UK Government’s change of strategy for Labour general election success after dismal Leadbeater performance: have Starmer appeal to Tory voters?

Although Kim Leadbeater was successfully forced at the Batley and Spen by-election, like a magician makes an unsuspecting dupe pick a predetermined card,  it was a pyrrhic victory. A collapse in turnout meant that the Labour party, scraping over the finish line marginally ahead of the also underperforming Tories,  could only look like it was ailing rather than an ebullient thing that UK Government wants and needs it to appear as.

In fact, the interpretation that politicians and corporate-media have been giving the election since the result is confirmation of the author’s appraisal of the current political situation, which is this: UK Government is to have Labour form the next executive in Parliament, because the incumbent Tories are mired with Covid-19 authoritarianism, and will need to be replaced. The reason for this is as follows:

The British public has been suffering under a misapprehension, and contrary to the widely held belief that its living in a democracy means that it is free, has not in fact lived in a free country for at least a hundred years. The maintenance of the delusion, however, is crucial to the preservation of the order. And while the British public don’t notice the forest for the trees of their perpetual and disguised enslavement, they do and will notice – and perhaps become disgruntled by – phases of overt authoritarianism that take them to a new phase of illusory freedom. This “means (to an end)”, which risks permanently disrupting public outlook, needs to be seen to be dealt with, and declared over, so that in effect, the public doesn’t notice the “end”, which is the ratcheting up of the covert authoritarianism. And so, in this current case, there is a need to have the Tory party vacate the office of the executive branch, bearing responsibility for all the infringements upon civil liberties that “Covid-19 mitigation” legislation has involved.

Planned Labour victories in by-elections that take place before the next general election are intended to create a perception of growing Labour momentum – although the design has very much been confounded by low turnout. Low turnout in elections, as  the author called it some time ago, is a feature of the “Fake Brexit era (or epoch)” where vast swathes of the public cannot identify with any political party that is offered to them, or they understand their duty and responsibility to not participate in elections. Of course, the impact of low turnout, and even its existence, is something that politicians and corporate-media (being fronts for UK Government) cannot admit or draw too much attention to than is absolutely necessary. Thus, as politicians and corporate-media are deliberately and wilfully misunderstanding election results, we have entered an age where mainstream interpretation is completely disconnected from real circumstances.

The turnout again played a crucial role in the Batley and Spen by-election, and the reaction of the parliamentary Labour party leader, Kier Starmer, was unsurprisingly dishonest, even if it was correct according to the script of how UK Government wants this by-election theatre to progress. In this article, we’ll begin by discussing the turnout, and then the reaction of Starmer, and for demonstrating a point, the reaction of another party – and the whole issue of how Kim Leadbeater was forced is one for the next episode in the “Jo Cox periphery” series.

At 47.5% (source), the turnout at the Batley and Spen by-election in 2021 was the second lowest since 1983, when the seat was created. The lowest ever occurred in 2016 when Tracy Brabin was literally handed the seat as if it belonged to the Labour candidate by right by dint of Jo Cox’s apparent murder. In that election, turnout was 25.8% – and this is a figure comparable to what could have been this time.

It was feature of this election that the character George Galloway stood as a candidate independent of Labour, although supposedly appealing to Labour voters, and therefore splitting the vote. Indeed, Galloway has been blamed for Kim Leadbeater’s poor performance. On the contrary, he has certainly not been commended for introducing tension and inspiring a higher turnout than otherwise there might have been – which would have been the reason for his deployment. Consider this, reader: if Galloway had not stood, 8,264 people might not have participated (these were they who voted for him), and in that case, turnout would have been a paltry 37.1%*. Imagine, reader, how very dislocated interpretation by corporate-media and politicians would be if the by-election of the year – the one by which Starmer’s  future as leader of the Labour party depended (there is an element of truth to this, as will be discussed at the end of this piece) – drew no more many people out to vote than the one which handed Brabin the seat on a plate?

Leadbeater’s poor performance has been mentioned, but as yet there has been no explanation as to how bad it was. This puts it all into context: Leadbeater won 13,296 votes, while Brabin, in 2016 – in that gross exercise in advantage-taking in which there was no opposition to speak of – won 17,506. Indeed, Leadbeater’s tally was the lowest ever for a Labour candidate.

