Election Wash-up: OT

No top-line surprises, then (unless you are the SNP, maybe).  Turnout figures in due course – seems it was very low – for purposes of the supplementary Compo question when the full figures are in.

A majority of this kind is always possible under first-past-the-post, particularly with so many heavy-duty spoiler candidates in play – surely, on a scale unprecedented in its depth and extent this time?

Anyhow, all pundits are agreed: Starmer’s support is very broad but very shallow.  Hard to disagree.   One of Drew’s Laws of Politics is: the bigger the majority, the less meaningful is the result.  Large numbers of dumb voters who simply like feeling they are on the winning side – of which Murdoch is just the ugliest & and most prominent.  Conventional wisdom is that it’ll be damned hard for Starmer to enforce discipline.   (Is there anything Starmer will wish to do that actually requires a majority of that size?)  He’ll be very happy he stuffed the candidate list with placemen and non-entities, and carefully deselected the identified troublemakers of the left: Mandelsonian power politics in play there.

So here’s an open thread, starting with a few random early thoughts of my own.

• as regards the long game, the whole thing now comes down to how Farage conducts himself.  I personalise it thus because he is and probably will remain a one-man band.  If I was him, I would invest in some very comprehensive personal security.
• on the green/left/Gazan side: although altogether less strategically interesting than Farage it’ll be interesting nonetheless to see how the assorted malcontents – now holding quite a lot of seats – conduct themselves.  I actually think Starmer will be happy to have them making extreme spectacles of themselves, as an ongoing reminder to his own people of the merits of his quietist project. 
• I sincerely hope that each and every Tory MPs who contributed to foisting Truss onto the leadership ballot paper came unstuck yesterday, and will never be heard of again.  How could anyone sit in the same building as her for more than 10 minutes and not notice she is stark, staring, batshit crazy?   If, as some have said, it was a Johnsonite manoeuvre to facilitate his re-entry, well, for self-centred irresponsibility that’s up there with Joe Biden’s senile vanity.
• wouldn’t it be nice if Starmer would now cut Murdoch cold-stone dead at the latter’s every blandishment?  That’s the way to parlay a majority like this.
• this isn’t anything I thought I’d ever find myself writing: but based on his recent “realist” (I think he means realistic) utterances I actually think David Lammy might make quite a good Foreign Sec.  If I’m right, he’s gonna piss off the Left even quicker than Starmer.

With Starmer’s very recent incarnation as Mr Growth-at-any-Cost – which we must believe was primarily a formulation against the challenge of “how ya gonna do it without borrowing or tax increases?” - the opening for BlackRock et al is plain: and they’ll be up his trouser-legs like a rat up a drainpipe before he gets to sit down.  Cue the biggest PFI binge in history …

Over to y’all.

ND

UPDATE:  a great phrase in a Graun article:

Labour’s ambiguous mandate, both overwhelming and unconvincing