UK Politics Thread X: Upcoming Local Elections in May

[Forsher]

Nationalist**: 40.5%
Unionist**: 38.2%
Other**: 21.3%

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table? Or does Sinn Fein's refusal to go to Westminster and/or the increasing fragility of the Good Friday Agreement effectively keep that off the cards?

[The Huskar Social Union]

Nationalist**: 40.5%
Unionist**: 38.2%
Other**: 21.3%

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table? Or does Sinn Fein's refusal to go to Westminster and/or the increasing fragility of the Good Friday Agreement effectively keep that off the cards?

Nationalism has made some serious gains in the last few elections, Sinn Fein being the largest party in both the Assembly and Local Government, a plurality of Irish Nationalist MP's at stormont etc but at the end of the day its down to the discretion of the secretary of state and unless they decide there are grounds for a border poll to result in unification they wont call one.

Also it would be extremely unwise imo with how politically fragile NI is at the moment. It would just be adding fuel to the fire of DUP refusal to go back to Stormont, the NI Protocol/Windsor Framework etc

[The Huskar Social Union]

There is one seat left to declare in the Collin district of the Belfast City council, its down to People Before Profit and the SDLP. If PBP fails to take it they will be reduced to one councillor in total and lost all representation in Belfast, their strongest area of support. If the SDLP get it, they will balance out on a net gain of one seat in the Belfast City council, having won a seat in the Black Mountain district earlier today, giving the party one bright spot in this election.

[Thermodolia]

Nationalist**: 40.5%
Unionist**: 38.2%
Other**: 21.3%

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table? Or does Sinn Fein's refusal to go to Westminster and/or the increasing fragility of the Good Friday Agreement effectively keep that off the cards?

My reading of the GFA and the border poll is that there has to be a majority or near majority on the side of the nationalists to call it.

And given the recent results I’d say they aren’t quite there yet

[Concejos Unidos]

Nationalist**: 40.5%
Unionist**: 38.2%
Other**: 21.3%

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table? Or does Sinn Fein's refusal to go to Westminster and/or the increasing fragility of the Good Friday Agreement effectively keep that off the cards?

The GFA stipulates, as Thermodalia, said, that the Secretary of State should call for a border poll if it seems probable that it would succeed. Looking at these numbers, that seems like a stretch. Political tensions and the obvious political disruption of a border poll probably make it less likely.

[Philjia]

Nationalist**: 40.5%
Unionist**: 38.2%
Other**: 21.3%

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table?

No. Most Other votes were cast for Alliance which is officially a nonsectarian party but was historically a Unionist party and is still supported more by Unionists than Nationalists, and I think it can be safely assumed from this that Unionists remain a majority.

[Emotional Support Crocodile]

...Jim Allister probably a bit mad...

He always seems that way.

[Ostroeuropa]

In 1906 the 29 Labour MPs were asked to name authors who influenced them.

None picked Marx.

Rankings:

John Ruskin
Charles Dickens
The Bible
Thomas Carlyle
Henry George
Walter Scott
John Stuart Mill
Shakespeare
Robert Burns
John Bunyan
Lord Tennyson
Giuseppe Mazzini
Charles Kingsley
T.B Macauley
James Russel Lowell
Beatrice Webb
Adam Smith
William Cobbett
W.M. Thackery
J.R. Green
Charles Darwin
Henry Drummond


The tension within the party then is those that take a utilitarian approach to the economy (No marxists or class warfare types it would seem), and those that take the "Chivalry of Labour" approach in tandem with spirituality.

Notably, Ruskin takes the approach to his criticism of the economy of entirely dismissing economics and emphasizing repeatedly social relationships and community and how these can be strengthened by adjusting the economy. He is entirely uninterested in wealth generation compared to this.

There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings ... The reaction of the national press was hostile, and Ruskin was, he claimed, "reprobated in a violent manner".

To this end he proposes co-operatives. He also explicitly rejects equality as a value and endorses hierarchy.

[Saor Alba]

Nationalist**: 40.5%
Unionist**: 38.2%
Other**: 21.3%

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table? Or does Sinn Fein's refusal to go to Westminster and/or the increasing fragility of the Good Friday Agreement effectively keep that off the cards?

Not any time soon I do not think. The Northern Irish participants in this thread might agree with me that the increase in republican electoral strength will just make political tensions worse. That aside, no polling in recent years has given unification a majority.

Thomas Carlyle
...
Robert Burns

The Scottishness of the Labour Party at this time makes Burns not remotely surprising, and Carlyle less surprising but still... CARLYLE??? I do not know enough about the individual Labour MPs in 1906, so were there any guild socialists in their ranks this would make sense. But I am still shocked. His critiques of capitalism are all very conservative ones!

