Polls close in three by-elections...

Yeah and he wont be remembered for that, he'll be remembered as a war criminal, who signed off a illegal war in Iraq based on lies (WMD), along with his co-conspirator Bush, at least Bush has crawled under a stone and you never see or hear from him, unlike that smirking, slimy,  smarmy twat Blair, who for his crimes has been knighted and hasn't got a prang of conscience about all the lives lost in his illegal war, and how to this day we are still paying the price for his LIES.

How do you know he can't choose his own clothes, what sort of rubbish are you spouting now.

Is it your contention that 'real people' are people that agree with you?

You are trying to create a conspiracy theory, if people of the same party can't be 'acquaintances' there is no hope for anyone.

Blair would not get my vote today but as far as I am concerned Starmer can use him any way he wants.

What is Conservative right, do you men the real idiots?

The Lib Dem success in Somerset, in conjunction with the massive swing to Labour in Selby, far from being a source of worry for Labour is a definite positive. Because what it shows in play big time is anti-Tory tactical voting, and if this pattern is repeated in a general election Labour would be likely to do well in every seat where they are the main challengers to the Tories whereas the Lib Dems will tend to do well and defeat Tories with the help of Labour supporting voters in seats Labour cannot win anyway.

So to think of the Lib Dem win as boding ill for Labour is to misunderstand what lay behind it. The sort of tactical voting in play will be exactly what Labour wants and will tend to maximise success for both parties if repeated in a general election.

The real fly in the ointment here is of course the Uxbridge failure. There was still a substantial swing to Labour but nothing like that in Selby and the Tory vote held up better. Labour thus failed to take the seat even though the swing needed to do so here was much less than in the other two. The obvious answer to why this is must surely be ULEZ extension.

I was listening to a presenter on LBC yesterday who was obviously in favour of ULEZ trying to argue that ULEZ alone could not explain Labour's failure here and that there had to be other reasons. But none were forthcoming, nor was any other factor in which Uxbridge differed from the other two forthcoming. Various polls and stats were bandied about, including the alleged fact that two thirds of Londoners support ULEZ extension and even half of those in outer London do. I have not seen these stats myself so I have no idea how accurate they are. There was also the stat given that 9 out of every 10 vehicle owners in Uxbridge are ULEZ exempt anyway.

But even if that latter fact is true, Uxbridge is a relatively affluent area full of people who can afford the more expensive electric cars as well as access to their own garages and driveways for reliable personal charging points. The one in ten who cannot are likely to be the poorer ones who are struggling already, the very ones who would be priced off the road and for whom ULEZ exempt vehicles, even if they could afford one, are not a viable option because they live in a block of flats with no garage or some such situation. These are under normal circumstances just the type of people whose votes Labour might hope to win. Were I a driver in Uxbridge I might have felt a greater need to protest vote against Labour than the Tories. It could have been for the first time in my life, a scenario that drove me to vote Tory.

Labour is now so under the thrall of affluent middle class liberals that it appears to have lost the ability to see things from the perspective of economically disadvantaged and struggling working class people. Because to us this ever intensifying drive towards what is for many of us unviable electric vehicles, with ever more schemes to penalise those driving older and cheaper combustion engine models, looks like a Labour attempt to price the poor off the roads. Penalising poor people financially is never going to be a vote winner for Labour. But a party that once thought we were the salt of the earth and now thinks we are the scum of the earth apparently doesn't care.

An attitude problem on their part that makes me even more determined never to vote Labour.

Why would I want you to care about me?!?

I voted for my local Labour candidate not for Blair, Blair just happened to be the leader at the time and I thought he was wrong to go to war but that's history now.

I will not vote for Starmer but I will vote for my local Labour MP and Starmer just happens to be the leader.

A bit different to the idiots that voted for Johnson don't you think?

Ah, is that finally an admission?  Well done!  I'll ignore the Boris deflection (you don't half post them).

I took it as acknowledgment that you knew Arien's post, which you childishly attacked, was spot on.  Of course, if you're confused then maybe I have been a little presumptious.  I just expect the intelligent mind to make these connections.  As for points, I can only guess that you mean I have made my point and have somehow scored? Is that good?