Voters backed the Conservative campaign in Aberdeen South to stop the close down of our oil and gas industry. The government needs to change policy urgently. Dear and imported energy is the main cause of de industrialisation and no growth in production industries.
Voters in Makerfield backed Andy Burnham to replace the PM. That too was a vote for change, a cry for help. Unfortunately flip flopping Burnham is unlikely to cut taxes, reform benefits and stop net zero self harm which is what is needed.
June 19, 2026
Irrespective of the by-election result we have 3 more years if ruinous liebour rule. I can’t see Burnham calling a snap election when a large portion of his party would be wiped out.
Unless the IMF is called which is a distinct possibility, I’m afraid we’re stuck with 3 mire years of destruction and heading for an Islamic State.
June 19, 2026
So that will be 31+ year of left wing ruinous rule by 2029 then even if we do get a decent government with a decent majoroty it will take them 10 years at least to start to undo the damage of Blair, Brown, the Con-Socialists and Starmer/Burnham.
June 19, 2026
Steve Baker just now on Talk Radio, suggests Reform needs to question why Burnham won so decisively. Very simple Burnham was the only way to get rid of the hated dissembling and robotic Two Tier. Thus totally different from any other by-election. They voted Labour because they hate Sir Kier and the existing Labour agenda.
Alas Burnham is essentially the same or even worse – though at least a little less boring and robotic.
June 19, 2026
The decision to get Starmer out was the bleedin’ obvious reason for voting as they did.
June 20, 2026
I think Reform should indeed be concerned. This was a fight in the red wall for a seat which voted 65% to leave and Reform has been walloped by a Labour candidate who has been quite open about wishing to return to the EU. Insofar as they want to get rid of Starmer,
it seems Makerfield’s voters want something even more leftwing.
Wake up time for the likes of Messrs Farage Tice Lowe, Youssef etc. the right unites either openly of tacitly or we get another Labour govt, next time with an even more leftists agenda.
June 19, 2026
Steve Baker still appears to blame much of the Tory woes on Covid. No not really Covid but the absurd, idiotic and hugely damaging Boris/Sunak response to it. With net harm vaccines (coerced in to people with no need of them even had they been safe and effective) )and net harm lockdowns and £60bn (worse than wasted) actually spent doing vast net harms. They also spend 14 years destroying all trust in the party with serial manifestos of lies.
Come on Steve you have BEng in Aerospace Engineering Southampton you surely can do better analysis than this?
June 19, 2026
@Ian Wragg – the UK Parliament doesn’t do election, doesn’t like democracy it cramps their ‘ego’. Those that criticise the USA, the majority in the UK Parliament, know that the USA will have had 3 General Elections to confirm direction and validate what its leadership is doing before the UK gets its next one. The USA as a Democracy has elections for the House of Representatives (the HoC equivalent) every 2 years.
Even now we have had our powers that be ‘Gerrymandering’ the up and coming Mayoral Manchester Election. They have change the rules of first past the post in the hope of anyone but the radical ‘left’ can become Mayor. The UK Parliament will keep changing what Democracy means, they refuse democracy to be government by the people for the people. Its is always rule by them for themselves
June 19, 2026
I’m thinking a snap election would be no answer. The Makerfield result showed the “none of the above” movement was the majority view, and of those who voted the majority view was a Labour candidate was the answer. By my reckoning a Labour candidate in any form is no answer. Just as in Makerfield, the electorate as a whole won’t return a government that would be good for the country, even after 2 years of lamentable governance that should have made people learn.
June 19, 2026
the result in Aberdeen is very creditable and an endorsement of Kemi Badenoch’s leadership. The result in Makerfiled should be a wake up call for the right, and anyone who doesn’t want another Labour government. For all the bravado from Mr Farage and others, Reform were thrashed. Rupert Lowe’s vanity project made no difference. Reform were thrashed in a red wall seat which voted 65% for leave where the winning candidate has expressly said he would like to rejoin the EU.
Unless there is a unification on the right we will have another 5 years of tax borrow spend and regulate Labour, with or withour the greens the libdems and the snp, pummelling the productive sectors of the economy to shovel ever more money to benefits and net zero. Their attitude to defence will leave the Country imperilled.
June 19, 2026
Read the stats – Reform increased vote share by 3% thats hardly a thrashing, and the knowledge that possibly thousands voted for Burnham instead to get Starmer out!
