He said he had told his team to “fight like we’re five points behind”.

“As every football fan knows, you don’t win the league by a good result in February,” he said.

If you believe the results show the UK is “crying out for change” in the form of Labour, then you’ll believe anything.

Labour: no-one cares about you

Turnout in both by-elections was pretty dire:

• In Kingswood, 37% of the electorate voted
• In Wellingborough, 38% of the electorate voted.

Of course, Wellingborough’s new Labour MP Kitchen believes 38% of the electorate turning up to vote shows them ‘speaking for Britain’.

Her statement would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic and insulting to her constituents. This is because, when you look at what percentage of the total electorate voted for Labour, these two by-election results look very different:

• In Wellingborough, 17.44% of the electorate voted for Labour.
• In Kingswood, 16.65% of the electorate voted for Labour.

Of course, when you parachute Labour politicians from other areas into seats the public will rightly be suspicious, even if both candidates did ‘grow up’ in their respective constituencies. Egan’s track record as Lewisham mayor was hardly good – with him looking like a careerist from the off.

In reality, both results show that politicians and the state have now utterly disenfranchised huge swathes of the public from our so-called ‘democracy’. However, this has been building for some time.

Starmer: helping to disenfranchise the poorest people from our sham democracy

It was a similar story in the Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth by-elections last October, and the Hartlepool by-election in 2021. Labour lost it, but most people didn’t bother voting, anyway: the turnout was 42.6%.

It was the same in Wakefield in 2022, where Labour won but turnout was a dire 39.5%. Wellingborough is particularly reflective of both these other results – as the three constituencies all have higher deprivation scores than the England average. That is, Labour (and politics generally) are failing to convince the poorest people it’s worth voting at all.

As the Canary wrote of 2022’s Wakefield by-election result:

Ultimately the Wakefield by-election is useless as a public opinion gauge. Because the turnout was just 39.5% – way down on the general election. This is much like 2021’s Batley and Spen by-election, where Labour spun-it as some sort of victory when turnout was less than 50%. Both constituencies have higher rates of poverty than other parts of England. Hartlepool was a similar story: poverty met a by-election and the result was a turnout of less than 50%.

Our systems of politics and democracy, and their proponents, disenfranchise the poorest people. So much so, that they rightly feel voting will change nothing. The difference in a richer area, like Tiverton and Honiton, is clear. Its by-election saw a 52% turnout and the Lib Dems got in – while the constituency has much lower rates of deprivation.

So, no – the Wakefield election wasn’t a victory for Labour. It was a victory for the political and media class, who’ve maintained the status quo. And it’s all thanks to their disenfranchisement of the poorest people.

Labour’s Wellingborough and Kingswood by-election victories haven’t changed any of that – in fact, they’ve likely compounded the issues. If Starmer and his cronies weren’t such careerist charlatans, they’d admit this and try to engage with missing voters. Instead, they’ve sunk further into a centre-right, delusional abyss – while the rest of us suffer.

Featured image via BBC News – screengrab