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Westminster has failed Selby North Yorkshire is quaking with political discord

“Keir Mather delivers his campaign video with the robotic flair of a sixth-former running for headboy” (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

“Keir Mather delivers his campaign video with the robotic flair of a sixth-former running for headboy” (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)


July 18, 2023   6 mins

It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon in North Yorkshire, and Rishi Sunak is trying to reassure the North Yorkshire Conservative Association gathered on his front lawn that all is not lost. Sheltered under a marquee, he’s like a cruise-ship crooner entertaining a ballroom full of pensioners: “Time is on our side,” he says to his audience, alluding to the discord beyond the rolling hills of Northallerton. “Eighteen months is a long time to turn things around.” After few words of reassurance, the raffle is announced with a sense of relief. A full 13 years of Tory rule have passed, and, amid the boozy, forgetful haze of the slow afternoon, the Sunaks’ garden party is mourning the decline of the modern British Conservative Party.

The by-election in Selby and Ainsty, 50 miles south of Sunak’s estate, is part of the reason why. Mention it to the attendees and they grimace. On Thursday, Labour will have a chance to overturn a 20,000 majority and lay the first meaningful stone in the path to a Tory electoral apocalypse. Two weeks ago, the race was compared to a coin toss. But since then, a great pilgrimage of shadow ministers and Labour activists has flooded the Yorkshire town, hoping to pull off the second-largest swing to Labour in electoral history. This would be the sort of decisive victory not seen in Selby since the days of the English Civil War, when a Royalist rout spelled the end of King Charles I’s rule in the North. The bookies now have them as favourites to win.

Selby, however, as both Labour and Conservative canvassers confess, is a “weird constituency”. It takes in pockets of poverty and comfortable Country Life villages. It is an area of contrasts and contradictions: a beautiful Norman Abbey within a stone’s throw of a high street garlanded with vape shops; a commuter belt to Leeds and York in the former industrial heartland once home to the most productive coal mine in Europe. A place where three-quarters of homes are owner-occupied, but the housing shortage and mortgage-rate crisis now make home ownership both untenable and undesirable. A place where you can find all of England’s problems and convince no one of their solutions.

For both parties, this is not just a by-election, but a chance to war game electoral machines for 2024. Labour see it as a zone of reckoning for a country fed up with Tory rule, and a chance to lay the ghost of Jeremy Corbyn to rest after their vote dropped here by 9.6% in 2019. The local Tory wisdom — and ready defence — is that if they lose the seat, it will be because their vote stays at home. But outside of the two major parties, Selby is also a place where we can observe, in the form of political rebels and strays, the two unresolved forces of British electoral politics: the disbelief in the power of politics to change things, and a hatred of Westminster.

Nothing sums up the latter like the circumstances which led to the by-election. The stroppy resignation of Nigel Adams — a Johnson lackey who departed after failing to get a peerage — “has pissed everyone off”, as one Tory put it. The constituents aren’t impressed either. “Good riddance, you shocking grifter,” read one of the kinder comments on a farewell post. The legacy of Adams, further tainted by his temporal association with the other more sleaze-orientated by-elections, has only contributed to a broad cynicism towards Westminster. Adams himself is now regarded as a political morality tale in the pubs of Selby: the local lad who went to London and got lost in its web in his pursuit of patronage.

The Conservative candidate, lawyer and councillor Claire Holmes, seems eager to bridge that gap by talking up her “local connections”. But she already appears to have misread the mood of the constituency on housing.  There’s only so much she can say about the mortgage woes other than repeating the promise to cut inflation, but her pledge to protect “green spaces from inappropriate housing” was regarded as tone deaf in a constituency that can no longer rely on Nimbyism to form a winning coalition of voters. It was this comment that spurred a number of younger local Tories to abandon her campaign — “the sort of lazy politics that will stop anyone under 50 from voting for us”, as one senior councillor put it.