That the culprit was the turnout rather than any swing to the Tories (which is being a lauded in some interpretation by corporate-media and by politicians) is self-evident, as it should be noted that they have scored more in previous elections in Batley and Spen. At 12,973, the vote for a Tory candidate was the lowest since the 12,186 scored in 2005 (which had hitherto been the lowest ever). What does it really say about the Tory party if, when it is faced with the best chance to win Batley and Spen since 1992 – when the Tories actually held the seat – it can’t rustle up an extra 324 votes required that would have seen them close and overtake the tiny margin by which Labour was ahead?

In stark contrast to the interpretation of the type the reader is about to inspect, the situation being demonstrated here is the same one as seen before at the recent Hartlepool by-election: something called the too-tall-and-not-tall-enough Tory party problem at FBEL (see here), where the Tory party cannot win new support, and any appearance of its success or failure is purely dependent on participation in an election in support of Labour. In this by-election, the Labour party motivated just enough voters to prevent the non-growing Tory tree being the tallest in the wood. This is the reality. As pointed out before, the upshot will be a failure to have Labour look like a rampant beast about to romp home in a general election – which is the perception that the public needs to have if UK Government is going to rely on the idiot tendency to want to back a winner.

As for an examination of an example of interpretation, we are going to look at that which was written and said by Keir Starmer (source), and also written by Laura Kuenssberg, who is the BBC’s political editor, and it’s going to be done in a particular way so that the reader can easily see how the two are in lockstep in the promotion of the same talking points – which indicates the one script, serving UK Government’s plans, as source.

Both Starmer and Kuenssberg paid tribute to Leadbeater, because of course the fact that she was run to scrape a Labour result, with other more qualified people being passed over for the sake of her candidacy, has to be obscured.

Starmer said that Leadbeater had “incredible courage”, which must be to suggest that retracing Jo Cox’s steps, which in her case led to “death”, must be a difficult thing for Leadbeater to do – and of course is incredibly dishonest given that the Labour candidate in Batley and Spen was obviously specifically chosen to appeal to a sense of recognition of ownership of the seat, exploiting the fact that Leadbeater’s sister had had an apparent political and actual life (apparently) cut short. Kuenssberg said that Leadbeater was a “standout candidate” – which is gaslighting that should be famous. As suggested before, there will be fuller discussion of Leadbeater’s “Mr Smith in Washington” nature in another article.

Both Starmer and Kuenssberg indicated that the result was a return to normal politics – and when they talk about this, reader, they don’t mean that the abnormal politics are the sort of the Fake Brexit epoch. They are talking about an anomaly of circumstances that happened in the course of the fake pandemic which they use to explain the Labour loss in the Hartlepool by-election – which was, according to the supposed narrative of Labour’s rise into government, a blip. Using the phrase “Labour is coming home”, was a crude attempt by Starmer to identify the win at Batley and Spen as something that everybody was hoping for after a period of disappointment with a reference to a song associated with the England Football Association’s team at a time of a win against supposed rivals Germany. It is a reference that would have significance to those great many with arrested development in the British general public.

Of course, Starmer was more overt than all that:

As we emerge from restrictions, there is now a real opportunity to harness the solidarity and national spirit that we’ve seen over the last year.

Here again, at more length, is the expression of an idea that Labour victory is something that everybody wants, and a Labour executive branch would be an extension of the repercussions of the authoritarianism (and not the authoritarianism itself – which belongs to the Tories). Reader, it should be perfectly obvious to you without any further assistance from the author as to how this precisely fits the intent of UK Government as it has in these pages been explained.

As for Kuenssberg in this respect, her piece openly asked the question “is politics starting to return to normal?”. Obviously the question could be answered by pointing to the times when Mike Wood was winning Batley and Spen for Labour with 23,213 votes (on one occasion), and with a four to five thousand vote lead. However, this is not the normal Kuenssberg means, because Mi7 must understand the situation as well as any department of UK Government. The normal that Kuenssberg means is a situation where the Tories don’t get any credit for public health, which of course is a political football all part and parcel of the fake left-right divide:

Boris Johnson and his ministers have got used to parading the undoubted success of the UK’s vaccine programme as an answer to almost every claim made against them.

