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The General Election eh? Here's what I think...

I think I might have told you this before, but my first conscious political act, was chanting “Heath is a cunt” with my mate Sten outside Falla Park Juniors, which was both our primary school and local polling station, meaning we had election day off and could thus engage in such profane sloganeering. It was in February 1974, and I was 9 years of age. What this action demonstrates is both my eidetic memory for General Election nights, of which more in a minute, and my lifelong, unbending hatred of the Tory Party. I’m not sure if it was before that election or the later one in October 1974 when the auld fella taught me Nye Bevan’s correct pronouncement that Conservatives were “lower than vermin,” but it’s a statement I’ve held close to my heart this last half century. I believe in it as strongly today as I did then. Indeed, I’ll go to my grave knowing of its simple, inarguable truth. I hate the Tories even more than I hate Sunderland AFC. Try that one on for size.

So, having cut my teeth in 1974, by staying up late for the results of the October election, as it took place during half term, I began a series of nocturnal, psephological devotions to BBC1. Back then it was David Dimbleby, Robin Day and Bob McKenzie presenting things and you could tell they were even more downcast about the result as I was in 1979, when Thatcher came to power and Britain, effectively, became a police state. If you look at the continued conduct of the Met, little has changed in the 45 years that have followed. Somewhat ironically, I wasn’t that fussed about the 1979 election as I was fully in thrall of the extra parliamentary left. The Parliamentary Road to Socialism had bypassed Felling Square. While I hadn’t, as yet, come across the impossibilist position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), whose declaration of principles, stated on their foundation in 1904 and unchanged to this day, are those I completely concur with, I was an avid reader of Socialist Challenge, Workers’ Weekly, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and sundry other ultra left agitprop publications. I might not have understood the minute details of their arguments, but the general point that we needed violent revolution yesterday was one I’d happily got on board with.

That said, sometime in late 1980 I joined the Felling ward branch of the Gateshead East Constituency Labour Party at an ordinary monthly meeting, held in The Beeswing at the bottom of the High Street. First pub I ever had a drink in, but that’s another story. What I didn’t do, despite relentless peer group pressure, was join Militant, whose inflexible rote-learned reformism turned half my extended family into unthinking automatons, effectively ending many of their lives as independent, sentient beings.

I remember the sense of grinding despair at the outcome of the 1983 election; on the back of the Malvinas War, Thatcher’s majority increased, and I fell into a state of gloom on the sofa. I’d said I wouldn’t go to bed until Labour had 200 seats. Eventually, they picked up 209, but overnight, the figure stuck at 199 and I became redder eyed and puce faced angry as the night wore on. Similarly in 1987, having moved back from London at the start of the campaign, I allowed the widening North South Divide to persuade me Labour would triumph. They didn’t and 1992 was worse, following Kinnock’s crass and cretinous performance at the Sheffield pre-election rally.

By this time, I’d actually had the experience of voting for someone other than Labour, and it had been a curiously liberating experience. During my student years in the early to mid-1980s, I remained registered at the parents’ place, which denied me the option of voting for hardline Republicans in hardline Loyalist areas of County Antrim, though I had experienced a revelatory epiphany on reading a copy of Socialist Standard for the first time. Subsequently, in every election, I ought to have spoiled my ballot paper by writing WORLD SOCIALISM on it, but I never got round to doing so. As it was, living in Leeds for my postgrad year, I was on the electoral roll for the Headingley Ward. There were two candidates to elect, and every person in our shared house, voted Communist and Green, bar Steve Connolly. We locked him out the house for most of the evening when he came back from firstly canvassing for Labour and then exercising his democratic right. Needless to say, he backed the winners, though that fight was closer than the 1989 European election in Tyne and Wear South. I was honoured, for the first and, so far, only time in my life, to vote for the SPGB. Tim Kilgallon garnered 919 votes, a little behind Labour’s Alan Donnelley with 126,682. It was a platform to build on, I suppose.