By contrast, Labour has seized upon housing in their campaign. Speaking in the Commons last week, Keir Starmer pointedly raised the case of a police officer from Selby forced to sell his home due to rising mortgage costs. And mortgage deals are coming to an end across the area as repayments rise by up to £400 a month. At the age of 25, the Labour candidate Keir Mather might seem perfectly positioned to court young voters stuck in the area and unable to get on the housing ladder. But — Oxford to public-affairs consultant via the office of Wes Streeting — he delivers his campaign video with the robotic flair of a sixth-former running for headboy. When I walk into his campaign office in the centre of the high street, full of students and the odd flat-capped local, Mather is whisked away into a backroom the moment I mention the word “interview”. It’s not hard to understand why. He is most effective when saying nothing and grinning weakly in front of a giant portable screen that reads: Conservative Mortgage Bombshell.

Both candidates are accurate personifications of their parties: the Tories’ an unimaginative clone; Labour’s an anodyne silhouette. Where they are concerned, the belief that “nothing will change” persists. But then there’s the array of political eccentrics who always come out of the woodwork for a by-election. Nick Palmer is one archetypal centrist dad who has gone rogue in the terraced suburbs of Selby. He is the closest thing Yorkshire may ever get to Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down. Striding from a delayed train into Selby, the independent candidate looks and speaks like he’s just had to sit through an entire series of Question Time. Armed with a clipboard with his LinkedIn handle scrawled in black Sharpie, Nick preaches a message of democratic breakdown and a system of “shit processes” from London, carried out by people “scared to have a conversation with people who’ll tell them to piss off”.

He nonetheless emerges as a canny soothsayer for the town’s misery. In a busy cafe near the station, he finds common ground with the clientele sipping cappuccinos as they gleefully watch a set of passing canvassers getting drenched in the rain. A clear “90% of the people who come in here won’t vote”, the cafe owner tells us. “Modern politicians have no power or control over the real decisions,” adds her husband. “So what’s the point?” 

One of the more coherent protest votes against Westminster comes from a former Conservative councillor now standing to establish a Yorkshire Parliament: Mike Jordan of the Yorkshire Party. Does he have anything more profound to say? “He’s more likely to say something profoundly fucking stupid,” a Tory member retorts. Behind this sentiment, however, is a quiet frustration. Jordan will be lucky to come fourth, but he represents a disgruntled Tory demographic. In a narrow race, the regionalist-populist energy he can attract and possibly harness is a potent minority view — one that Labour and the Tories cannot ignore.

The rosy-faced Yorkshireman tells me about his adventures in the Tory heartlands to the north of the constituency to garner interest in his vision for Yorkshire. “I spoke to one lady,” he tells me with relish, “who says this is the first time in 50 years she won’t vote Tory. She’s going to vote for me and Yorkshire instead.” When he took to the stage of the hustings, it took him only 30 seconds to deliver his message: “Voting for me is a chance to send a message to Westminster that Yorkshire needs to be thought about — and what are you gonna do about that, cock?” 

It’s a straightforward message delivered in straightforward Yorkshire, but tellingly it’s being redeployed by both parties as a means to cut through the apathy. “No one on the doorstep is interested in what’s happening in Westminster,” says former policeman now Tory councillor Tim Grogan, fresh from campaigning in the key battlegrounds to the south of Selby. And taking power and money away from Westminster is about the only thing the Conservative Party has left to talk about up here, a localist stance that puts them in a strange alliance with Jordan. A new devolution deal has just been signed that will bring an elected Metro Mayor to York and North Yorkshire, in charge of £540 million in grants. But the push for more local power feels symbolic. It can’t stymie the disgruntled energy that drove Brexit — and which is now starting to turn its gaze towards Westminster in another effort to “take back control”.

We’re far from the Red Wall, but 60% of people here voted Leave. They feel the democratic deficit all too keenly. And nationally, Labour has tried to address this discontent, too, with their Gordon Brown-drafted “New Britain” constitution that promises a “radical devolution of power”, to “unleash the potential that exists everywhere in this country”. It is seen as one of the key components of Starmer’s reforming project, should he seize power. And much of the document reads like a Yorkshire Party rant condensed into polished policy prose. The irony with this, of course, is that this is likely to create more, not less, of the politics and politicians that everyone in Selby and Ainsty seems to hate.