[Ostroeuropa]

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table? Or does Sinn Fein's refusal to go to Westminster and/or the increasing fragility of the Good Friday Agreement effectively keep that off the cards?

Not any time soon I do not think. The Northern Irish participants in this thread might agree with me that the increase in republican electoral strength will just make political tensions worse. That aside, no polling in recent years has given unification a majority.

Thomas Carlyle
...
Robert Burns

The Scottishness of the Labour Party at this time makes Burns not remotely surprising, and Carlyle less surprising but still... CARLYLE??? I do not know enough about the individual Labour MPs in 1906, so were there any guild socialists in their ranks this would make sense. But I am still shocked. His critiques of capitalism are all very conservative ones!

Broadly my point. Conservative anti-capitalists have been in Labour since the beginning and formed most of its initial members, and continued to be (And still do) a prominent influence. Ruskin even describes himself as a "Violent Tory" and yet is the party's favourite author in this period.

I suspect Labour only transitioned into being perceived as "For Socialists" during the cold war and even then they didn't manage to wrest control over the party until around the 70s and 80s.

The Labour party has traditionally been concerned with improving peoples lives, strengthening communities, prioritizing social relationships over wealth, and exalting nature and architectural beauty, and that's about it. To that end, support for co-operatives has been long standing as a means to fulfil the first two. It is historical and has been for most of its history an extremely conservative-socialist party.

This extends to Attlee who send troops to go beat up communists when they went on strike, and basically founded NATO.

Wilson represents a continuation of the Buskellite consensus that basically saw this "Conservative-Socialism" put into practice in many ways.

The marxist class war wing of Labour is an aberration and has never historically been in power, nor achieved anything of significance policy wise. Arguably their rise to prominence helped cause the breakdown of the relationship between this "High Labour" and the ruling class, something they attempted to fix by installing a bunch of Liberals like Blair and Starmer as opposed to conservative anti-capitalists.

[Nationalist England]

In 1906 the 29 Labour MPs were asked to name authors who influenced them.

None picked Marx.

Rankings:

John Ruskin
Charles Dickens
The Bible
Thomas Carlyle
Henry George
Walter Scott
John Stuart Mill
Shakespeare
Robert Burns
John Bunyan
Lord Tennyson
Giuseppe Mazzini
Charles Kingsley
T.B Macauley
James Russel Lowell
Beatrice Webb
Adam Smith
William Cobbett
W.M. Thackery
J.R. Green
Charles Darwin
Henry Drummond

Well, that’s a lot of names to add to my reading list.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Okay so the last seat to be declared was held by People Before Profit, putting them to a total of two seats, down three from the last election and i would not be surprised if they lose their sole remaining MLA in the next Assembly election, whenever that might be. Full updated breakdown here on the last page

But here are the final adjusted seat numbers:

Seat Totals:
SF: 144 (+39)
DUP: 122
APNI: 67 (+14)
UUP: 54 (-21)
SDLP: 39 (-20)
TUV: 9 (+2)
GRN: 5 (-3)
PBP: 2 (-3)
PUP: 1 (-1)
AONTU: 0 (-1)
IND: 19 (-5)
OTH: 0 (-2)

[The Huskar Social Union]

Okay, so I know this is councils and from reading your posts I think most people in NI would rather Stormont actually functioned first, but does this put a Unification referendum on the table?

No. Most Other votes were cast for Alliance which is officially a nonsectarian party but was historically a Unionist party and is still supported more by Unionists than Nationalists, and I think it can be safely assumed from this that Unionists remain a majority.

Alliance voters are a mixed bunch but i believe they transferred more to Nationalist parties in this election and the past assembly election, polling ive shared on here (either this thread or a previous one) by Lucidtalk also shows more alliance voters would back a UI than staying in the UK. Ill try and find the post i made again.

edit: Comment i made about it to Nihilistic View May 9th 2022. Border poll voting intention - April 20th 2021 (Both of these are about the same polling btw just want to link to both posts for it so you can see everything)
Transfer vote intention on verge of last years assembly election - April 29th 2022

[The Nihilistic view]

The government is planning to delay - or have, in some cases, already delayed - pension payments to divorcing public sector workers because of self-imposed calculation issues which means they literally can't pay them on time. (Although this is a six-week-old issue and it very much sounds like the BBC wouldn't have picked this story up - now or at any other point in time - if a teacher trying to chase up her divorce in the courts hadn't decided to come to them and complain that it was leaving her family in a house that was damaging their mental health. Yes. The UK is a very normal country.)

It's to do with a valuation for division of assets/future pension rights not any payments. Six weeks (so far) also isn't that long of a time period in the context of a divorce.

You obviously only have two options, carry on using the previous values knowing they are going to probably be or you wait for the revaluation to be done under the new calculation. Which of the two opptions would you pick?