In 1997, the Blair Landslide reinforced to me that the simple truth was I hated the Tories much more than I liked Labour. I had a degree of hope that at least the country would now be governed by competent and honest people, rather than the greedy, rapacious, corrupt reimagining of the French Royal Family of the 1780s that Major’s government had become. How naïve that belief appears now. In short, we were all let down by Blair and his repulsive, ideological fawning over GWB and clamour for war at all costs. That said, no-one can ever take away the joy of seeing the likes of Portillo and Mellor humiliated on live TV in the early hours of May 2^nd, 1997.

It could be that my memory is playing tricks with me, as I didn’t vote in the 2001 election as I was living and working in Slovakia at the time. I’d imagined it to have been a lot closer than it was. Checking up on the results, I was surprised to see that the figures for seats taken by the main parties were almost unchanged from 1997; Labour 412 (formerly 418), Tories 166 (165) and Lib Dems 52 (46). Being honest, about the only thing I remember from that campaign is John Prescott knocking that bloke out.  What a superb punch by Two Shags it was.

Moving on to 2005, I was able to vote in Newcastle upon Tyne East for the first time. This constituency, under its various names, is where I’ve owned property and been on the electoral roll since 1998. The seat was held by Nick Brown from 1983 until last week, when Mary Glindon succeeded him. I didn’t vote for him in 2005; I voted for my former UCU colleague Martin Levy, who stood as the Communist candidate. He received 205 votes to Brown’s 18,768. As an aside, the father of a former student of mine, Bill Hopwood, stood for Socialist Alternative (he’d been a member of Militant and sided with Taaffe’s tendency at the open turn) and gained 582 votes. Probably enough to keep Denver fiddling with himself under the covers for weeks that.

Come 2010, things really began to unravel. I’m still disgusted by the venal, narcissistic conduct of the Lib Dems who, in a hysterical thirst for power, signed up to be the Tories’ sacrificial lambs, copping a fall for the totally discredited policy of austerity that started the process of comprehensively reducing most people’s lives to abject misery and fiscal penury, that continues to this day. Personally, I voted for Martin Levy once again. He got 177 votes this time. Bill Hopwood had emigrated to Canada.

Things got no better in 2015. Mollie Phillips was standing instead of Martin Levy; I was one of the 122 who backed her. TUSC (Trade Union Socialist Coalition), who I’m ashamed to say I stood for in the 2014 Council election in Dene, put up an absolute simpleton by the name of Paul Phillips. He got 170 votes, which was less than the 180 I managed in a single ward. Nick Brown was elected and the country, as a whole, went to hell in a hand cart. Red Ed made no significant inroads, the Lib Dems got their arses handed to them for 5 years of Vichy style collaboration with the Tories, who won at a canter, while Scotland became enslaved by the racist eugenicists at the heart of the Scotch Nazi Party, who promised a chicken in every pot and a stolen motor home on every driveway. While I’d first joined the Labour Party in 1981, I can’t claim unbroken membership.  However, on resolving to do something positive in the wake of the deep disappointment caused by this result, I rejoined and, low and behold, Corbynmania broke out AOTS.

Now the election of this one bloke was enough to make Taaffe’s tendency decide the Labour Party was no longer “irredeemably bourgeois” and for them to attempt another ideological volte face, but you can’t blame their little empty Schactmanite heads, can you? After all, we all loved him at first.  Didn’t we? I mean, just look at the size of the crowds at the rallies, or the adulation that poured down on his appearance at Glastonbury. While the Tories were intent on crashing the economy via the Brexit fiasco, Dave the Pig Porker got the fuck out of Dodge and handed the baton onto tedious Teresa, who couldn’t govern without Arlene’s DOBs backing her. Meanwhile, Jezza was riding a wave of popularity that far exceeded his ability; retrospect tells us, he should have assumed a ceremonial role, allowed John McDonnell to take over the leadership and we’d have been spared the evisceration of December 2019. You don’t believe me? Read This Land: The Struggle for the Left by Owen Jones.