Regionalism has frequently, and frequently lazily, been proffered to restore the discontented provinces to political equanimity. But devolution was overwhelmingly rejected by the North East in 2004; it’s hard to see that a Yorkshire “parliament” of Mike Jordans would satisfy Selby. One woman looks appalled when I suggest it. “The idea of some of the local politicians getting their hands on more power around here,” she says, standing outside Selby Abbey, “is, quite frankly, terrifying.” Whatever happens on Thursday, this mood is here to stay — a disquiet that all these candidates want to exploit, and none can bear to resolve.


Fred Skulthorp is a writer living in England. His Substack is Bad Apocalypse 

Skulthorp

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Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago

Thanks to Fred Skulthorp for a very enjoyable analysis of the up-coming by-election. As a Scot, it is depressing to read that Selby folk are being told that the solution to their problems is yet another stratum of politicians. In Scotland, we managed to get rid of one stratum, the Regional Councils, but, shortly after, a new stratum of politicians, the Scottish Parliament, was resuscitated. That gave us gender self-ID, an unworkable bottle deposit return scheme and a fleet of ferries that is not nearly as functional as the Spanish Armada.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

The alternative to local government is more power to Westminster and more candidates picked from the political class such as Keir Mather. This works for the south-east but has not worked for anywhere else in the UK for 40 years.

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago

I totally accept the points that you make. But, to harp on about the Scottish example,the Scottish government has approximately 20% more per capita to spend on health and education compared to England, yet outcomes on the significant metrics are worse than in England. Somehow, our extra tier of Government manages to do less with more. An extra layer of politicians is, in itself, not a silver bullet.

Last edited 1 year ago by Peter Kwasi-Modo
Christopher Peter
Christopher Peter
1 year ago

I think you meant to say NOT a silver bullet – in which case, I agree!

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago

I have now edited in the missing “not”. Thanks.

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago

I have now edited in the missing “not”. Thanks.

Christopher Peter
Christopher Peter
1 year ago

I think you meant to say NOT a silver bullet – in which case, I agree!

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
1 year ago

Why does it work for the South East? Bit of a generalisation wouldn’t you say? We’re not all bien-pensant tofu eaters and investment bankers you know!

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago

I totally accept the points that you make. But, to harp on about the Scottish example,the Scottish government has approximately 20% more per capita to spend on health and education compared to England, yet outcomes on the significant metrics are worse than in England. Somehow, our extra tier of Government manages to do less with more. An extra layer of politicians is, in itself, not a silver bullet.

Last edited 1 year ago by Peter Kwasi-Modo
Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
1 year ago

Why does it work for the South East? Bit of a generalisation wouldn’t you say? We’re not all bien-pensant tofu eaters and investment bankers you know!

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
1 year ago

Well said. The notion that Labour is the answer to the Tories is analogous to the late Victorian view of heroin as a response to morphine. But in a two party system this is what you get – ossification, corruption and drift – drift, usually, in the direction of whichever side is culturally dominant among the chattering classes. These days, unfortunately, it’s the left.
More broadly, the author’s view of voting intentions applies everywhere. The straws in the wind suggest a cataclysmic failure of the Conservative party. But this leads to the really interesting point: Labour never really “wins” elections; the Tories just lose them – more or less catastrophically. This one is going to be bad, so bad that it might finish the party altogether. It takes a rare degree of Conservative incompetence to fall so completely between two stools, but look at the past few years.
Cameron takes years to move the Tories to the centre (hiring all sorts of wets as candidates) before, in a fit of arrogance, stiffing the Liberals with a referendum promise. The Libs are duly stiffed but then Cameron has a problem: the referendum. This he leaves to Osborne, who runs a negative campaign and fluffs it. Then Cameron flounces out. Johnson ducks and runs, May steps in, falls flat on her face and ends in a mess. Only Corbyn rescues the Tories after that. Johnson then well and truly destroys the party with lockdown, high tax and unprecedented levels of migration. As a result the Tory party has alienated Brexiteers, Europhiles, wets, dries, nationalists, free marketeers and – of course – the floating vote. They deserve to implode. The sad thing is that we don’t deserve the result of their implosion: a victory for even worse administration.

