votie totie

Here is the story of the UK election is microcosm. My sister lives in Stroud in Gloucestershire about halfway between leafy Cheltenham [GCHQ] and industrial, University-town Bristol. Stroud has a peculiar mix of people: tree-huggers and poets (Laurie Lee); it used to be a mill-town; bankers who commute to London; shop-keepers who sell stuff; retirees who collect the pension and spend it locally. Dau.I also lived there for four years until she repatriated herself  6 months ago. There is therefore a bit of an edge between traditional Labour voters and those who naturally vote Conservative. In the 2015 election, the big issue was Brexit but also the old Left/Right ideals that have engaged voters since the Great Reform Bill of 1932. In 2015, the Conservative candidate won; this time round UKIP was irrelevant (having achieved its one-issue manifesto) and Labour, 5,000 votes behind, really had to up its game if it was to prevail against the Poll-ratings when the election was called.

Party	2015	2017	Diff
Labour/Coop	22947	29994	+9.30%
Con	27813	29307	+0.20%
LibDem	2086	2053	-0.20%
Green	2779	1423	-2.30%
UKIP	4848	1039	-6.30%
Voters	60819	63816	+1.50%

3,000 more people came out of the woodwork in 2017, and presumably many of those were The Youth voting for the first time. In Stroud UKIP people seem to have transferred mostly to the Labour guy and I guess many of the Greens turned Red. The Sister would be a natural Green but voted tactically for the Labour candidate. But she didn't want to see her first preference go unrecorded so she signed onto SwapMyVote and agreed to vote Labour IF a stranger in another constituency voted Green.  Her vote for Green wasn't sufficient to get a second Green MP over the line. SwapMyVote is a child of the social media age - how it works - but serves as a stop-gap until the UK really embraces political diversity.  A bit more than a stop-gap, maybe; it serves as a way of showing that there is a real desire for wider platforms in politics. The alternative is to not vote at all because it is nall a waste of time and deeply alienating and depressing that your vote - as a green, as a gay, as an actor, as a separatist, as a republican, as an immigrant - counts for nothing which you care about.

Finally, some commentary on the Results. "Jonathan Pie" longer version starring Afshin Rattansi. Labour apparatchik Alastair Campbell on why embracing the DUP to shore up a minority government is politically insane [go to 2.22 mins] w.r.t. the Northern Ireland peace process.