June 19, 2026
Peak Reform I feel. If a member of an opposing party is seen as a greater vehicle of change than Reform in a by-election then Reform can not get sufficient votes out at a general election.
June 19, 2026
Time to stop the fantasy of a Reform govt, there is no chance. The government after the next election, will as ever either be a Labour one or a Conservative won. Maybe in coalition or minority govt agreement. The best Reform can hope for is to be the 3rd largest party and therefore perhaps to be in coalition or partnership with the Conservatives. So time for the likes of Messrs Tice and Youssef to stop talking about how they want to destroy the Conservative Party, with which they have minimal differences, and focus on the real enemy – the leftwing axis of evil which is doing so much damage to our Country, both directly in government and through bureaucratic action via the blob and its ancillaries.
June 19, 2026
Have you changed your name from Lynn? Restore did a creditable job from nowhere but still only got one fifth of Reform percentage in spite of the rush to get Burnham in Westminster..
June 20, 2026
I was referring to Labour not Restore.
Burnhsm picked up anti Labour votes from Greens, Restores, Lib Dems and Conservatives who would rather Reform didn’t win.
That is Reform’s biggest problem in first past the post. The majority would rather vote for anyone but Reform.
Farage had the same problem trying to becone an MP
June 19, 2026
“Dear and imported energy is the main cause of de industrialisation and no growth in production industries.”
Yes, at last a senior politician of the legacy establishment, says something sensible. Shock Horror.
Of course for nearly a decade while in government, the Tories did nothing to reduce vat and excise duty, other than tinkering with marginal rates. About 50% of the price of fuel is tax. Abolishing that tax would go some way to giving British industry ( and consumers ) a significant economic boost.
At the root of every unit of GDP is a high component of energy.
June 19, 2026
And Starmer’s ‘take-away’, the overwhelming the voter in the UK supports his ‘Plan’ the direction that he is taking Labour and the Country. Opened the door to a greater push to full integration with the EU. The Electorate has just overwhelmingly supported Labours Policy of returning in full to the EU. More Nationalisation, more State Control. It was never in their minds a local election but a general election
Options:
2TK will offer Burham a top Cabinet position with a promise to make room come the General Election. 2TK will also take the results as meaning his revised Manifesto and Mandate has been confirmed by the Country and re-entering the EU is the Countries biggest priority
The the Labour Party will anoint Burnham as the Labour leader & PM next week and the promises he made to get elected will be Labours Mandate & Manifesto going forward, and re-entering the EU is their and the Countries biggest priority .
We are in this position because May, Johnson & Sunak refused to leave the EU, refused to listen to the nation, refused to be a Conservative Party and carried on Parliaments fight to remain in the EU. There are no positive takeaways, a dysfunctional Parliament still fighting the people moving further left and suppressing democracy and self-determination
June 19, 2026
The 3 by-elections show the overriding need for a pre-election Conservative-Reform alliance. Where it was clear who the main right wing candidate was in Makerfield (even though the Conservatives there had a very good candidate whom I had helped years ago when he stood in Bolton) and in Aberdeen the voters themselves rallied behind the leading candidate but where it wasn’t clear (as it wouldn’t be in most constituencies at a General Election)as in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry the vote split pretty well down the middle to the detriment of the centre-right. Furthermore both Reform and the Conservatives have much to lose from the lack of an alliance -the Conservatives have nearly 120 M.P.s who might not be re-elected if Reform opposed them and Reform would face problems of accusations of extremism damaging their prospects in the absence of an alliance. There is also now the distinct possibility of a snap General Election when Burnham becomes Prime Minister (Burnham would decide that and who knows his mind?) and so this matter must be faced very quickly.
June 19, 2026
Yes. Voters in Makerfield clearly wanted the fastest way to remove Starmer from leadership. Reform UK appeared to be tainted by the candidate’s unpleasant tweets from a decade before and its vote level was split by Restore Britain performing well.
The outcome was predictable early on, although the extent to which Starmer was despised substantively magnified Burnham’s majority leaving many to believe he is immensely popular.
June 19, 2026
That too was a vote for change, a cry for help
The politicians can cry crocodile tears as much as they like but Jo public are finally having their eyes open to lies and deceit these people will say just to get into power, all we need now is a General Election to clear the rabble from Westminster and replace with people who will put the public first financial and safely, fingers crossed 🤞
June 19, 2026
On the Makerfield result – “Sir Keir said voters had backed ‘Labour’s campaign of hope and optimism over division and hate’.”