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

“The sad thing is that we don’t deserve the result of their implosion: a victory for even worse administration.”
Labour won’t last 13 years. The red tories will implode long before that.

Last edited 1 year ago by polidori redux
Simon Denis
Simon Denis
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

They certainly don’t deserve to last thirteen years – but, thanks to their insurance policies of mass immigration and “multiculturalism”, they have more or less gerrymandered the whole country for the foreseeable future. This is the problem. Were we in the relatively luxuriant predicament of 97, your words might offer some hope – the economy was buoyant, centre-right ideas prevailed in many areas and the world was sane. None of this applies today. Today, I fear, Labour is the immediate gateway to unprecedented darkness in the history of modern Britain. Hence, even in their spineless, empty, grifting mediocrity, the contemptible “Tories” are the better option. Let us hold our noses and avoid the precipice.

Chipoko
Chipoko
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

Labour is the immediate gateway to unprecedented darkness in the history of modern Britain.”
Quite so! A couple of months ago the BBC reported (with a tangible sense of glee) that Whites in the UK would become a minority (i.e. less than 50% of the UK population) by 2050, possibly sooner. The Labour Party deserves some credit for investing (multiculturalism, diversity, inclusion, immigration, etc.) in its longer term, future prospects in power!

joseph wilson
joseph wilson
1 year ago
Reply to  Chipoko

The BBC are wrong with their forecast. It is easily checked. Why do the BBC persist in telling falsies, whether it be politics, population or planet weather.

joseph wilson
joseph wilson
1 year ago
Reply to  Chipoko

The BBC are wrong with their forecast. It is easily checked. Why do the BBC persist in telling falsies, whether it be politics, population or planet weather.

Chipoko
Chipoko
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

Labour is the immediate gateway to unprecedented darkness in the history of modern Britain.”
Quite so! A couple of months ago the BBC reported (with a tangible sense of glee) that Whites in the UK would become a minority (i.e. less than 50% of the UK population) by 2050, possibly sooner. The Labour Party deserves some credit for investing (multiculturalism, diversity, inclusion, immigration, etc.) in its longer term, future prospects in power!

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
1 year ago
Reply to  polidori redux

They certainly don’t deserve to last thirteen years – but, thanks to their insurance policies of mass immigration and “multiculturalism”, they have more or less gerrymandered the whole country for the foreseeable future. This is the problem. Were we in the relatively luxuriant predicament of 97, your words might offer some hope – the economy was buoyant, centre-right ideas prevailed in many areas and the world was sane. None of this applies today. Today, I fear, Labour is the immediate gateway to unprecedented darkness in the history of modern Britain. Hence, even in their spineless, empty, grifting mediocrity, the contemptible “Tories” are the better option. Let us hold our noses and avoid the precipice.

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

Your post is a great summary of recent UK politics. I just cannot imagine anyone producing a better summing-up in less than 300 words.

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
1 year ago

Many thanks. Your thumbnail sketch of Scotland today was hugely informative. I’m bound to say that under the continual pressure of the hard left’s idiotic hectoring, we on the right (or in the centre, or on the moderate left – I don’t wish to presume) are at least getting our thoughts in order. Perhaps this is the prelude to a period of successful counter attack.

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
1 year ago

Many thanks. Your thumbnail sketch of Scotland today was hugely informative. I’m bound to say that under the continual pressure of the hard left’s idiotic hectoring, we on the right (or in the centre, or on the moderate left – I don’t wish to presume) are at least getting our thoughts in order. Perhaps this is the prelude to a period of successful counter attack.

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

Hear hear – what a sh*tshow!

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

“The sad thing is that we don’t deserve the result of their implosion: a victory for even worse administration.”
Labour won’t last 13 years. The red tories will implode long before that.

Last edited 1 year ago by polidori redux
Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

Your post is a great summary of recent UK politics. I just cannot imagine anyone producing a better summing-up in less than 300 words.

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
1 year ago
Reply to  Simon Denis

Hear hear – what a sh*tshow!