The night before the election, I saw the incomparable Steve Albini for the last time, as part of Shellac. As an American, he may not have had much to do with UK politics, but from the stage of The Boiler Shop, he gave an impassioned speech urging us all to do our bit to keep the Tories out. Sadly, the game was up. I remember having a pint that night with Nick Kemp, now leader of Newcastle City Council, who confided that Labour were going to get killed. And we did but, despite the pain, the poverty and the unending corruption of what followed under Johnson, Truss and Sunak, it might almost have been a good election to lose.

Looking back on the last 14 years of Tory rule, or even just since 2019, the sheer number of crises, arse-ups and public relations disasters they were responsible for is almost beyond belief. The fall out from Brexit and COVID (PPE scandals and Partygate especially), the Rwanda scheme, Liz Truss and Sunak’s incredibly bad election campaign, were each reason enough for the party to be crushed underfoot by the electorate. And so, they were. I’ll come back to what I think we’ve learned from this election soon, but I’ll tell you about my take on things first.

Nick Brown, after almost 40 years unblemished service as MP for Newcastle East and Wallsend, in its various iterations, was inexplicably thrown out of the PLP because of a complaint raised against him. Whatever this was, we never found out, either as party members or electors. Instead, Nick stood down and Mary Glindon, formerly councillor for Battle Hill and MP for North Tyneside since 2010, became the PPP. I’ve met Mary as part of my UCU role and she was always a good, solid, down to earth representative who stood up for her constituents. Indeed, she introduced me and Ben to Dennis Skinner on the terrace of the House of Commons in October 2011. However, and this is why I’m such a shit member of the Labour Party, I didn’t vote for her.

After rejoining in 2015, I’d been a loyal Labour voter, even in the PCC elections, when I’d always wanted to write ACAB on the ballot paper. This changed with the Northeast Mayoral election in May. I wasn’t going to vote for Kim McGuinness, so I broke ranks and cast my vote for Jamie Driscoll. He didn’t win, but he put the wind up the Labour Party in this region. It showed, and this is very important to realise, there is a viable sector of the electorate who want a strong left of centre programme to get behind. For me personally, the policies I was looking for in any candidates were -:

1.      Abolition of the Monarchy.

2.      Renationalisation of all domestic power suppliers.

3.      Renationalisation of all train and bus franchises.

4.      Immediate recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

5.      Immediate commitment to withdrawal from the 6 Counties as a prelude to an independent 32 County Irish Republic.

6.      Commitment to rejoin the EU at the first available opportunity.

7.      An end to any restrictions on immigration.

8.      Abolition of all tuition fees and cancellation of all student debt.

9.      Immediate restoration of all benefit cuts and imposition of £50,000 minimum household income.

10.  Immediate prosecution of John Swinney for treason.

Now, I realise that these demands, while moderate and sensible, were not shared by many political parties, so I cast an eye over the leaflets landing on my mat for a sense of common ground. Unsurprisingly, it was the Communist Party who appealed to me the most with their 12-point plan based on reversing cuts, expanding public ownership, promoting inclusivity and internationalism. This is what the Labour Party should stand for. In the event, Emma-Jane Phillips got 206 votes and Mary Glindon 21,200. That doesn’t take away from the fact that what the Communist Party advocated was unquestionably morally right. Sometimes, that just doesn’t matter.

So, what about the rest of the 649 seats up for grabs. Well, this was a whole new routine for me, watching it with Shelley. We hit the gym after work, then grabbed a few nerve-settling pints in Enigma Tap, where I ran into a long-standing friend of mine. As voting is a private matter, I’ll not divulge their name. Suffice to say, this is a gentleman of long held left wing beliefs. Living in a safe Labour seat, though not the same one as me, he wanted to follow his conscience and vote for the most progressive platform on offer. Thus, he voted Green and I’m sure he’s not the only one.