[Forsher]

Too many people replied to my question to quote everyone, but thanks to everyone who answered.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Just wanted to share this photo, it entertained me.

Too many people replied to my question to quote everyone, but thanks to everyone who answered.

You are most welcome.

[Ostroeuropa]

60% of people oppose building on the green belt.

25% support.

Starmer points out that the green belt can include a car park, but not include a field, because it's not actually a sensible thing.

I'm going to point out that the field is also not a sensible thing. It is an ecological deadzone. London urban center has more biodiversity than your average green field which has exactly one species, grass.

Urban London is home to 14000 different kinds of plants and animals.

Even if we go full gigabrain mode and say "It's about air quality production. They're basically big air factories.", then grass is a terrible choice compared to alternatives, the optimal choice being a crysanthemum field (Which, incidentally, also purifies the air of toxic chemicals like benzene). The green belt is almost fucking worthless for anything and people have enormous misconceptions about it because it's got "Green" in the name. I'm not convinced we need to go all 5head about this and go for air factories compared to just competent rewilding. But if you insist we need an oxygen factory than a crysanthemum field can do the same job while taking up only 5% of the current land. So slap it to 10%, rewild 45%, and build on 45% and we'd come out ahead on every metric.

Well. Except the people whose house prices would be impacted by the artificial shortage ending.

1,629,510 current hectares;

81475 hectares of crys.
733,279.5 hectares of rewild, 733,279.5 of houses.

Assuming rural density (A big assumption, but it's the lower bound, the absolute minimum, and as we're about to see it's already comically large), that's 30 houses per hectare. Space for 21,998,370 houses, an amount so vast that "Let's build on the green belt" becomes comical. We wouldn't even be actually doing it. We'd just be saying we're allowed to if we wanted to. It'd take us bloody centuries to actually get around to using even 45% of it set aside for that purpose.

The problem is if Starmer rocks on up and says "60% of you are all either ignorant and don't know what the green belt actually is, stupid and don't know what biodiversity is, or malicious and pretending lining your own pockets is concern over environmentalism" he's going to piss people off. And regardless of how you try to explain this to people, that is functionally the implication.

This is where a loyal BBC comes in handy. Have your boy do a "Wowzers, shocking documentary ermagerd" that "Exposes" this fact to the public, then they'll nag Starmer to fix it, and he can go "Oh no! You convinced me!".

"Manage upwards" in other words, a skill necessary for any politician when dealing with the utter twats who are their bosses.

[Tinhampton]

During the dark ages known to historians as "a couple of weeks ago," Edward Lucas told his Lib Dem mailing list that a friend of his, who he called Richard, had been disbarred from a conference because his social media posts came up as opposing HM Government, which was made grounds for disbarment under recent Cabinet Office rules.

It's now emerged from the BBC that Dan Kaszeta was barred from the Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation Conference at roughly the same time that Richard was under almost exactly the same pretext that Richard was. There's nothing to suggest that he's Richard, with that said - I wouldn't call chemical weapons an "obscure" issue when their use in modern acts of war has been extensively covered, such as in Douma in 2017, and the BBC knows of at least four other letters of its kind over the nine months the rule's been in force.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Oh yeah btw what should the next poll be? Anyone got an idea? Saved the current one in the OP with the rest, ill leave it vacant for now.

[Cappedore]

Oh yeah btw what should the next poll be? Anyone got an idea? Saved the current one in the OP with the rest, ill leave it vacant for now.

Asking if Suella Braverman should resign? Will Labour win the next GE and if so, by how much? It's another stagnant period in British politics until something fun happens lol

[The Huskar Social Union]

Oh yeah btw what should the next poll be? Anyone got an idea? Saved the current one in the OP with the rest, ill leave it vacant for now.

Asking if Suella Braverman should resign? Will Labour win the next GE and if so, by how much? It's another stagnant period in British politics until something fun happens lol

First one would be a landside saying yes lmao so ill go with the second one as a placeholder for now

edit: New poll up, dont know how long this one will be around for

[Southern Archipelago Bay]

I'm so grateful that The UK didn't choose chaos with Ed Milliband

[Revanchist Serbia]

I'm so grateful that The UK didn't choose chaos with Ed Milliband

I'm hoping that this comment is parody or satire. I mean, seriously, whatever Milliband's problems, he couldn't have been worse than what Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak have all done to the UK.

[El Lazaro]

I predict a 99.4 percentage point swing towards Sinn Féin, wiping out almost every seat in parliament. There will be 632 vacant seats and 18 seats refused, causing an unusual political crisis where Westminster is just plain empty. The UK could be brought to its knees for years and forced to beg Sinn Féin to show up in parliament depending on what’s supposed to happen when all the votes in >97% of constituencies go towards candidates who aren’t running in them.

[Emotional Support Crocodile]

Dominic Raab to stand down at the next election. No great loss there.