S Wilkinson
S Wilkinson
1 year ago

I’m in Wales.
All I can say is –
1. Think of the worst example of a local council you can imagine, obsessed with their own status and intoxicated with their power in their little fiefdom and all of them blinkered to any opinion or evidence outside their little world and their personal agenda and pet projects.
2. Then give them even more power and a lot of money (with no second chamber to act as a check or balance).

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
1 year ago

Government can’t solve the problem. Government is the problem

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

The alternative to local government is more power to Westminster and more candidates picked from the political class such as Keir Mather. This works for the south-east but has not worked for anywhere else in the UK for 40 years.

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
1 year ago

Well said. The notion that Labour is the answer to the Tories is analogous to the late Victorian view of heroin as a response to morphine. But in a two party system this is what you get – ossification, corruption and drift – drift, usually, in the direction of whichever side is culturally dominant among the chattering classes. These days, unfortunately, it’s the left.
More broadly, the author’s view of voting intentions applies everywhere. The straws in the wind suggest a cataclysmic failure of the Conservative party. But this leads to the really interesting point: Labour never really “wins” elections; the Tories just lose them – more or less catastrophically. This one is going to be bad, so bad that it might finish the party altogether. It takes a rare degree of Conservative incompetence to fall so completely between two stools, but look at the past few years.
Cameron takes years to move the Tories to the centre (hiring all sorts of wets as candidates) before, in a fit of arrogance, stiffing the Liberals with a referendum promise. The Libs are duly stiffed but then Cameron has a problem: the referendum. This he leaves to Osborne, who runs a negative campaign and fluffs it. Then Cameron flounces out. Johnson ducks and runs, May steps in, falls flat on her face and ends in a mess. Only Corbyn rescues the Tories after that. Johnson then well and truly destroys the party with lockdown, high tax and unprecedented levels of migration. As a result the Tory party has alienated Brexiteers, Europhiles, wets, dries, nationalists, free marketeers and – of course – the floating vote. They deserve to implode. The sad thing is that we don’t deserve the result of their implosion: a victory for even worse administration.

S Wilkinson
S Wilkinson
1 year ago

I’m in Wales.
All I can say is –
1. Think of the worst example of a local council you can imagine, obsessed with their own status and intoxicated with their power in their little fiefdom and all of them blinkered to any opinion or evidence outside their little world and their personal agenda and pet projects.
2. Then give them even more power and a lot of money (with no second chamber to act as a check or balance).

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
1 year ago

Government can’t solve the problem. Government is the problem

Peter Kwasi-Modo
Peter Kwasi-Modo
1 year ago

Thanks to Fred Skulthorp for a very enjoyable analysis of the up-coming by-election. As a Scot, it is depressing to read that Selby folk are being told that the solution to their problems is yet another stratum of politicians. In Scotland, we managed to get rid of one stratum, the Regional Councils, but, shortly after, a new stratum of politicians, the Scottish Parliament, was resuscitated. That gave us gender self-ID, an unworkable bottle deposit return scheme and a fleet of ferries that is not nearly as functional as the Spanish Armada.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
1 year ago

Of course all parties are guilty of this, but have Labour appear to have learned nothing – their candidate is a cookie cutter embryo-politico of the sort 99.9% of Britons despise. Yet off he goes, la-la-la we’re sticking our fingers in our ears.
I’m increasingly of the view nobody under 30 should be allowed to stand for Parliament, with the added rider they should actually have a CV with non-political jobs on it.

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

I’d go further.
No-one with a degree from Oxford should be allowed to be an MP.

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

Oh dear…..

I’m 65 and a bit bored at the moment (like Joan Collins was pre-UKIP) and was wondering what to do at 65.

But I’ve got an Oxford degree, so I guess that rules me out.

Luckily, I’ve got another idea for a hedgehog sanctuary which may come off.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

To be fair, hedgehogs are perfectly deserving creatures Mike.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

Definitely help the hedgehogs

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

To be fair, hedgehogs are perfectly deserving creatures Mike.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

Definitely help the hedgehogs

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

or pointy corfam shoes, poly draylon suits, white drip dry shirts, neoprene ties…. and beards

Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

Oh dear…..