But there’s a sense the political power of that, and the faith many voters have wanted to place in the government during the pandemic, have started to fade.

This is interesting again, because this is talking about offsetting what is supposedly good (the “vaccine” – in the BBC’s eyes) against what is bad (which is unmentioned, but referred to with the use of the word “faith”) to come out of the situation engineered by the hoaxed pandemic [i.e. faith that the Tory executive’s (apparent) governance has been for the good].

While on the topic of the Tories, both Starmer and Kuenssberg wanted to make a point about voters actually switching to Labour from the Tories, which is Orwellian given what has been presented above. Starmer put Leadbeater’s victory down to an idea that “former Tory voters voted for her”. Keunssberg wrote the following:

Labour insiders are heartened too by how some voters who chose the Tories in 2019, or in the local elections a couple of months ago, switched to them, even allowing the party to catch up with the Conservatives in some wards where they had come third in May.

This is entirely meaningless in the context of mass abandonment of voters from both parties – which is what happened. Indeed, it is the most optimistic interpretation of election results that the author has probably ever seen – “optimistic”, of course, being used in this sense to mean dishonest. However, what Starmer and Keunssberg both are doing is telling their audience that Tory voters are switching to Labour, which is what UK Government obviously needs the public to believe.

In both the BBC pieces that cover Starmer’s comments and carry Keunssberg own assertions, there is mention made of how the Batley and Spen result would be cause for relief to Starmer who, as the former article states, “has been under pressure following recent election defeats for his party”.

Kuennsberg says:

And the result has also saved Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer from what would have been, at the very least, a weekend of public criticism and concerns, and at the worst, could have boiled over into an attempt to oust him.

Corporate-media has to talk about relief for Starmer because, or so it would seem, UK Government might have been panicking about the possibility that Starmer could not motivate voters like it had obviously hoped – and this would be the source of all the talk about leadership challenges ahead of Batley and Spen. Indeed, military intelligence’s direct mouthpiece (as reckoned by the author), The Times, was up to its famous old tricks when, possibly fearing a Labour defeat, it published a story at just-gone-midnight on July 1st – the day of the by-election itself – in which it claimed:

Supporters of Angela Rayner are preparing for her to challenge Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership of Labour if the party loses the by-election in Batley & Spen today.

By the early morning, The Express, which had been inspecting Rayner’s twitter output which suggested that The Times story was wrong,  had published this:

ANGELA RAYNER has denied any knowledge that her supporters are preparing a leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer should he lose the upcoming Batley and Spen by-election today.

So, of course, to recover from this flap, there must be “it’s all alright now” soothing noises made – but the idea that we are expected to think that the Batley and Spen result was a let-off for Starmer is clear proof that this by-election was all about telegraphing the simple message of a Labour win.

In all seriousness, reader, how would the very bad result for Labour at Batley and Spen make anyone who had been disgruntled and wanted to oust Starmer suddenly see everything in a new light so that a challenge against him was certain not to happen? If there is no challenge now, it means there never was one. The same problem exists after the Batley and Spen by-election as did before – the failure to have once-Labour voters participate. But here’s the crucial rub, reader. Because this problem, which is in fact the problem of low turnout, is not to be acknowledged, there isn’t a reason in the corporate-media asserted reality to challenge Starmer. Moreover, there is no challenge to Starmer until UK Government wants one – and it doesn’t want one, and perhaps even thinks it doesn’t need one, because it hopes (as is suggested if one pays close enough attention) that Starmer can just steal those people who do vote, but vote Tory, so that the turnout no longer affects the result.

Well of course, this would be a huge failure for UK Government, and the cause of great weakness which it would hope won’t be taken advantage of – meaning, where people would realise the fact that MPs and executive branches that are elected by tiny minorities are not legitimate, and act to take power back to themselves. Granted, UK Government does rely on Britons being amongst the dumbest people that ever drew breath (so that the realisation required will never happen), but the remedy to that, which didn’t exist these last hundred years, is now here.

* Changed from 27.6%, 4th July, after the discovery of a miscalculation.