Insulated by a few beers, we nipped home for a lengthy snooze to enable us to pull an all-nighter. I woke up at 9.53, saw the exit poll with Big Ben’s chimes and settled in to watching a whole series of Tory bastards squirming as the manner of their humiliation became clear. Oh, it was wonderful that Labour won, but how much better was it to see Rees-Mogg and especially Truss cast out like the trash they are. Neither of them had the tiniest of understandings why they’d been brought to book, but who cares? Of equal joy was the evisceration of the corrupt Scotch Nazi Party. No longer can they traduce the working classes with false promises of a chicken in every pot and a stolen motor home on every driveway. The dead-end of ultra-Nationalism, like Viktor Orban in a kilt, has been swept away and working-class unity on both sides of the border can help to regrow a Socialist consensus that the defenestrating Dundee drug dealers have long opposed.

I woke up on the sofa at 8.45, wondering quite where I was. Despite Shelley’s best efforts to chaperone me, I’d managed two bottles of Moldovan Pinot Grigio and was feeling a little tender. However, a soothing breakfast of coffee, toast and a recap of the results, enabled me to relax, then grab a few more hours kip, in bed this time.

Despite 412 elected Labour MPs, this landslide, based on 34% of the popular vote, isn’t quite what it seems. Indeed, it seems clear that this election has seen a substantial drift to the Green Party in safe, educated, urban Labour seats. Keir Starmer may have a whopping majority, but the shifting tectonic plates of political allegiances are considerably shallower than in the past. Multi-generational class, cultural and religious ties are not so secure as in the past. Allegiances can change. The enormous Labour majority could just as easily be wiped out, or massively eroded in 5 years’ time, if people feel let down. In the words of the Bolshevik virgin, what is to be done?

Demographics are crucial. In my seat as well as the adjoining Newcastle Central West and Newcastle North constituencies, the Greens defeated the Lib Dem candidates, showing that there is a clear mandate for radical, progressive thinking, as demonstrated in comparable seats across the country. Understanding why we have Green MPs in Brighton and Bristol doesn’t require genius level intelligence. However, both Newcastle East and Newcastle Central West, though not Newcastle North, also embrace sizeable Muslim Communities and pockets of urban deprivation. This has resulted in a further fragmentation of the Labour vote; in Newcastle Central West, independent pro-Palestinian candidates Yvonne Ridley (3,627 votes; 8.8% of the poll) and Habib Rahman (1,636; 4%), together with John Pearson (3,228; 7.8%) of the Green Party gained more support than the Fascist Reform candidate (7,815; 18.9%). Basically, 40% of votes cast are from those who have defected from the two main parties.

At a rough guess, the Fascist votes in Newcastle Central West probably came in a 50:50 split from Labour and Tory deserters, while the left-wing votes are all from Labour. In Newcastle East, it’s probably the same story, with 5,257 Green votes and 430 for the Workers’ Party, which adds up to 14% of the total number cast. Bearing in mind what happened in Blackburn, Dewsbury and Leicester, Starmer needs to court the Muslim vote. Indeed, the Hindu vote may also be up for discussion now Sunak is history.

The really challenging thing is to win the hearts and minds of those who abandoned Labour for UKIP, Brexit, Reform or whatever variety of sieg heiling snake oil Farage and his shower of scum are peddling. There has been, for too long now, an attitude among the urban, educated left that sections of the British working class are ideologically irredeemable and should therefore be held in contempt. I’m saying that is bullshit. Just look at the gains Labour has made in Scotland. Labour didn’t give up and now there are 40 seats back with the natural party of the working class. That can happen in England; perhaps only Lee Anderson’s seat is a realistic proposition of the 5 the Fascists have (and can you really take Nigel Farage seriously as an advocate of proportional representation?), but eroding their vote by pointing out it is the monstrous entity of global capitalism and the profit motive that has made the lives or ordinary people such a misery over the last couple of decades and not refugees or economic migrants. They are our brothers and sisters; we must fight alongside them to repel the lies of the extreme right wing. Let’s do it now, from the very start of this new Government.

I’m 60 next month. I never want to see another Tory government in my lifetime. Remember, there's 121 Tories left and every single one of them is a bastard.