June 19, 2026
a great laugh – we all needed that.
June 19, 2026
On the whole the Makerfield result is good for the various opposition parties because Burnham is just a glib version of Starmer with the same policies which will fail in the same way over the next three years, then when he has failed what do Labour have left ? Give them enough rope …
June 19, 2026
Can anyone predict Starmer’s last words?
“Et tu Rachel” is one possibility.
June 20, 2026
‘I tried carpet bombing’
June 19, 2026
So, the floating voter determined that Starmer was the most crushing issue and voted to depose him.
A shame the Restore voters didn’t recognize the poor logic in their actions. When will the right of centre parties start working together against a common cause.
Labour will imagine this vote also validates what they have been doing, but doubtful if Burnham will get the same result in a GE.
Good to see libdems and Greens didn’t do well.
Reply Conservative and Reform voters voted for Burnham to get rid of Starmer. Burnham took 55% of the vote so the splits on the right made no difference.
June 19, 2026
‘libdems and Greens didn’t do well.’ Fraction over 1% when added together!
June 20, 2026
but but but ….the people voted for and wanted net-zero
June 19, 2026
@Steve Bullion – A vote for a new Prime Minister, that’s how the media was allowed and encouraged to portray this local election. So the modern corruption of democracy has a local election being able to override the what 45,000,000 million elsewhere think or have a view on. The next angle, is the coronation decided behind closed doors. Then we get a new mandate, that the people have no voice in approving. Whose Country?
Obviously this is not unusual, in UK Politics, but it stinks. Parliament will fight the people keep fighting the people but it wont allow us to arrive at ‘government by the people for the people’ – also called democracy. Then should anyone be surprised that we finish up with a Parliament that looks more like the Politburo, with MPs that see ‘rule by them for them’ as being normal.
June 19, 2026
‘Dear and imported energy is the main cause of deindustralisation and no growth in production industries’.
UK car production fell from 1.72 m cars in 2016 to 717,371 in 2025 (SMMT). Ford’s engine plant in Bridgend closed in 2020, as well as Honda’s car factory in Swindon in 2021 and Vauxhall’s Luton base in 2025.
‘Nissan ‘says Sunderland plant could close if UK excluded from Made in Europe rules’, 5 March 2025.
‘Stellantis and JLR to explore collaboration synergies for product development in the US’, 20 May 2026, Stellantis press release.
Please tell me, had anything happened in the UK around mid-2016?
Reply Key change was adoption of bans on making petrol and diesel cars which are introduced progressively up to complete ban in 2030
June 19, 2026
Isn’t it a strange argument to make? Have Fiat, Mercedes, Renault and other car manufacturers in other countries had to stop their factories because of the switch to EVs?
Do other countries also lose their car industry so readily? Very unconvincing.
June 19, 2026
Interpreting election results is never easy, but if the voters of Makerfield were making an anti-Starmer protest few would disagree with them.
June 19, 2026
392 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK yesterday 18th June 2026 …
June 19, 2026
Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley. previously the co-publisher of LM (formerly Living Marxism) and associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party. So not a right-wing terrorist as 2TK refers to people that he ‘hates’
“In the build-up to the tenth anniversary of the EU referendum, we’ve heard lots of claims about Bregret.
There are some Remain nostalgists who are convinced that, after a decade of listening to their wise counsel about how much better we’d be if we’d stayed in the glorious EU, those misled numpties who voted the wrong way must surely have changed their minds and be ready to slink back to Brussels.
Recently, the Observer commissioned polling to prove the point. It’s true that rejoining attracted the largest single share, at 33 per cent.
But the options for staying out of the EU, taken together, commanded a clear majority: 55 per cent. Mysteriously, the paper decided not to publish. Darn it, why does the public keep giving the wrong answer? ”
Unfortunately the rest is behind a pay-wall
June 19, 2026
alas our respected host is a down-and-out unswerving Conservative.Calling for “unity” under the leadership
of the current party leader.No change from the Daily Moan’s begging bowl.
The Aberdeen vote has got Scottish Football Association to do with the Manchester vote.
Socialist Labour are even more unshakeable in their support than”trendy media poseurs”
With all due respect to Kemi I have to give her a thumbs down.More champagne corks were
popping in Broadcasting house last night than when England won their opening game.
June 19, 2026
Voters demand clear policies and compliance with manifesto