I’m 65 and a bit bored at the moment (like Joan Collins was pre-UKIP) and was wondering what to do at 65.

But I’ve got an Oxford degree, so I guess that rules me out.

Luckily, I’ve got another idea for a hedgehog sanctuary which may come off.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  JOHN KANEFSKY

or pointy corfam shoes, poly draylon suits, white drip dry shirts, neoprene ties…. and beards

JOHN KANEFSKY
JOHN KANEFSKY
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

I’d go further.
No-one with a degree from Oxford should be allowed to be an MP.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
1 year ago

Of course all parties are guilty of this, but have Labour appear to have learned nothing – their candidate is a cookie cutter embryo-politico of the sort 99.9% of Britons despise. Yet off he goes, la-la-la we’re sticking our fingers in our ears.
I’m increasingly of the view nobody under 30 should be allowed to stand for Parliament, with the added rider they should actually have a CV with non-political jobs on it.

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
1 year ago

Politicians do have the power post Brexit. They are simply unprepared to be both responsible and accountable. Deficit of leadership.

Susan Grabston
Susan Grabston
1 year ago

Politicians do have the power post Brexit. They are simply unprepared to be both responsible and accountable. Deficit of leadership.

John Dellingby
John Dellingby
1 year ago

Alas the feeling of powerlessness regardless of where one lives in the country is all too pervasive. At the moment it is the cause of apathy with a complete lack of trust in our politicians. Labour will win this by-election and the next GE by a landslide, but it will be the least enthusiastic one in history. When Labour inevitably fail, what then?

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

I live in a Con / Lib Dem marginal which is almost certainly going Lib Dem at the next GE. I’m mentally prepared for it – 20mph speed limits, 15 minute cities, Green zealotry and all the rest of it, but many of my smug Range Rover owning, Remainer-voting neighbours are not. Ha ha ha!
I’m also moving somewhere less smug, prosperous and hypocritical. Like Poland.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

As South Park accurately observed, electric vehicles create enormous clouds of toxic smug.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

As South Park accurately observed, electric vehicles create enormous clouds of toxic smug.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
1 year ago
Reply to  John Dellingby

I live in a Con / Lib Dem marginal which is almost certainly going Lib Dem at the next GE. I’m mentally prepared for it – 20mph speed limits, 15 minute cities, Green zealotry and all the rest of it, but many of my smug Range Rover owning, Remainer-voting neighbours are not. Ha ha ha!
I’m also moving somewhere less smug, prosperous and hypocritical. Like Poland.

John Dellingby
John Dellingby
1 year ago

Alas the feeling of powerlessness regardless of where one lives in the country is all too pervasive. At the moment it is the cause of apathy with a complete lack of trust in our politicians. Labour will win this by-election and the next GE by a landslide, but it will be the least enthusiastic one in history. When Labour inevitably fail, what then?

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 year ago

“Modern politicians have no power or control over the real decisions.” There it is in a nutshell. The machinery of democratically derived power has been thoroughly captured. We can argue about whether it’s by capital or the woke blob but it’s hard to see how we’ll ever get back government working on behalf of ordinary people. Without something snapping first.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 year ago

“Modern politicians have no power or control over the real decisions.” There it is in a nutshell. The machinery of democratically derived power has been thoroughly captured. We can argue about whether it’s by capital or the woke blob but it’s hard to see how we’ll ever get back government working on behalf of ordinary people. Without something snapping first.

Simon Neale
Simon Neale
1 year ago

“Time is on our side,” he says to his audience, alluding to the discord beyond the rolling hills of Northallerton. “Eighteen months is a long time to turn things around.”

Exactly what my MP said to me on the doorstep during the local elections. She’s an important Secretary of State, and was accompanying the local Tory hopeful (he lost). “Rishi’s aware of your concerns, and is on the case…”.
That’s great, but the Conservatives have been in power for 13 years and have a big majority. There is a pervasive sense that the country is drifting into anarchic irrelevance. More importantly, we are facing unprecedented demographic change about which we were not consulted, and which we are being “encouraged” not to question. Something tells me that we need to look a bit deeper than the choice between the usual candidates.

Simon Neale
Simon Neale
1 year ago

“Time is on our side,” he says to his audience, alluding to the discord beyond the rolling hills of Northallerton. “Eighteen months is a long time to turn things around.”

Exactly what my MP said to me on the doorstep during the local elections. She’s an important Secretary of State, and was accompanying the local Tory hopeful (he lost). “Rishi’s aware of your concerns, and is on the case…”.
That’s great, but the Conservatives have been in power for 13 years and have a big majority. There is a pervasive sense that the country is drifting into anarchic irrelevance. More importantly, we are facing unprecedented demographic change about which we were not consulted, and which we are being “encouraged” not to question. Something tells me that we need to look a bit deeper than the choice between the usual candidates.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago

An interesting survey of the issues in the by-election. The comment about Starmer “seizing” power was pretty bizarre however!

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago

An interesting survey of the issues in the by-election. The comment about Starmer “seizing” power was pretty bizarre however!

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago

A good if depressing article. The electorate are now aware that our political system – the post 97 New Order – is both anti democratic and now exposed as in rapid descent. The gear stick is broken. De-centralising is yet another rubbish Brownite scam, only adding another layer of poor SNP style apparatnik to the mix. Eventually we will realise that the UK has tipped over into a perma Socialist, Progressive Big State tax with key powers held by the Higher Force of unelected judges Quangocrats & Blobs. Until someone can see who, what and how a System constructed outside of and above the democratic process can be challenged (80 seat maj is not enough) we must just reconcile ourselves to our impotence .and wait for the inevitable…

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
1 year ago

A good if depressing article. The electorate are now aware that our political system – the post 97 New Order – is both anti democratic and now exposed as in rapid descent. The gear stick is broken. De-centralising is yet another rubbish Brownite scam, only adding another layer of poor SNP style apparatnik to the mix. Eventually we will realise that the UK has tipped over into a perma Socialist, Progressive Big State tax with key powers held by the Higher Force of unelected judges Quangocrats & Blobs. Until someone can see who, what and how a System constructed outside of and above the democratic process can be challenged (80 seat maj is not enough) we must just reconcile ourselves to our impotence .and wait for the inevitable…

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

Should have a candidate called Mugab e by gum?

Aidan Trimble
Aidan Trimble
1 year ago

No.

Aidan Trimble
Aidan Trimble
1 year ago

No.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago

Should have a candidate called Mugab e by gum?

David Lindsay
David Lindsay
1 year ago

Keir Mather took his BA in 2019, he took a master’s degree in 2021, he was Wes Streeting’s researcher for a while, and he now rejoices to be the Senior Public Affairs Advisor to the Confederation of British Industry. Quite apart from making one wonder what babe in arms must be the Junior Public Affairs Advisor, the CBI really is the last, and indeed the current, entry on the Curriculum Vitae of this person who is apparently so outstanding that he is presented as a potential Member of Parliament at the age of 25. The Labour Party is in no position to mock the elevation of Charlotte Owen to the peerage. I am. You are. But it is not.

David Lindsay
David Lindsay
1 year ago

Keir Mather took his BA in 2019, he took a master’s degree in 2021, he was Wes Streeting’s researcher for a while, and he now rejoices to be the Senior Public Affairs Advisor to the Confederation of British Industry. Quite apart from making one wonder what babe in arms must be the Junior Public Affairs Advisor, the CBI really is the last, and indeed the current, entry on the Curriculum Vitae of this person who is apparently so outstanding that he is presented as a potential Member of Parliament at the age of 25. The Labour Party is in no position to mock the elevation of Charlotte Owen to the peerage. I am. You are. But it is not.

James Kirk
James Kirk
1 year ago

Labour getting cocky putting up Private Pike. Huw Edwards likes stupid boys. Shame he can’t publicly endorse him. Privately however…

James Kirk
James Kirk
1 year ago

Labour getting cocky putting up Private Pike. Huw Edwards likes stupid boys. Shame he can’t publicly endorse him. Privately however…